Nana’s Pie: ‘A lot of songs are about breakups or about moving away but this song was honestly just about being happy’

Brisbane coastal rockers Nana’s Pie are gearing up to release two new songs ‘Happy Today’ and ‘Push Restart’, which will form part of their debut EP around mid-2025.

Gritty guitar riffs and the pulsing bass lines in their songs capture the rebellious spirit of rock and leave you wanting more, pushed along by soaring, singalong choruses. The band, which they formed four years ago, comprises Tyler Hammill (vocals, guitar and harmonica) and twins Nash Hindmarsh (guitar) and Adam Hindmarsh (drums). Hammill describes them as ‘three best mates who met in kindergarten’: ‘We were super young but we got on really well,’ he said. ‘I ended up going to a different school for a while but we bumped into each other a couple of years later and found out we all were playing music over those years that we were apart and it all started from there. So we were best friends who disconnected for a bit and reconnected!’

I ask whose nana’s pie they are named after and he laughs: ‘Normally, we just make a story up so people can believe it’s a cool story but the real story is that our drummer, Adam, had a shirt on, which actually said the word ‘nana’ on it when we were eating pies for lunch. He made a joke out of it. We had a giggle and ended up sticking with it – we haven’t changed it yet! We did do a little poll the other day saying if we were to change our name, what should we change it to? And there was public outrage!’

‘A lot of songs are about breakups or about moving away but this song was honestly just about being happy’

Hammill describes ‘Happy Today’ as a departure for them, both lyrically and sonically: ‘We always try to give a story to a song,’ he said. ‘A lot of songs are about breakups or about moving away but this song was honestly just about being happy. There will be a music video to this that will really help you visualise it. It’s about when life gets tough, when you’ve got to try so hard to count up all the things in your life that you’ve been grateful for. Even if things aren’t going your way, you have a roof over your head and all the essentials like that. It’s a song about trying to be more happy with having the opportunity to be on earth. It’s a new sound for us. It’s very hooky, hookier than ‘Fool For You’. There’s a melody that goes on and on and on throughout the song, it just gets stuck in your head, which is cool. We like that because we’re trying to be memorable in a world with a lot of music.’

He is the main songwriter in the band, although they try to share the load: ‘I have written heaps of different songs, ‘cos I’ve been doing it since I was so young, so I have all these songs that I have sort of ready to go. On tour is a really good time, there’s a lot of time when we’re in the van and there’s a lot of time in between shows that we’re just at a campground sitting there. I feel like a lot of our songs and ideas actually came from just the breaks we were having between weeks on tour. We try to collaborate as much as we can. I sit down with a guitar and if I come up with an idea and if I’m in the zone, sometimes I can just smash out 75% of a song in one sitting and show it to the rest of the band so they can all add their input. Adam might bring an idea to us or Nash might bring an idea then we all try to throw our own opinion into it and see where it goes from there. Nash also loves songwriting, songs such as, ‘Breathe’ and ‘Ghost’ are amazing works of his that we play live quite frequently.’

‘It leans towards ‘Fool For You’ and the ’18 Again’ sort of vibe, if you were to cross them together’

‘Push Restart’ is a reflective track about trying to figure out relationships, although it remains upbeat sonically, according to Hammill, who describes it as being about ‘young love’: ‘It leans towards ‘Fool For You’ and the ’18 Again’ vibe, if you were to cross them together,’ he said. ‘It’s about a young couple who both had different goals, even though they had so much love for each other. They’re unsure if they’re ready to settle down when they have so much young life left to live. When you’re young, it’s so hard to make big decisions sometimes. They parted ways but when you spend time away from someone you love, it’s hard. And the song’s about: “Do we push restart? Do we try again?” It’s the boy saying to the girl: “Here’s the question, this is how I feel.'”‘

