Camp Cope
The Future Is Female
I’d caught up with Georgia Maq twice in the past fortnight. Once when her band Camp Cope was supporting Modern Baseball and the other when they were doing a mid-week live to air performance for a community radio station. On both occasions she had asked me to review her band’s new album, which was days away from being released. On both occasions I’d politely declined. It’s not that I don’t like Camp Cope, on the contrary. There are so many layers to this band, that to summate their existence into a few paragraphs and a couple of hundred words would be a disservice to them.
I’d had the unmastered version of the album for a while and loved it; the bass melodies and the aggression in the vocals particularly, but it was the lyrics and the underlying themes and messages that Maq was singing about that I kept gravitating towards.
After exchanging back and forth text messages we arrange an interview and choose to meet out the front of the Poison City Records store in Fitzroy. I arrive early, so decide to head inside and peruse the shelves. No sooner do I arrive, than I overhear a customer asking about the Camp Cope record and purchasing their t-shirt. It’s less than 24 hours since the album has been released but it’s clear that things are about to change in Camp Cope.
We walk a few doors down the road and sit in the corner of a pizza bar. It’s a Saturday afternoon and people come and go for lunch. A small group sit at the table opposite us despite the venue being largely empty. No doubt they can eavesdrop on everything we are talking about, but it doesn’t matter, what Maq has to say is worth hearing.
A couple of years ago I’d interviewed her over email and her responses were guarded and brief. Today, at just 21 years of age, she rarely hesitates, is articulate and pulls no punches. She is extremely passionate but also unapologetic and it’s clear that she doesn’t just mix the personal and the political, because for her, the personal is political. The Georgia Maq you hear on the record, is the Georgia Maq you hear in real life. “I just talk about personal stuff. I feel that’s why people kind of find me endearing,” she says. “All of my writing is very stream of consciousness because it’s my outlet. The only way to get it out is to write about it and say it and be comfortable with saying it. Everyone goes through similar things, as long as they don’t feel alone. If I can help anyone that’s all that matters.”
The album is dripping with emotion from start to finish, as Maq sings about her ‘crippling anxiety,’ ‘the darkness that lives inside of’ her and being ‘desensitised to the human body.’ I ask her if music and this band in particular, is an escape, a way for her to cope. She agrees. “I don’t think I’d be as happy or feeling as content or fulfilled in my life if it wasn’t for Kelly and Thomo and the music we create together,” she says, of her close relationship with bass player Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich and drummer Sarah Thompson.
In the United States, Camp Cope is the name of a weekend getaway provided for the children of militarily service men and women. Cope, is an acronym for courage, optimism, patience and encouragement, four characteristics that manifest themselves across the album. Maq laughs at the coincidence. “I know, I’ve seen their Instagram hashtag,” she jokes.
The past few years has seen Maq grow from creating covers of Dresden Dolls, Lana Del Ray and The Pretty Reckless songs in her bedroom to busking on the city streets of Melbourne. It was then performing solo acoustic shows at pubs across town, to now fronting a band. Over that time, she’s overcome the challenge of performing to increasingly larger audiences, but also finding her own voice as a songwriter. “It’s been a really slow build up,” she reflects, looking out the window at cars passing by. “My dream of dreams when I was a kid was to play in an all-girl band. It’s been a challenge building up that confidence and trying not to freak out, but I feel now it’s less of a challenge with two people beside me,” she says.
On Atonement, the first song she ever released, she sings, ‘My name’s Georgia Maq and I have to learn to be comfortable with that, because I am all I have.’ It’s biting self-loathing but symbolic of the brutal honesty that would soon become her own brand of lyricism. I ask her, now she is part of a band, what the greatest strengths Hellmrich and Thompson bring. “Amazing bass riffs, great drums, constant support and encouragement,” she says, before I can finish the question. “They’re my two best friends. We create something beautiful all together and it’s this gorgeous friendship that gives so much to all of us. I feel like I’m never alone now.”
June 6, 2015 was the first time the band rehearsed. 321 days later they had released one of the best albums of its genre for the year. The record was the only eight songs they had at the time of entering the studio.
Opening track, Done follows a discourse of righting wrongs with family and loved ones. Recently added to Triple J rotation, it’s fitting the first 12 seconds of the song, and consequently the introduction to the band, is a bass riff. Hellmrich’s playing is distinctive and is fast becoming a hallmark of the band’s sound; discreetly engaging the counter melody to Maq’s vocals.
Flesh And Electricity references Maq’s job as a nurse and employs vivid imagery to absorb the mundane nature of shift work and turn it in to a fragile account of bare-bones beauty.
West Side Story deals with the heartbreak of a failed relationship, before it switches time signature and tact to take glancing blows at the public transport system, health care and Gina Rinehart with scathing social commentary.
Lost mixes metaphors of a long distance relationship with the US TV drama of the same name. It’s the first song the trio wrote collaboratively and the first that really clicked as a band. “That was the first power chord song I’d written, instead of just cowboy chords,” laughs Maq. “I brought it to the band and we got it really quickly. That was our first band song; one that I hadn’t played solo.”
Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams has become the overwhelming stand out, having received over 32,000 Spotify plays and 24,000 YouTube views in its first month of release. It has also generated much discussion, including a thread on Internet forum Reddit where users argued over its meaning. “It’s about challenging popular narratives perpetuated by the media,” wrote one user, while another replied, “it’s about being lied to about how the world should work and how society is supposed to function.” Perhaps they’re both right.
