By Frank Bell
Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, Ruby and Pete are President Street. We talked to the charming duo about Something to Believe, their stunning, aptly relevant new song, about overcoming adversity and learning to rely on yourself above all else…
What has been the most inspiring career moment for you so far?
Ruby: Having people contact us about the impact our latest song in particular ‘Something to Believe’ has had on them is incredibly inspiring and reaffirming for me. Music was my saviour growing up so that’s been special for me in terms of the songwriting part of our career. To have someone say they connected so deeply with it and that it’s been a cathartic and helpful song for them is just magic!
Pete: I think doing our first UK tour was definitely a really inspiring moment to me. In a way that moment made me feel that all the hard work we’d done up to that point was starting to pay off.
Who are some of your non-musical inspirations?
Ruby: In general people who live with passion and spread love in the world. Dr Brooke Goldner is an amazing vegan doctor in the U.S. helping people get their health back and has been a catalyst for me in terms of a healthful vegan diet and lifestyle.
Pete: I find Pablo Picasso an inspiration in the sense that he totally reinvented his process in order to find his own unique voice. I admire the courage and self determination needed to take that risk and think about that in my own moments of doubt.
Describe your new track, Something to Believe, in three words.
Uplifting. Deep. Real.
Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
Hopefully we’ll be able to travel more than the current 5km radius from our houses in Melbourne by then – but who knows at the rate our current covid lockdown is going! And hopefully we’ll be doing what we’re doing now but on a larger scale – touring and writing.
What is the most common theme in your songwriting?
Personal journeys. We always try to stay true to ourselves and human experiences we guess. Whether it’s one of us directly, or after chatting with someone else or seeing something on the news, we often seem to gravitate to real stories of personal journeys that move us.
©FM