Last month, they released ‘For The Weekend’, which opens with a reference to the sweltering weather and a hearty “Yeehaw”, which immediately conjures up memories of shimmery summer days, aided by Hammill’s warm vocals and bursts of harmonica: ‘We have a specific tuning we use with our guitars but whenever we’re rehearsing for a tour or a show, we always just muck around and see what we can make,’ he said. ‘This one started with a chord progression. Adam mucked around on the mic and discovered this really cool melody and a really cool first verse. We would play that chord progression and that verse over and over again for months but it never really went anywhere. One day, I sat down with the song and mucked around with a chorus and a verse. It was one of those sessions where everything just starts flowing really well. We were sitting here, all of us boys together and it poured out onto the paper in an hour or two, and then we didn’t really revise it.’

On the surface, the song appears to be about a long-distance relationship but it actually turns out to have a different provenance: ‘A lot of people work Monday to Friday nine to five and they just live for the weekend,’ he said. ‘It’s saying: “Look, I know it’s hard, but there’s more to life than just living for the weekend and living life on repeat”. We also like to give it to our listeners to really interpret what they they hear and what they feel. If you put it into a more literal sense, I guess the song could also be about a couple who only see each other on the weekends because they’re so busy during the week. They have a lot of love for each other but they’re not seeing each other enough. One person might not be as bothered, whereas it could really bother the other person.’

‘It became a massive passion of mine throughout high school!’

Hammill came to singing aged 11 in the choir with his cousins: ‘I loved going to choir ‘cos I got to hang out with my cousins and it’s good to see family,’ he said. ‘I ended up joining the school rock band, just giving it a shot and obviously it wasn’t amazing but I grew confidence and a love for music around those years of my life. My parents would always support me and say I had a great voice and I trusted them. I ended up loving it, I did it every week and it became a massive passion of mine throughout high school!’

I ask if music runs in the family: ‘I love my parents to bits but they have no musical talent whatsoever,’ he said laughing. ‘I remember I was around 11 and I just said to my mom that I’d love to have a guitar for Christmas. And she said: “That’s weird. Why do you want a guitar?” And I said that I didn’t know (laughs). Just something to do, I had no reason to ask her, I really didn’t. They said if I was going to have a guitar, I might as well have lessons. So they bought me some lessons and I ended up loving it.’

‘Fool For You’ tells an altogether different story about being treated badly in a relationship: ‘It’s something I was going through at the time,’ he admitted. ‘It was a bit of manipulation really by a person in my life. For her, the same thoughts and the same sort of feelings weren’t there, but she was pretending. It sucked a bit, I was a bit confused and all over the shop. I was actually at her house when I wrote it as she would play the guitar and write songs all day, too. She was a skilled songwriter actually, we would sometimes find ourselves helping write each other’s songs but that can cause sticky situations. There’s a passion from the the musicality in the song but there’s also the truthfulness in the vocal, I think it works pretty well.’

‘There are some great artists coming out of my city like Ziggy Alberts – he’s very folk – and The Dreggs’

Growing up, his parents were huge fans of Australian pop singer Guy Sebastian, who won Australian Idol in 2003: ‘They would put him on all the time. And Mumford and Sons and Kings of Leon, I feel like I draw a lot of inspiration from their sound now. Michael Bublé is another one they used to love, and Adele. Now, there are some great artists coming out of my city like Ziggy Alberts – he’s quite folk orientated – and The Dreggs. Those are two artists out of Sunshine Coast that I’d go see tonight.’

If he could go drinking with any musician, Hammill goes with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin: ‘There’s something to do with his demeanour and the way he goes about his career and his writing that I actually see in myself,’ he said. ‘I feel like we could take notes from each other, if you know what I mean, even though he’s a bigger artist than me. You always discover new things speaking to different artists whether they’re 200 times more successful than you or 200 miles behind you. You can always gain knowledge. I think I would ask him just how he likes to write, what’s his process of writing these hit songs? I feel like if we were to sit together, having a few drinks, it would just be chitter chatter the whole time!’

(Top photo from left to right: Adam, Tyler and Nash.)