Season 1, Episode 5: Darren Cordeux

Episode 5 of The Cockatoo is here!

In today's installment, host Adam Burke chats with singer, songwriter, guitarist, producer, and all-around music industry powerhouse Darren Cordeux. From leading the iconic band Kisschasy to his latest LA venture, Daz & the Demons, Darren's musical journey is a tale of resilience and reinvention.

Join us as we uncover the twists and turns of Darren's trans-Pacific adventure, from the early hits of the 2000s to the exciting challenges of forging a new path in LA.

Interview Transcript

Interviewer: Welcome to The Cockatoo, your source for all things Australian music in the US of A. We're coming to you from Los Angeles, California, and this is the interview part of our newsletter where we talk about musical journeys to the United States. Today, I'm very happy to be talking to Darren Cordeux, a singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer who is the frontman of Australian rock band Kisschasy, and more recently, Daz & the Demons.

His career has seen hit records in the early to mid-2000s, the band breaking up in 2015, a Kisschasy comeback in 2022, and now a new project based in LA called, as I said, Daz & the Demons. Let's find out a little bit more about this Melburnian's journey across the Pacific. Welcome, Daz.

Daz: G'day, mate. Thanks for having me.

Interviewer: Of course. Very good to see you. Let's just give the listeners a little bit of a basic understanding of who you are. You grew up in Melbourne, right?

Daz: That's right. Yes, I grew up in a shithole town called Cranbourne. I'm not sure what it's like these days, but at the time, I didn't really have a great time there. There wasn't much to do. It was very much a suburban wasteland. Music was my escape, I guess. My dad was a singing teacher. He was a singing teacher. That was my first introduction to music. Having it permeate the walls of my bedroom there in Cranbourne, all the students coming to the house and seeing the hits of the day, every week.

Then we moved to the Mornington Peninsula, which is where I met the guys and Kisschasy. I guess, yes, we took it from there.

Interviewer: So it's actually a band out of the Mornington Peninsula versus Melbourne, yes?

Daz: That's right, yes. We say Melbourne just to just lump it in, but I guess it was more specifically the Peninsula.

Interviewer: Kisschasy starts in 2002. You guys put out three studio albums, 2005, 2007, and 2009. I figure you're pretty busy touring and playing around Australia at that time?

Daz: Yes. I think between 2004 and 2012 was just nonstop very busy. If it wasn't touring, it was recording. It was TV appearances. It was very much just like that was the career and that was like, this is what we're doing.

When 2015 came around, it was going to be the 10-year anniversary of our first album. We were like, should we do a special tour where we do that album in its entirety? I put my hand up, and I said, why don't we do it as an anniversary, but also call it our final tour and bookend our career that way?

I think people at that point were waiting for us to put out a fourth record, and then we just said, no, we're not, this is the end. That was the end. Yes, 2015, we toured that album, and also said goodbye. Then I moved here, I got actually, that same year, I got married, and then the following year, I got divorced. Then there was nothing tethering me to Australia, aside from family, obviously.

I was just like, yes, I had my eye on the States for a while because we'd come here and recorded like our last record, we'd done a lot of showcases here. My best buddy, Jai, who signed our band, was based here. It was like, okay, well, that's the logical next step. I want to continue making music and seeing how diverse I can take things, coming here, where there's a real economy for it, just made sense.

Interviewer: Just to peg this in time, 2015 is when the band calls it quits and you do your final tour in Australia. When did you move to the United States?

Daz: It was 2017. I'd came here in 2016 for three months to test the waters and do some writing sessions and things like that. Then I went back for six months and then made the final plunge in 2017.

Interviewer: Okay, so tell us about that period between 2016 and 2017. How did you manage that move? What was going on? You said you came out for three months, you did some recording. How did all that go down logistically for you?

Daz: It was difficult actually. It was probably the hardest time in my life. I'd just gone through a divorce and then I moved here and-- well, I was trying to figure out how I was going to move here. I had a whole studio set up in Australia. I sold off basically everything I owned because I was like, I don't have a job lined up in the States and I'm eventually starting over. It doesn't matter who my band is in Australia, we weren't big in the States. I was taking a risk.

It's funny because a lot of people always say you move to LA. A lot of people who do that have this Peter Pan syndrome or something like that. For me, it was the opposite because I could've lived a comfortable Peter Pan life if I just stayed in my band in Australia where people knew who I was. It was actually a much harder reality to come here to be a tiny fish in a big pond. Yes, I sold everything. I didn't have a job lined up. I didn't know how I was going to be able to stay here. I didn't have a visa or anything like that.

I could have applied for the O1. I was gathering all my documents for that. It just seemed like really a lot of hard work. My buddy Jai, he was like, why don't you just go for like an E3 visa, it's like an Australian professional visa. This basically this bar/event space, wanted somebody to come and book entertainment for them and things like that. Based on my history and also the relationships that I did have here in LA, they took a liking to me and put me on their payroll.

