Michael “Cavs” Cavanagh (of King Gizzard) - In Conversation
Interview & introduction by Beau Croxton
Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh by Sarah Findlay
For our 10th installment of In Conversation and our new digital cover story, we are thrilled to have an interview with Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh.
Cavanagh is best recognized for his work as the drummer of the Australian shape-shifting rock band King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. It’s no secret that the band is one of the most prolific rock groups ever, as they have covered dozens of genres over the past 15+ years throughout their highly consistent and staggering 27-album discography. From sugar-coated psych-pop to vicious thrash metal, King Gizzard has been blowing minds left and right, no matter the genre.
Initially, King Gizzard started with a two-drummer arrangement— but 6 years ago, Cavs took over the throne as their sole drummer, leading a blazing path which ultimately allowed the band to blossom in remarkable ways with extensive improv. This freedom spawned fiery jams and ever-changing setlists that turned King Gizzard shows into a widely adored phenomenon. Importantly, it allowed Cavanagh to truly soar to the legendary drummer status that he holds today– nowadays, you can catch Cavs stealing the show regularly with his insane drum solos among King Gizzard’s trademark explosive jams.
While Michael Cavanagh’s first solo effort in 2021 (CAVS) was composed entirely of drums, his upcoming sophomore album Sojourn boldly expands his role into a triple threat as a drummer, musical director and composer. Cavanagh enlisted his close friend and fellow drummer Jim Reindflesh of Mildlife to help him steer the project as a co-producer, mixer, engineer, and percussionist.
Landing on April 24th, Sojourn channels 70s jazz fusion energy and serves as a significant glimpse into the King Gizzard drummer's influences– Reindflesh calls Sojourn a “a journey through Cavs’ rhythmic imagination”. The album features a list of many notable musicians from the surrounding Melbourne scene, including Adam Halliwell of Mildlife (on flute/guitar), harpist Siwei Wong, saxophonist Archibald Pommelhorse, keyboard-player Selene Messinis, his King Gizzard bandmate Joey Walker on bass, and percussionist Robbin Poppins.
The record was realized from an interesting process; Cavanagh would have the musicians record a take based on ideas he had composed from samples, and then record an additional take of improv. Cavanagh and Reindflesh would then arrange the instrumentals of each track by mixing the takes, and sometimes composing new parts with the pieces. Cavanagh directs these Herbie Hancock and Alice Coltrane-influenced instrumentals over his groove-centered drum tracks that maturely focus on serving the big picture rather than show-y chops.
As the record started to take shape, Cavanagh and Reindflesh decided to create a colorful “Indiana Jones-style” visual narrative behind the instrumental album. For example: Opener “Victoria Amazonica” is a giant waterlily that serves as a boat for the protagonist of the story, and “Silk Road” depicts a journey through the jungle on a tropical island.
Sojourn is an excellent and surprising follow up to 2021’s CAVS– it's a brilliant and notable charge into the world of instrumental music and musical direction by one of today’s most incredible drummers. While the album is an extremely vibey and accessible affair, it should especially be a big hit with King Gizzard’s die-hards who love their more jazzy and funky jams.
Sojourn is also very aptly titled, as it is an immersive and transportive record that takes the listener somewhere else entirely– and what a lovely and exotic voyage it is. It’s a delectably funky and jazzy odyssey that will serve as the ultimate soundtrack as temperatures rise from the bloom of warm spring weather to hot summer beach days ahead…
I caught up with Michael “Cavs” Cavanagh over Zoom recently to discuss many things including: Sojourn, the album’s narrative, his upcoming CAVS live show, King Gizzard’s relationship with NYC, and all the exciting new music that King Gizzard has been cooking up at their HQ.
Check it out below!
INTERVIEW
BEAU CROXTON: Whatsup!
MICHAEL “CAVS” CAVANAGH: Hey mate! How you doin’ ?
BEAU: Doing great man! Thanks so much for making time, nice to meet you!
CAVS: You too, man. Thank you man, thanks a lot!
BEAU: Congrats on your new record, it's excellent. You must be very excited, considering it's your debut as a full on musical director of sorts. How are you feeling about releasing it to the world in April?
CAVS: I’m just so stoked with it…really happy with it!
BEAU: You have such an impressive list of guests on this project– I’m a big fan of Mildlife as well, and all the harp parts on the album are pure magic. What can you tell me about the musicians that you assembled for the album, and how that came together?
CAVS: Jim, (the drummer from Mildlife), he engineered the record and he is a co-producer as well. He also played some percussion and he mixed it– he is just an all-around gun. We always talked about getting Adzi (Adam Halliwell) on it anyway, because he is just an amazing flute player, or “flautist” or however you want to say it (laughs). He’s got a really good ear, in the way he comes up with parts and everything. It was just amazing to play with him.
