On Taking a Seven Week Old Baby to an Interstate Music Festival We took our seven week old baby on a plane across the Bass Strait to attend Dark Mofo, Tasmania’s mid-winter arts festival. If I’m honest, my partner and our friend Greta took the baby on the plane, I was on a separate flight an hour later, being upgraded to Economy X which has a skerrick more leg room because I had a glut of frequent-flyer points. When I arrived, they were already checked into the hotel and baby was happily feeding. The trip down was seamless, baby sleeping happily strapped to mum the whole flight, and he happily slept some more as we went out for Udon noodles to warm us in the icy Hobart evening. We wandered into Pablos Cocktail Bar and I had a solo beer in the beer garden with the baby while the girls watched some jazz inside, then the girls took the baby home and I went to see Clown Core, an equal parts horrific/satisfying/awe-inspiring mix of hectic breakbeats, AI-generated art, and post-apocalyptic themes. It’s music for the Tiktok generation, constant chopping and changing between ideas. Every 10 seconds something new is thrown at you, an absolute barrage of information and dopamine hits. Highly enjoyable. I had a couple of beers and got back to the hotel at 11 to find baby absolutely cracking it. He proceeded to scream and feed and shit until 3 am, when he finally passed out letting me and my partner get a small amount of sleep. Tears were shed, mostly not the baby’s. Continue reading “On Taking a Seven Week Old Baby to an Interstate Music Festival”
On Touring New Zealand (part 2) I am naked in a forest glade in the centre of a patch of purple heather. The festival organisers have set-up a shower block here which is a flimsy set of bamboo lattice and a couple of tie-dyed cotton sheets. It’s entirely see-through and I can see the rest of the band having breakfast while I shower. Peny tells me a bird flitted in and sat on the edge of the bath-tub while she was in there. Glimmers of Disney. I arrived here by van, a 1980s Toyota that barely made the trip up the mountain. Towing a campervan we did the entire journey in second gear, grumbling around hairpin curves with a convoy of angry drivers behind us. It took an hour to drive from Nelson to the top of Takaka Hill, then another hour along a dirt road that twisted through Pikikirunga Trail and into the Abel Tasman National Park. When we finally made it to the festival the driver pointed me in the direction of the info tent and cheerily told me to ‘watch out for the carnivorous snails’. We find out that this forest is home to a set of snails that eat each other. Not whole, but in slow snail sized bites. The risk of being caught and eaten by a snail is low, but the risk of humans on the snail’s natural habitat is high, so we’re warned away from them. The snails can live for twenty years, and we find a row of empty shells, large hand sized spirals stretched out on a branch in the woods. Continue reading “On Touring New Zealand (part 2)”
On Touring New Zealand Tour is salt and vinegar chips, spilled under the driver’s seat. Tour is launching ourselves into every possible body of water. Tour is a 4 am bed-time, followed by an 8 am lobby call. We spent the week travelling up the guts of New Zealand’s South Island, ensconced within an eight-seater Kia Carnival I nicknamed Carmen in tribute to an ex-girlfriend. The car is a capsule, a bubble, a closed ecosystem with developed routines, rituals, ways of being. Sam and I inhabit the front seats. We alternate driving, marvelling over this car’s inexplicable features. The car beeps at us, non-stop from the moment we roll out of the rental carpark. It beeps to tell you when you’re speeding (sixty in a thirty zone), then it beeps any time you cross a line on the road, it beeps when you get within two metres of the car in front of you, and it beeps incessantly while you reverse. It beeps when we place a bag on the backseat, assuming it is a small child. The beeps all have slightly different cadences and wildly different pitches. One is Eno’s Music For Airports, another is Rage Against The Machine’s Killing In The Name. We scroll through the car settings to try and disable them but eventually give up and accept the discordant symphony of beeps interrupting our conversation. Continue reading “On Touring New Zealand”
On Gusto Gusto’s New Album Gusto Gusto have a new album! To The Ocean They Returned is out today. It’s our debut full-length album, which is a funny music marketing thing I’ve seen everyone else do and figured we’d co-opt for our project. Is this our ‘debut album’? No, of course not. We’ve got two EPs out already. But it’s our ‘debut full-length album’, which basically means it’s the first time we’ve done a longer album. Weirdly, music industry people LOVE stuff like this. Anything that can make something seem new and cool sells right? Blergh. I first saw **name redacted because some of my friends play in his band** try this, and suddenly all these people were raving about this ‘cool new artist’ who has just released his first album. Not his first album, and definitely not new, he’d been kicking around Melbourne for years at that point, but he just scrubbed the internet of his first two albums and started fresh. The marketing worked and his ‘debut’ album did really well and now he has a successful career, so let’s see how it goes for us. To The Ocean IS a much different album to our two EPs. Continue reading “On Gusto Gusto’s New Album”
