Lots of strange things have begun with a bottle of red wine … from great romances to bloody wars. For drummer Ben Gillies and keyboardist Wesley Carr the vino inspired a rock’n’roll band. By the second bottle the pair were writing song after song in Ben’s kitchen and merrily taping the results. After the third bottle they decided that their new group needed a name so they looked at the label on the bottle and in their … exuberant … state they pledged to call themselves “Tambalane”. However, the next morning when they were cleaning up the empties the pair realized that they’d actually misread the spelling of the winery’s name!

“The evening had been so perfect that we just decided to stick with Tambalane”, explains Ben Gillies. “It felt right – just like the music did”.

The pair originally met through mutual friends at a time when they both had too much time on their hands. Ben’s band, Silverchair, was taking an indefinite break and the surf wasn’t great. He was heartily sick of sitting around in Newcastle listening to James Brown and Led Zepplin and was looking for something to keep him musically active. At the same time Wesley was eking out a living in Sydney’s inner city pubs playing folk songs and trying to sell a few copies of his indie EP after the show. Both of them were keen to have a new musical outlet so it only took a few corks to be popped before they were rolling at full speed into making music together.

“We both had a bunch of musical ideas that didn’t make sense for our other projects so it was great to be able to bounce off each other and turn lots of them into complete songs”, says Wesley Carr.

Some of the songs that Ben and Wes knocked up over the red wine that first night will soon make their way onto the group’s self titled debut album. It’s a compelling brew of classic rock with irresistible melodies. Gillies trademark heavy grooves are all too apparent but they are tempered in many places by Carr’s sweet singer/songwriter influences. It’s a return to co-writing for Ben after leaving the composition chores to Daniel Johns on the last few Silverchair CD’s. However, on the group’s first two albums Ben helped pen the music on tracks including classics like “Tomorrow” and “Slave”.

“I really enjoy playing Daniel’s songs but sometimes over recent years I’ve missed having that writing outlet”, he says. “It’s been great to get back into doing that with Wes. Silverchair is fun and I definitely want to make more albums and tour with Daniel and Chris when the time’s right but in the meantime it’s a lot of fun to do Tambalane because my role is so different.”

“I even get to play a bit of guitar and sing background vocals in this band”, he chuckles.

Most of the tunes on “Tambalane” were written during various writing trips during 2004. Wes traveled up to Newcastle a few times. Then the pair went away to Byron Bay for a few weeks with their girlfriends and spent nights drinking wine and writing more songs. Finally Ben started spending a lot of time in Sydney and things really started to jell. By late last year the pair had amassed over 20 songs they liked and they’d found bass player, Greg Royal and keyboardist Gerard Masters to help flesh out the tunes. To really fine tune things prior to recording the quartet did a low key residency in the tiny front bar at Sydney’s legendary Annandale Hotel. Each Saturday night for a month they played after midnight to a handful of partiers when the advertised bands had finished playing in the main room. It was quite a change for Gillies who was more accustomed to filling arenas with Silverchair but that was all part of the fun.

“We really had a great time doing those shows”, says the drummer. “You could immediately tell which songs were grabbing people’s attention and even which bits of songs were working. It helped us to sort things out in the lead up to making the album and it helped the band bonding too”.

“Tambalane” was recorded over a hectic few weeks in early 2005. Phil McKellar engineered and produced. This was a homecoming of sorts given that Phil helmed Silverchair’s first ever recording sessions for their “Tomorrow” EP. Since then he has produced acclaimed albums for Grinspoon and Spiderbait among others and has done some more work with Silverchair including the demo sessions for their most recent album “Diorama”. Phil McKellar and the band endeavoured to keep a very ‘real and raw’ feel to the sessions with the group laying down most of the basic tracks live in an attempt to capture the energy of those late night gigs at the Annandale Hotel. On recordings like the upbeat “Little Miss Liar” and the anthemic opening track “Free” it’s clear that the exercise succeeded in spades. Elsewhere on the album the band show a funkier edge on “Skywalk” and a gentler approach on “Sail” which suggests their broad musical range. “We’re not looking to try and reinvent rock music or anything like that”, says Wesley Carr when asked to describe Tambalane’s sound. “We just wanted to have a bunch of songs that were fun to play live with some grooves and melodies that were really good fun to listen to. It’s as simple as that really. Hopefully people will just enjoy listening to it.”