With the three members hailing from a melting-pot of weird and wonderful places, Three Marias’ sound was always going to be totally intriguing.
Although they’re hard at work preparing for tomorrow night’s Basement Bash gig at Urban Spree, the surf-slash-garage rockers took the time to speak with indieBerlin about the inspiration behind their latest record, and shared some insights into the formation of their curious little group.
indieBerlin: Tell us a little bit about your musical background.
Frankie: We share a passion for the sound of the ‘60s – mainly garage, surf and psych rock – and for the contemporary bands who took that sound and evolve it into something new. Our music is pretty much a 50/50 mix of clean, surf-style guitars and crazy amounts of fuzz distortion.
iB: How did you come up with the name Three Marias?
Jamie: Funnily enough we’re named after a song of ours! Frankie and Manu once told me that they have Maria amongst their middle names, which is quite a common thing in the countries where they’re from (Italy and Portugal). I decided to write a silly song about it and call it “Two Marias”, but Frankie decided I was going to be a Maria too, so we made it Three Marias. Song and band name: sorted!
iB: How did you get together as a band?
Manu: Jamie and I had a band before Frankie arrived in Berlin – The Almighty Howlers. It was great fun, but our frontman had to go back to his homeland Australia for good. We spent months looking for a new singer until Jamie stumbled upon Frankie’s post on Craigslist. It felt right straight from the first jam.
iB: How does the songwriting process work in your band?
Jamie: We normally start from a simple idea, a riff or a bunch of chords recorded at home and we start working around it. Frankie and I sometimes get together and try our new ideas on acoustic guitars, then Manu adds the drums in the rehearsal room.
Our music is like the sea, sometimes calm, sometimes rowdy, but always floating.
iB: If you had to describe your music to a deaf person, what would you say?
Frankie: Our music is like the sea, sometimes calm, sometimes rowdy, but always floating.
iB: Where do you get your inspiration from?
Frankie: We build ideas on a quite wide range of things, but we never take it too far. Most of our songs talk about real life situations, experiences, moments that we shared together, or simply what goes on in our minds.
iB: How do you feel about covering a song?
Manu: It’s something we’ve previously done and we’re OK with it, although we prefer presenting our own stuff to the audience rather than fill our setlist with songs by other artists. We played a couple of cover-only events and it was good fun, but we tend to keep the cover business separate from our ‘normal’ song routine.
iB: Do you see your songs in colour or in black and white?
Frankie: I’d say definitely colour. Some a bit faded and gentle, some bright and bursting with all different contrasts.
iB: Do you want to give anybody a shout out?
Jamie: Yes, Alex Ott, who recorded and produced our single and did an amazing job!
Want to see Three Marias live at Basement Bash tomorrow? Check out details of the event here.
