:: Spotlight :: Via Tania - Warming to a Different Sky...

By: Semone Maksimovic

Just after the release of Via Tania¹s debut record “Under A Different Sky”, I managed to hook up with Ms Tania May Bowers who some of you may remember fronting that young giggly indie rock group of the early 90s, SPDFGH. Since then, Tania has left the country and lived in Chicago with husband Casey Rice, where she managed to get a new project started. She called in friends like Scott Herren (Prefuse 73), John Herndon (Tortoise) etc, and managed to record “Under A Different Sky”.

With the Australian release finally upon us, Tania is excited and eager to talk about her experiences as she sits happily on a garden chair, under a garden umbrella, sipping coffee in the warm sunshine of her front yard in Melbourne.

“I feel really good that the album is finally released here, because it's been out in the States since May. But when it comes out in the place where you come from, it's a completely different story. The record company over there doesn't really know anything about Australia and what it's like with music, and the first thing I said to them was "when are we going to put it out in Australia? What's going to happen in Australia?” They said, “Well, it's not exactly a huge market” and I was trying to explain to them that it's where I'm from and where I live, so they eventually said, “Okay, you can pick anyone you want to put it out over there. You know about that stuff and we don't, so they left it up to me.”

Moving to the States would be hard enough, but adapting to having all of these cool musicians around your neighbourhood keen to lend a helping hand would have to be a harder thing to get used to. Not so for Tania. She worked with a steady air of comfort and adapted right away. "I moved there early in 1999 and actually hadn't any ideas about recording. I just went there and I hadn't travelled that much
before. I actually found it strange. It's just so extreme, like the good things are really good. I met amazing people and the people in music, art and fashion, that became my friends were just some of the most amazing people I'd ever met. Then the other side of it was just like on the street, like all of the poverty and all of the really depressing society kind of things that we don't have here so much. Recording was a long process because we had a studio in our house and a lot of our friends had studios too, so it was a lot like “what are you doing this weekend? I need some drums on this song” or “This one isn't quite coming together, it needs something else”. It just stretched out like that for about 10 or 11 months and I was working a job, so recording wasn't really full time. It was actually a really nice way to work on it. I don't know how I would go with being told I had three weeks to make a record. I mean, I could probably record in that three weeks but I would need so much time to think about mixing and then take my time mixing it. That's how things like that get really considered - when there is time and distance in between all of my decisions and stuff. It was a really great experience, plus being able to get musicians to come on in and do whatever they thought was appropriate and then go again, it became a bit like “Oh, what's going to happen today?” So it was a lot of fun. It was cool because 90% of the people who played on my record lived in my neighbourhood and I saw every other day anyway."

After living in such an artistic environment, you'd think returning to her home country would have been more difficult for her, but not so. “I'm just happy to be back. Australia is an amazing place. I do plan to take full advantage of what I love about both places now though. For example, this is like my fourth summer in a row.”

Under A Different Sky is out through Warner Music.