That's this place in Silver Lake that I still work at. They said they'd sponsor me. That was the best-case scenario because it was in the world of in the neighborhood where I wanted to be, surrounded by the people that I wanted to be surrounded by but it was a consistent paycheck. I could still do my writing and production. It was like, okay, well, that found me. It was like a real savior in a way, and also introduced me to a great community here.

Interviewer: From when the band breaks up in 2015, after that, you get married and get divorced. There's obviously a little bit of turmoil in your life throughout that period.

You have a potential career, things are looking good and yet you decide to come out here to the US and start a hospitality job. Tell us about what you're feeling in order to compel you to do that?

Daz: Yes, it was strange. I mean, it was funny because even when Kisschasy was at its peak, I always had this head on my shoulders where I knew it wasn't going to last forever. Very rarely does that stretch out for a lifetime for anybody. I always felt like it had an end date and I always was in the back of my mind. It's like, I'll probably have to get a 9:00 to 5:00 at some point, but this is fun. This is great. I'm enjoying this now, but it's not going to last.

When I moved here and that was the case and I was like, well, I've got to get on with it and work a job. It felt like it was just inevitable, but I felt grateful that I was doing it here and the chance for me to still grow as an artist was-- that opportunity was infinitely bigger now, even though I was starting from a much lower point here. That was what kept me going and still does really.

It was definitely-- it's humbling to go from one thing to the other, but at the same time, I was so ready. At that point, that had been my life for such a concentrated part of my life for so long that I was really ready to let it go. When I came here, I didn't even lean on that at all.

I didn't talk to people about my old band or I definitely didn't rest on my laurels or anything. It took me until this last 24 months to really kind of, when Kisschasy did this tour that we did last year and the response has been what it has been, it really took me that to be like, okay, we actually did something really cool. And something that's increasingly hard for artists to experience now where you're someone's favorite band because we came from an era when things were a lot more streamlined and not everything was so disparate.

Now people maybe have their favorite song or their favorite playlist, but to have their favorite band is, it seems like a rarity now. The fact that we came from that era where we held a special place in a lot of people's hearts is a really cool thing. To come back and still have people feel that way, it made me appreciate what I'd done in that period of my life.

Interviewer: You guys have gone the full distance in Australia as a band and you as the frontman of the band. You've seen the industry properly and then you move out here without the band and with the band broken up. It's a completely fresh start for you musically, right?

Daz: That's right. Very much.

Daz: The hardest thing was that that band broke up. I always had very eclectic taste and always wanted to see what I could do with that. When the band broke up, I was like, okay, well, what artist do I want to be? Do I even want to be an artist? when I moved here, I actually didn't have any intention of doing that. I was more like, I'll just maybe do some co-writing, some producing and see where that goes and just be willing to pivot if I need to.

Then the pandemic happened and again, you're shut off from the world. I felt like that kid in Suburban Cranbourne again. I was like, I'm alone and I'm bored. What did I do when I was bored? I picked up a guitar and that was my relief. That was my release as well. It was this cure to all my anxieties and boredom and everything like that. That's when I started tinkering away with the stuff.

It was just like, I'm trying this out, I'm trying this out. Then when the pandemic happened and I started writing these songs that became what is now Daz & the Demons, it was really like this great distilling of all my tastes up until that point. Everything I'd listened to growing up with my dad listening to Del Shannon and Buddy Holly and Roy Orbison and then going through my own '90s phase and then a bit of the '70s power pop and the Brit-pop and all of that in there.

All of the different music, guitar music mostly, but all the different inclinations of that that I took little flavors from. Then it was during that downtime that they all came together in this really focused way. I made this batch of songs and I was like, wow, this is the most me that I've ever been musically. It was just all there. It all came out at once. It was that same feeling that I'd been trying to get.

Interviewer: Tell us about the process of starting again with a new band, US-based band now.

Daz: Yes, it is a lot harder, especially just being older because when you're younger, you got nothing else to do. When you're in your 30s and you're trying to find people, it's definitely like everyone's got careers and they've got-- I was lucky in a sense that I've been playing with a bunch of different people here. I made little mental notes about certain musicians. I was like, if I do my own thing, I really want to play with this person, that person.

I had this little list and luckily, when I had written the songs and I sent them out to those people, everybody that was on my list said yes. I've got one of my best buddies, Zach playing bass, my friend Spencer, he plays drums, he plays in some great bands, one called Bleach, another one called Low Hum. My friend Mackenzie, she plays guitar and does backing vocals. She plays in a great band called Grady Strange.

My friend Genevieve, she plays keys and vocals. They're all just super-talented people. That's the great thing, especially about Los Angeles. You have these people here that probably all have a similar trajectory to me. They've all come here for one reason or another and they've probably had their hearts broken by music at times and they're these incredibly talented people. They just need someone to be like, hey, you shouldn't let this languish and let's do something.