Jim is more connected to the Melbourne jazz and soul scene than I am. We both assembled the players. All the players play in like a hundred other bands around Melbourne. A few I’ve seen before, a few I haven't— I knew of them and I have always loved their stuff. Jim helped to select most of them anyway, because he has played with them often.
With Siwei on harp– there are not that many harpists around in general, unless you turn to orchestras and stuff like that. In terms of getting harp players in the studio to sort of improvise and to share ideas and bounce off, there are only a couple that I know. Siwei plays live in bands a lot, and she does her own thing as well. I just love harp– hey, it’s such a beautiful instrument. In this context, it just works so well.
I’m also about to do this show with the full band, and I just can't wait to hear it. I plan on making the tracks rock a bit harder live….like a jazz-rock fusion kind of thing. I am excited to hear the harp in that context as well.
BEAU: The harp was something that stood out to me. I love Dorothy Ashby-type stuff, so it really hit for me.
CAVS: It’s so percussive as well. When it is plucked– it’s so cool.
Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh by Sarah Findlay
BEAU: So you’ve already sort of answered my next question– but what (else) can your fans expect from the live CAVS show coming up in May?
CAVS: Well apart from the record, we haven't gotten together and rehearsed just yet, but we're gonna get into rehearsal pretty soon. I talked about it a bit, but don't expect the songs to be exactly like the record. There will definitely be moments– I plan for this band to hit moments of the record, but we go off on a whole different journey. I want it to be very energetic. So I am going to sort of rearrange a few of the songs, so they flow a bit better live, with more energy… and a bit louder. I think it is going to be real fun!
BEAU: That sounds incredible. I’m getting jealous on this side of the pond over here….
CAVS: (laughs) Ah– you should come over! ….It’s not far from New York! (laughs)
BEAU: It’s pretty close! (laughs). So one of the things that fascinated me was all the little bits about the story that you created behind the record. “Boitata” has a namesake of a fire serpent in Brazilian culture, and I heard that the music is supposed to soundtrack a snake.“Paititi” is the name of a legendary Lost Inca City…..
What can you tell me about the story that was created behind the record?
CAVS: It didn't take place until midway through mixing the record. It was half way through mixing, that we were like “this is becoming a bit of a journey, of this record”. We were mixing and arranging at the same time. That helped us a bit, because it is instrumental music. You can kinda name the songs whatever you want, which is kind of cool. We wanted some sort of narrative concept to go with it. The thing that came to mind was being lost on a tropical island, and this track list is (representative of) the journey.
“Victoria Amazonica” is a giant water lily, so I was like, “What if that’s this voyager’s boat?”. They get in that, and they are floating down the “Emerald Nile”, which is what early explorers would call the Amazon River. In “First Light”, they have woken up after the journey and they are on this beautiful, mythical tropical island. From there is where the sequence of events takes place. “Silk Road” is the path, and in “Boitata”, the voyager meets this mythical fire breathing serpent– it sounds scary, but he’s a nice guy.
The “Death Bat” is kind of like the villain. Yeah – and I kinda want people to find their own way through this journey as they listen, but it’s something that I am trying to write at the moment. It has taken me a long time (laughs). But I want to get it all written down– nothing too long. I actually wanted to do this before the record came out, as something that could go out in press and stuff like that– but I also want people to make it their own journey.
“Paititi” is the city that the voyager finds along the way. I just picture it like… temples covered in vines… somewhere buried deep. And in order to get to it, you have to go through the “Candiru” fish. That is my way of looking at it. We titled the tracks around that.
I think I will get around to writing it. When I do write it, it will be short and brief. (It’ll be) something I will release with the album that can guide people through in a way that’s not gonna take away from their journey or imagination.
BEAU: That is so cool– I only read a few pieces and it really painted a picture. So, I really love the sound you landed on for Sojourn. I am definitely hearing the Herbie Hancock influence and the Alice Coltrane vibe with the sweeping harp.
There are a million different directions you could have gone with this record, but I want to know why you settled on this particular vibe for your first full musical direction?
CAVS: I’ve always kinda wanted to make a record like this. We have hit a lot of jazz stuff with Gizz, but I wanted to get a little bit more “spiritual jazz” on it. I really like this Herbie Hancock record– it’s called Crossings. I’ve loved that record for ages.
Obviously, I love Headhunters and stuff like that– but some of his spiritual records are really cool, and super percussive. Whenever I started exploring my own solo thing, I’ve always wanted to do something like that.
