Ahead of their Coffee House Session at Nottingham Trent’s Student Union, we caught up with Aussie sisters, Germein, talking about Little Mix, their debut album and Sherwood Forest…
Hi, could you please introduce yourself to our readers?
Ella: We are Germein, we are from Australia and we’re all sisters. My name is Ella and I play the Bass and Electric Chello.
Georgia: My name is Georgia and I play guitar
Claire: Hi, I am Claire and I play drums
Like you said you’re from Australia, what is it like being over here in the UK?
Ella: Yeah, it’s awesome, we were actually here in July and this is probably our sixth or seventh time we are over in the UK, we love playing here and especially in the last year we opened for one your bands, Little Mix which was amazing. We were doing 15 shows around the UK was incredible and it’s cool to follow up that tour with this Coffee House sessions here. The weather hasn’t been to bad yet.
Claire: There was definitely a heatwave in July, this time we have been pretty lucky
Ella: But we love it here.
What was it like supporting Little Mix?
Ella: Yeah, it was amazing! They were huge shows, the crowds were so lovely and welcoming to us. Obviously a lot of people didn’t know who we were over here so it was amazing to come over here and be so well received.
Your brand new single, “Knocking at my Door” is out now, could you tell us a little bit about it?
Georgia: Yeah, I am trying to think what the inspiration was behind it because I wrote it ages and ages ago – like a few years ago now. It was just a sort of thing that came up, it’s like a fun song.
Ella: It is one of them songs where it’s like that person that your always thinking about, especially when your touring and on the road, you always miss a friend, boyfriend or a girlfriend, mum and dad or whatever and your like ‘ahh, I wish they were here with us’ and sometimes having that surprise. Or even talking about a friendship falling out or break-ups and getting back together and that sort of euphemism.
Georgia: We recorded that one in our home studio which was really fun to create that one, which was really cool.
Have you done any recording outside of Australia?
Ella: We did some on Ireland a couple of years ago, but not any of the new stuff
Who would you say are your biggest inspirations?
Ella: We have so many, I really think you can get inspirations from so many artists but also just people you meet generally. Our mum and dad have been massive supporters of us which has been really great because being a musician isn’t the ideal career but they’ve been so supportive of us doing this and always helping us out with advice and that sort of thing. But in terms of artists we love bands and a lot of female artists especially, with the female movement – it is so cool to see girls on guitars rocking out, there is’ Haim and even Little Mix. I know there not a band itself there more of a group. Their energy and how they put it on stage is just really inspiring. You see how much effort they really put in that goes on behind the scenes to their shows. So watching that was super inspiring but we just love music and old-school Fleetwood Mac and U2, a bit of everything!
Do you think your fan base is a lot different every country you travel too?
Ella: I think if you look at our Instagram, you can see the age bracket. I think it’s so broad. Over here, I think it’s a lot more younger just because of the Little Mix crowd we played too. But you know, we’ve got the mum’s and dads behind us as well liking our music. We try and hope that our music appeals to everyone as much as it can and people can take out what they want from it, whether their in high school or 100 years old, we hope that everyone can enjoy it.
Are there any talks of an album?
All: Yes!
Georgia: We are just finishing off an album at the moment. It is hard to finish because we are travelling so much! But when we get back from this tour we will finish off the rest of this album and hopefully have it out by next year – that’s the plan.
Claire: Hopefully we will be back in the UK touring that album.
What do you miss about home the most?
Claire: Obviously we miss our mum and dad and our brother and our pets, definitely. We have four dogs at home and every time we see a dog we all scream. It is a lot easier travelling all together because we are family and it’s not too bad.
Ella: You get to see so much. There are so many places we’d love to stick around and explore a bit more. But I think for us, being home we have a bit of property with trees and the outdoors, sometimes when your crammed in hotels, they are things you really appreciate such as space.
Claire: But it’s good because you get the best of both worlds, we are going to be going home for summer and Christmas this year that will be nice.
Of course! It’s summer over there currently! Are their any places in the UK that you’d really like to see?
Ella: I would love to go back to Bath. We were there a few days ago but we were only there for like half an hour.
Claire: I always wanted to see the Harry Potter Studios which I did this year finally which was just exciting for me because I am a big Harry Potter fan
Ella: I’ve seen London but not all the sights. I haven’t seen Buckingham Palace and things like that. I’ve been to Windsor Castle earlier in the year. Even just places in history that you may not necessarily know about. The other day we went to Call the Midwife’s set and where that was filmed. Sometimes you do them tours where films are set or books are written and for us that is so cool. We went to Sherwood Forest last time we were here and we didn’t even know that was a real place! I thought it was a fictional place in the story.
Claire: It was just so cool.
You can stream “Knocking on my Door” on Spotify
By Becky Lumbard