“That experience happen to a girl I met in America,” says Maq of the line, ‘Hearing catcalls from police cars.’ “She was telling me how she was walking home from a bar and she was whistled at. She turned around and saw that it was from a policeman and was like, ‘what the fuck?’ He then winked at her and said, ‘what are you going to do about it?’ So I expanded on it, because that’s such a common experience had by women. You ask any woman on the street and she can tell you about a time that she’s been harassed or intimidated. I wanted to put that experience in to a song.”
Trepidation is literal to its title, again alluding to Maq’s anxiety in a personal narrative of being plagued by doubts. Stove Lighter, follows similar themes, but is slightly more uplifting in its use of group vocals to express finding freedom and your place in the world.
The album’s crescendo is the heart breaking closer Song For Charlie. A song that sees Hellmrich and Thompson stand to the side, as Maq lets everything out. It’s the third time the song has been recorded, but this one is the rawest yet. “In 2014, my mum’s partner, John, hung himself the day after his daughter’s birthday. He had been living with depression for a long time. Mum was away and she took a plane back as soon as she could. We were all at my dad’s house. It was fucked. I remember playing guitar around that time and meeting John’s kids properly, because I’d only met them after he died. I started writing that song because Charlie seemed the most affected by it; sad and quiet. I wrote that song to make him feel better. It’s all about John, but it’s for Charlie.”
Nothing that Camp Cope does is by accident and the photo that adorns the front cover of the album too portrays a deeper message. Sitting in a hospital, draped in bandages and with blood smeared on the pillows behind her, a two year old Maq still manages to find the beauty in it all with an enormous grin. “You go through all this shit, but humans are still resilient and find joy,” she says. “I spent some time in Greece when I was a little kid. I saw my sister carry around a giant glass bottle, so I decided to carry an even bigger one and run with it. I tripped and it smashed and the pieces all went in to me. So my parents wrapped me in a t-shirt and took me to hospital and the doctor put Betadine in my wounds. We were on a tiny Greek island and the doctor couldn’t deal with it. So we went on a fishing boat to the next island and a surgeon sewed me up as my dad held me down because they had no anesthetic. My mum was standing outside the door and all she could hear was me screaming.”
Camp Cope’s actions speak just as loud as their words, you only need to look at their album tour to see the effort they have gone to in ensuring accessibility and inclusion. Be it playing all ages shows, performing alongside thought-provoking bands like Two Steps On The Water or playing events such as the Queer & Now Festival in Sydney, their presence is a statement. “One of our Old Bar residency shows had a bill that was equal amounts of men and women. The girlfriend of one of the guys in a band came up to me at the end and said, ‘I haven’t felt that safe at a show in so long.’ That’s what it’s about.”
She mentions the show they recently did with Modern Baseball where she wore her ‘The Future Is Female,’ shirt and the response that came from it. “One of the goals I have is to get more young girls on to the stage and feeling like they can start a band; it’s not boy’s territory,” she says. “I read a tweet that was like, ‘I was inspired to pick up my guitar after listening to Camp Cope,’ and I was like fuck yes!”
In its simplest form, the premise of the riot grrrl movement was built around having no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet about it. One of the most striking lines from the album is, ‘We will not go out in silence, no we will not go quietly,’ from Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams. I ask Maq if she identifies with riot grrrl. “When I was a kid I didn’t know about this whole broad music community. I didn’t think it existed. I just thought there were these really big bands and that was it. I wouldn’t have even known where to look for music that was for me. I didn’t listen to Bikini Kill, I didn’t listen to Bratmobile or Sleater Kenney but I was still a riot grrl in a way because I was a girl playing music and going to shows. I was unapologetically front row. I didn’t need those bands to feel the empowerment that I felt. My empowerment was through punk music in general. That liberated me. I was ten years old and listening to punk rock and wearing all black and being like, ‘screw the man.’ It made me who I am.”
The band has done a handful of press for the album, including radio, print and digital, but the most powerful press came in the form of a Q & A with frankie magazine, a popular arts and culture publication with national circulation of close to 60,000. When asked what scares you most — a normally generic throw away question, Hellmrich responded, “a government that puts little to no urgency on improving education, women’s rights and closing the gap.” Forget trying to sell a record, here was a young band that had something to say and weren’t afraid to say it. “I like statements,” says Maq. “I want people to know what our views are. I want to get feminism in your face. The world is so fucked and music is such a beautiful escape. We should make it better for everyone and if we can use music for good, then we should.”
Music is an escape for Maq, but it’s also something she can’t escape. Her father is musician Hugh McDonald, a one time member of folk-rock group Redgum who also recorded many of her first songs. “I think he’s proud,” she says of his response to Camp Cope. “My little sister and big sister don’t do music so I was the music child.”
Since moving out of her Eastern suburbs family home after high school, Maq has lived with countless musicians in share houses across Footscray and Seddon in working class West Melbourne. She now also casually works behind the bar at The Reverence Hotel. The influence of being surrounded by musicians has, by her own admission, been a constant inspiration, but so too has her environment, you need to look no further than her songs West Side Story and Footscray Station. “I’ve got an east coast heart and a west coast mentality,” she says referencing the P.S Eliot song Tennessee. “It’s now who I am. I feel so connected.”
Wearing a grey Poison City Records tee, Maq’s arms bare much of her motivation. There’s a tattoo of her beloved 1988 Volvo 240 and the band’s primary mode of transport. There’s an astronaut, symbolic of her love of science fiction and space. “I took Year 11 music and then I dropped out. I did physics and psychology because I wanted to be an astronaut,” she tells me. But most fittingly is the DIY text scrawled on the inside of her arm, a quote from the X Files, The Truth Is Out There, because indeed it is, it’s in the 36 minutes of her band’s debut album, it’s in the words she speaks and it’s in the actions she and her bandmates take.
Brendan Hitchens