That's also kind of why I got harp in there—Because just as soon as I hear harp, I just think “spiritual jazz” all the time. So yeah, it kind of just took that direction, man. The demos we had were like nothing like what it turned out to be. The demos that I did were really just built of vibe and some sounds to lay the drums down to, and then we got everyone else in after that. It just came together when we added more instrumentation and got the players in.
I wrote the demos with a lot of samples, so I was getting the players to hit those sample moments– but also getting them to improvise and do their own thing on it. We sort of mixed and matched things.
I guess me and Jim always had that sort of spiritual jazz vision. We just wanted it to sound like “of that time”, you know, that 70s jazz fusion— like those Harvey Mason records, and Tony Williams and stuff like that. So, we always had that direction in mind. I think it just instinctively went that way.
Michael “CAVS” Cavanagh by Sarah Findlay
BEAU: I would love to know about that Slingerland kit that you used for the album— why did you decide on that kit for Sojourn?
CAVS: Man, to be honest, I wasn't even thinking of making this record until I bought that kit. The kit was kind of the very first bit of inspiration for this record.
So that kit came up on Marketplace. It was previously owned by John Watson, who plays drums in this famous Aussie band called Australian Crawl. He owned this kit and toured with it in the 70s and 80s. Which is so cool– it's like a sort of piece of Aussie rock history, you know?
Yeah– just the color of it, the shape of the cutaways… I just kept coming back to those videos of Billy Colburn and Tony Williams playing those big yellow kits, and they're doing that jazz fusion thing. I was like, “Oh, that’s so sick…I’ve got to do something like this.” Then obviously (the kit) is the main piece on the front cover. So yeah, the kit was the very first little bit of inspiration for the record.
Sojourn album cover (floral design by Amy Cavanagh & photography by Sarah Findlay). Out April 24th on (p)doom records.
BEAU: This is a question that I'm sure a lot of drummers are probably dying to know about…King Gizzard shows are always so demanding. You’ve got 3 hour marathon shows, and if the show isn’t a marathon, it's well over two hours. There's always very intense drumming– (shout out to songs like “Dragon”…)
How do you manage your stamina with all your gnarly drumming during such long sets?
CAVS: Yeah, man – I get asked that a lot. I've got my own techniques, I think none of my techniques or anything are professional in any way. It’s just from playing in Gizz for so long...
In the early days, we were kind of doing the punk rock thing, where I'd be doing really fast 16th notes on the hi-hats. And, you know, we'd do that for like 20 minutes. I think I just developed this endurance just from playing for so long. But it's interesting, because as I get older, it's still something that I have to work on.
I've kind of just taught myself my own technique to be able to (for example) sustain those like 16th notes and play constantly– but it's not really like a technique in the way I hold the stick or anything like that. It's more about isolating muscle groups and stuff like that, which I've kind of taught myself– and I've had a little bit of help from other people as well.
So, if I'm playing a really fast song like “The Dripping Tap” and it goes for half an hour or whatever– I'll use my wrists and try to relax my forearm. Or, I will use my forearm and relax my wrists, or I use my fingers more and try to relax everything else.
If you switch between, it's kind of like gears in a car or something, you know? Same with my legs, you can use your thighs and relax the calves…or use the calves and relax the thighs….. Do you know what I mean? (laughs) It sounds kind of crazy, but that's a little trick of mine to just sort of sustain myself. Honestly, it's also just a frame of mind as well… Adrenaline is also just one of the best things to help you through all that.
In terms of most of the practice we do, I'm just writing and sort of working on ideas, and trying to come up with more creative stuff. I'm not really just sitting there at my drums by myself practicing my speed or anything like that…although I feel like maybe I should.
It's just playing a lot, and also the “frame of mind” thing. Once you've started a song like “Dragon”, you can't back out of it. Song’s started, you can't back out! If it hurts to play, it doesn't, what are you going to do? Stop? Well, you can't, so….
BEAU: Well, you're blowing everybody away, man!
CAVS: Oh, thanks, dude. I try.
CAVS with King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard at Forest Hills Stadium, 2025— by Tommy Krause for Occult Magazine
BEAU: So I’m a native New Yorker, and I love the rich history that King Gizzard has with New York City— you know, the band receiving the grant, and coming over and recording I’m In Your Mind Fuzz in the 2010s and all that. Now in the 2020s, there's such a big relationship with Forest Hills Stadium with King Gizz. I'm there every year with my wife, and now this year, there's three shows in a row there this August. We practically have our own NYC King Gizzard festival in August this year!
CAVS: Yeah, absolutely. It's gonna be sick!
BEAU: I'd love to hear about your relationship with NYC and Forest Hills as a band.