It was really cool to be that catalyst for that, for those people. We came together and we started just rehearsing. I had this great place in Boyle Heights here where I had crazy cheap rent. I had this huge four-bedroom place to myself and so I turned one of the rooms into a rehearsal room and another one into the studio. We would go there and rehearse and we started playing shows.

Then we recorded the album in there as well. That's actually about to come out on April 6th.

Interviewer: Tell us, how did you go about connecting into a community, the music community, such that you are able to put together, in some ways, it seems to be a dream band for you?

Daz: It was one of those things where for the first little while I was finding my feet here, I wasn't engaging quite enough with the local community, musical community. I was focusing on just getting by, making ends meet. I was definitely a few hungry years there when I moved here. Then it wasn't-- until that period where I had found some consistency in my life and, yes, I'd been playing with a few different people.

My friend Ariel Beasley, we did some writing together and she-- I was her almost creative director for a while where I was playing in her band and then she would find other members in her band and I would show them her songs and that's how I met Spencer, the drummer, actually of the Daz & the Demons. Then I would start going to see some more shows. The other thing is that, I don't know if a lot of other artists relate to this, but when you're not in a good place musically, it's really hard to absorb other new music because there's that ego part of you that feels a little bit like maybe embittered or jealous or you just feel like frustrated.

I started really writing my own stuff and I felt like, okay, I feel like myself again, that I started really going out and soaking up the local scene and enjoying what was going on out there. That's when I started reaching out and meeting other people in that community and that way I found other members and I found other people to play shows with and so that really felt-- and that was a really great feeling where I was like, okay, I feel plugged into the rhythm of what's happening around me in LA, and not in this little bubble, which was really cool.

It took quite a while and I think it does take people quite some time when they move here to really do that.

Interviewer: Album comes out April 6th. Any plans around the release?

Daz: We're going to play a great venue, actually, which used to be known as the Hi-Hat in Highland Park, and now it's called the Goldfish. It's got this really cool '50s aesthetic, which we're drawn to because I don't know, there's a little bit of that in our music as well. There's a bit of that doo-wop thing.

It's us and this great band from Long Beach called Soft Jaw. They're doing their opening. My good friend, Jordan Jones, who I played with at Zebulon, he's going to be DJing the event as well.

That's the main thing. Then we might go back to Australia at some point. We did actually do a run of shows in Australia. I brought some Americans out with me, two of the members. Then I had a couple of Aussies fill in for the other fellas.

Interviewer: Love it. Take it all back home.

Daz: That's right. Yes, it's nice. It's cool. It's definitely-- it is nice. In Australia, obviously having that bit of a leg up. Casey who books, Kisschasy actually books Daz & the Demons now in Australia. She's amazing. It's funny, that was the one thing that it felt very Australian. When I talked to her about Daz & the Demons, I sent her the record and she said, "God, I love it. Let's do something."

LA for better or worse, one of the things that does happen here, you get people hyping you up and then nothing comes of it. When she said that, I was like, yes, whatever. Then I got back off the plane from Australia and landed in the States and she'd already locked in a tour for us. I was like, God, okay, amazing. Last year we actually got to go and play a whole run of shows and I got to take these Americans to Australia for their very first trip. They were there for-- they took that long flight and they were only there for eight days.

Interviewer: If you could go back to that time when you were deciding to make the move and making the move to the US, is there anything you'd tell yourself?

Daz: Yes, I would tell myself to really just focus on having a good work ethic. Also, I don't know, the thing is that I think with a lot of Australians, I'm not afraid to admit I definitely got into the partying a bit hard when I moved here. I felt like probably wasted a little bit of time. I don't know if I would change that because it definitely made me understand myself a lot more.

My main thing would be, I'll just be like, have a good work ethic, wake up every day and get into your studio. There was a period where I had this great studio set up and I would just walk past it every day. I do wish I got in there more. I wonder what songs that could've been in existence now that didn't get to be created at that time. I think just have a good work ethic, but also not at the cost of enjoying life.

Interviewer: I hear you. Great conversation. We've caught you at a fascinating inflection point of your career. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today, Daz.

Daz: Thank you, man. Appreciate it. Thanks for taking the time.

Interviewer: Thank you. All the best. Very much looking forward to hearing the new album in April. Thank you to everyone for listening. Today, we've had Darren Cordeux, singer, songwriter, producer, guitarist, Kisschasy, now Daz & the Demons out here in LA. You've been listening to The Cockatoo podcast. This is the chat that we have for our newsletter. We are the Australian Music Alliance, which is part of the Pitchhiker Foundation. It's a 501c3, so you can support us in all the ways that you would support a non-profit.

The most important way is to listen in, subscribe, tell your friends and share these amazing Australian stories. Thank you and we'll catch you on an upcoming edition.