Lucy Hearn, The Understudy / Chris Frank, New Neighbors

Australian Lucy Hearn is a singer-songwriter who plays wry pop songs as The Understudy. Chris Frank is lead singer of New York indie rock band New Neighbors. They're old friends and touring together, so I spoke to them together.

LUCY HEARN: My dad plays a little bit of guitar, but not really. None of my other siblings are interested and some of them aren’t good at it either, but no, I don’t have a dad or a mum who is a musician. Dad played in a band when he was in university but never really took it seriously, so it’s just me really.

CHRIS FRANK: I come from a musical family. Halfway musical anyway. My dad as far as I know doesn’t play anything, but my mom is a piano player and has been since she was really very young, and about age five I remember sitting in the back of the car and announcing that I wanted to learn to play the violin. So I did. I started taking violin lessons that year and then I think five years after that my little brother announced that he wanted to play the guitar and I thought that sounded way cooler, so I started learning the guitar too. That, it quickly became clear, was my instrument and I started practising a lot less violin and a lot more guitar.

Does your little brother still play the guitar or did you steal it from him?

CHRIS FRANK: Well, I guess I kind of stole it from him. But he picked up the bass and has become a very good bass player so I think he and I are very happy where we ended up.

Lucy, You mentioned that your siblings aren’t interested in music. Do they listen to your music?

LUCY HEARN: Oh, they listen to music I just think they’re not interested in playing it particularly. My brother is actually really musically talented, but he only practises drums because he’s forced to. But the answer to that question is yes. In fact if there’s a person whose opinion I trust almost as much as Chris’s it’s my sister’s. Both of them are exceptionally honest. They’ll say, ‘Hmm, this isn’t very good. This isn’t as good as your other songs and this is why,’ and they have really good reasons for it. My sister is another sounding board I suppose for me. I call her and I’m like, ‘I just emailed you this new song. You have to listen to it right now and tell me what you think.’ She’s like, ‘I’m at uni and I’m busy.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t care, this is important!’