On Kotor We’re in Kotor. Brilliant beautiful Kotor, nestled on the Bay of Kotor, a stunning spot with mountains disappearing straight into brilliant blue seas. Step back. We spent two days in Podogorica, the capital of Montenegro, taking a little side-quest out to Ostrog Monastery – a blazing white building built into the side of a cliff. It was constructed back in the 1600s, originally tucked into the cliffs as a protective measure against the Turks, but now it makes it a quiet calm sanctuary in the 38 degree heat. The options for transport to Ostrog are a bus tour at 40 Euros per person, a train and a two hour hike (hitch-hike if you’re lucky), or Neno, a middle-aged taxi driver who spends the entire trip driving one handed and mumbling into his phone. It seems like Neno has some family drama going on, unfortunately he speaks no English, but he stays on the road and cranks the air-conditioning so we’re happy. We arrive at the monastery to a crowd of people – there’s a long line out the front snaking down the hill, starting at the entrance gate where people are asked to dress modestly – I’ve worn full pants for the occasion, the first time in two weeks, but anyone with bare legs is given a giant monk’s smock to wear. Most people wrap them around their waist just to cover their legs, but some people put them on properly, and it feels like some sort of pre-school art convention, ill-fitting smocks for all. Continue reading “On Kotor”
On Budapest We got scammed in Budapest. Well, not really scammed. Scammed in the idea that we spent money we weren’t planning on spending and definitely got overcharged, but when you have six Hungarian men playing double basses and cimbalon at you, what are you going to do? … Backtrack. It’s been an odd week. We started off in Edinburgh. 18 degrees. Rain. A whiskey tasting at Devil’s Advocate, a little whiskey bar on a ‘close’, a tiny alley in between buildings. I was introducing Grace to my high school friend Megan who I hadn’t seen in ten years. Like most of my oldest relationships, the conversation start fairly superficial (what do you do for work) and dives very deep quickly (how’s your childhood trauma treating you). Grace got a pretty deep look into my teenage years, I got to re-examine a bunch of child-hood beliefs, we drank some smokey whiskey. Followed it up with a cod sausage and a late night train back to Glasgow where we spent the day exploring the first of many museums. We stayed at a ‘tenement’ in Glasgow, which is basically an apartment, but originally built as low cost housing. With the passage of time, what was a cheap flat in the 1800s that would have housed 12 people is now a trendy light-filled four bedroom apartment walking distance from town. This particular one had incredibly high ceilings, a grand piano in the living room and an odd slant to the doorways. Glasgow was bombed during World War II and half of the building came down. When they rebuilt it they braced up the still standing section as much as they could, but there was still some irregularities. Squeaky floor boards and doors that don’t quite shut. Continue reading “On Budapest”
On Tour’s End Tour is almost at an end. The feelings ebb, expand, explode. I’m feeling all of the feelings. Exhaustion. The tickle of UK hayfever. A modicum of happiness, a smidgen of pride, a genuine desire to stop lugging my over-sized cymbal case out of the car, on to stage, off-stage, in to the car. We’ve been talking about the tour as the tour unfolds. We’ve been talking about the tour since at least this time last year. We’ll keep talking about the tour for the rest of the tour, the rest of the year, the rest of our lives. It’s been a bloody delight, an insurmountable challenge, a test, the best of times. The general vibe I’ve caught from most band members is that it’s been fun. The general vibe is that we would do it again. That we thought it was a great use of three weeks. That we are ready for a little break before I coax them back into the rehearsal room for the next thing. Continue reading “On Tour’s End”
On Tour The tour is passing in a blur. We played across the bottom of the country, a slow run from Glastonbury to Bath to Bristol to Exeter, a couple of days off in ‘Bideford’ (pronounced Biddy-fuhd according to the pundits on Tiktok) then rolling through London with a car break-in and a mad-cap run north to Liverpool to stay in an abandoned pub. Last night we played ‘a venue the Arctic Monkeys played when they were just getting started’. We’ve also played at ‘the pub where Coldplay had their first gig’, and ‘on the same stage as Muse’ and I briefly had a tinkle on ‘a piano that Elton John played’. Each time someone drops a famous name I remind myself that a) these are just names and b) every band has a starting point. Correlation vs Causation, playing the same stages as wildly famous but fundamentally different bands to us doesn’t mean much. I don’t see a recording contract with Universal in our future, or Grammy Awards, or private