CAVS: Yeah, well– New York's kind of where we cut our teeth in America, because, I don't know if you were there at the time…back in 2014 when we were doing residences of Baby's All Right and stuff like that…
BEAU: I'm kicking myself because I wasn't– I started listening in 2017.
CAVS: Yeah, cool, cool. When we first got this music grant, and we were able to go to America, we did this little tour…I think it was maybe through the Midwest or something. Then we went to New York, and we just played like every night, sometimes like three times a night, or three times a day (laughs).
We got this ski lodge in Upstate New York– in Hunter Mountain. We sort of lived there for a month. We were just writing and recording up there, it was really cool.
Every time it got to around Thursday or Friday…We'd make our way into the city and just play all weekend, and then we'd come back for the week… back to the cabin (laughs). We were doing this residency at Baby's All Right, and in the first week of the month, there were not that many people there. But then by the end, it was just really crazy…it was just like heaps of hype.
Still to this day, I'm just like, “that's just one of the best things we've ever done”, like, career wise, you know……..Well, I mean, you know… at that time! (laughs)
It was one of the best things we could have done at the time.
BEAU: Absolutely, it seemed a lot changed from then on, especially with those Daptone albums– Quarters, Mind Fuzz and then Nonagon Infinity— everything kind of blew up and escalated after all that.
CAVS: Yeah, exactly.
BEAU: And now Forest Hills Stadium….
CAVS: Yeah, it was crazy when we first did that. I think it was also one of the first times we technically played a “stadium”…then we were back there last year with the orchestra. That place is just such a good place to play. I think it's a really good size for our fans, and our crowd. I think it's kind of just the perfect spot– I mean, even on nights that don't sell out, it's always just like a good vibe, just lots of space.
BEAU: Totally, we really love going to see King Gizzard there. The way the sun peeks over the concrete stadium wall at the start of the shows in the summer…it’s just got good vibes all around!
CAVS: Yeah– totally.
CAVS with King Gizzard at Forest Hills Stadium in August 2025 (by Tommy Krausefor Occult Magazine)
BEAU: So, obviously King Gizzard is insanely productive. Y'all have made 27 studio albums in what……14 years? It's insane!
CAVS: Yeah ! (laughs)
BEAU: Can you tell me anything about what's been cooking over there at the headquarters lately ?
CAVS: Well, yeah– heaps, actually. We just finished up a two-week session with Billy Strings. We just recorded a whole heap of songs with him, and that was sick. We all came in with songs– everyone came in with their own individual songs. We just made this kind of full-on, Wrecking Crew kinda vibe. But yeah– we're still in the works. So Billy (Strings) was at our studio for two weeks, which was cool. We're working on some more of our electronic stuff as well…just heaps of stuff. We're about to move into a new studio, which is cool. We're not touring that much this year, but we're still just really busy.
BEAU: Wow— that’s all incredibly exciting! I was going to say, you may be stepping into musical direction with your new CAVS record…but I also did see you doing some musical directing to Billy Strings on Instagram last week at some point…?
CAVS: Yeah! (laughs) I was trying to tell him how to play guitar... (laughs)
BEAU: (sarcastically) Sometimes you got to tell Billy Strings how to play the guitar, I guess…you know?
CAVS: Yeah, exactly! (laughs)
BEAU: All right, man. Well, thank you so much— the new Cavs record is really excellent. I hope you have such a great time at your CAVS Show coming up in May— maybe you can grab the Heaps Keen (video) team so we can check it out over here.
CAVS: Oh, man, that would be amazing. I'm not sure they're in town, but I'll try and film it to some degree, I don't really know. But thanks, dude. It was really great to talk to you.
BEAU: Yeah man, it was great to talk to you too! I'm sure Field of Vision and Forest Hills will be amazing. Everybody's going to have a good time listening to that new CAVS record...
CAVS: Awesome. Thanks, Beau. Great to talk to you, man, thanks a lot.
BEAU: Thanks again! I'll see you at Forest Hills, man! I'll be out there.
CAVS: Awesome. We'll see you there, dude. Thanks so much!
Sojourn by CAVS is out everywhere this Friday, April 24th, via (p)doom Records! You can grab some beautiful orange vinyl right here via (p)doom records.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard will return to NYC for 3 consecutive nights at Forest Hills Stadium on August 20th, 21st and 22nd this summer! — get tickets here!
CAVS will be performing Sojourn in Australia on Friday May 22nd at the Thornberry Theater— get your tickets here.
Support CAVS on bandcamp here
Check out CAVS’ “Candiru” video from Sojourn below
Enjoy King Gizzard’s Orchestra show at Forest Hills Stadium last year below!
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