Despite their recent success, The Dukes of Windsor still have their feet planted strongly on the ground, writes Jesse Kuch

Melbourne band The Dukes of Windsor first got together in 2005 after vocalist Jack Weaving and producer, drummer and engineer Cory Blight spent several months cooped up in a bedroom writing music.

The band soon enlisted keyboard player Scott Targett, guitarist Oscar Dawson and bassist Joe Franklin and the current incarnation was born, kick-starting a career that has taken the band everywhere from the ARIA Awards to the top of the Australian charts.

"It’s funny, the way you get together is never as interesting as what you produce," Jack tells timeOUT ahead of the group’s gig at the Cairns Music Festival this month.

"We didn’t know what we wanted when we first started."

However ambiguous its beginnings, the group has found its success with 2006 debut The Others, heralded by critics as one of the best releases coming out of Australia that year. According to Jack, not much has changed from the band’s point of view.

"To be honest, we are better on stage than in reality," he says frankly.

"Not a lot has changed for us as far as lifestyle goes. The main thing we have seen is more and more people at the shows."

Aiming to repeat the success of its previous work, the boys have just returned from Sweden where they recorded second album Minus at former mental asylum Tonteknik Studios with hardcore legends Pelle Henricsson and Eskil Lövström.

"The main reason we went there is that we are huge fans of the producers," Jack says.

"The studio is way up in the Arctic Circle. We were waist-deep in snow the whole time with two-and-a-half hours light a day.

"It was an amazing experience and the quality of music coming out of there, and Sweden in general, is incredible,"
he says.

Jack strongly believes Minus is a real step forward from previous work.

"There are more intelligent tunes – the first album was five idiots thrown into a room making noise," he says.

"In saying that, we had to make as many mistakes as we could to decide who we were."

Stylistically, the band refuses to be pigeon-holed into a particular genre.

"I’m not sure what style we are myself, but Paul Dempsey from Something for Kate said something great about us.

"He said it sounds like the new INXS – it’s not dance, it’s not rock, it’s not funk, it just is.

"If anything, I hope it’s not electro.

"We are a rock band at heart and that’s how we try and approach it," Jack says.

Despite a hectic touring schedule, Jack still has some time for an honest day’s work.

"As we speak, I’m standing on the corner of Duke St in my home suburb of Windsor, and I am about to do a shift in a cafe owned by Phil, the drummer from (fellow Melbourne band) Something for Kate," he says.

"When I’m home I get the guilts.

"I don’t have any shows for a couple of weeks until we get up to Cairns, so I figured I may as well do a day’s work behind the bar.

"It beats watching Dr Phil."

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