jets. But hey, we’ve made it to this point. We’re touring the UK! We’ve played Glastonbury! We’ve almost sold out of t-shirts! Last night I gave a free badge to a guy who said we were the best thing he’s seen all year, and maybe that’s enough. The little personal connections are the thing that make this music work, that have always made touring work. I’ve got friends in country towns in Australia who I met ten years ago through bands that no longer exist. I’ve got multiple personas from folk singer-songwriter to banjo player to drummer in an esoteric instrumental dance band, but the personal connections are the bit that remains. … I’ve been having a real fun time on tour. It’s great to be out of Melbourne, to be somewhere new, to be meeting new people, to get to play music every night. I think its great for the band too. The band expands on tour. The songs re-arrange themselves. The mid-set banter gets refined. We take more risks. I remind myself every time we tour that we should try and record AFTER we tour because that’s when the songs have finally found themselves, but of course we record albums so that we can tour and it’s a never-ending cycle. It’s also great to see different people come in to their own on tour – personal relationships evolve, little bits get developed between band members mid-set, the whole band grows in ways I couldn’t have predicted when I started booking this tour this time last year. I love being in a band where the show evolves as we go. I love being in a band where everything is a little bit silly. I love being in a band where instrumental music dreamed up on my Mum’s old piano in a garage in West Preston resonates with audiences across the world. I love being in a band where we leave it all on the bandstand, no notes left, a sweaty sodden mess. I love playing music.
On Low Points Every tour has a low point. I’ve been asking the band for the last two weeks if they think we’ve hit the low point, first as a joke, then as a gauge of everyone’s energy, now with the hope that they’ll assuage my fears and say it’s all up from here. I hope our low point was Sunday morning. We played a show in London, a blurry late night blast of local ales (terrible), local pub food (excellent) and local experiences (mixed). Our tour has neatly lined up with the UEFA tournament, and England was in the quarter finals playing against Switzerland on the night of our gig. We stayed at a hostel in bustling Brixton. When we arrived they were busy fitting a new set of giant TV screens into the beer garden in anticipation of the night’s crowd. We tried to get in to the beer garden to watch the game but they were already at capacity, even when we told them we were sleeping upstairs and could literally see the screens from our window. We rolled on to a double decker bus and through the suburbs to Clapham where we were playing. When we got to our venue the game was on. First quarter, no points. We order meals, had some beers, watched the game. I’m not invested in sports unless it’s going for solo runs around the park, but it was fun to scream at the TV with a couple hundred Londoners. Continue reading “On Low Points”
Glastonbury (part 3) I am drinking gin and kombucha from a straw wheat cup. I am floating in a hammock in a forest glade near Totnes. I am feeling calm and clear and happy. We have reached the ‘hippie commune’ part of our UK tour. I am eating a giant bowl of vegan mac and cheese, deliciously irreverent mac and cheese accompanied by a side of crispy onions and garnished with a handful of brilliant orange flowers picked from the hedge behind the tent. The meal is served by a giant Italian man who appears to be mostly naked. He scampers over to deposit the food on the table in front of me and bold curls of chest hair erupt around the top and sides of the skimpy apron he wears. When he turns to walk back to the kitchen his bare arses winks at me in the British sunshine. I’m tempted to ask if he was wearing pants when he prepared the food, but hygiene standards be damned, this food is delicious and its got veggies in it, unlike any of the food I’ve eaten in the past week. … We left Glastonbury in a rush, up at 7 am to disassemble our tents and roll up the hill to the carpark in stages. Each person is overloaded, carrying gear first from the tent to the inside of Pedestrian Gate B, then carrying the gear out through the gate and dropping it on the other side of security, getting a pass back into the festival to pick up a second round of gear. It takes us over an hour to get from the campsite to the gate, then another hour to get from the gate to the car park. When I finally sit down in the car I’m a sweaty sodden mess, ready for a break, ready for tour to be over, ready for anything really, except another day of festival. The festival was grand. More people than you could ever imagine, crammed into a farm, forced to battle the elements, the sound, the dust, the sun. I had a great time, but it was a lot. We sit in the car with the airconditioning running and agree that it’s quite nice to be out of there, but then we have to navigate British country lanes. Most of the roads within ten miles of the festival have been blocked off for the weekend. It’s a complex network of one lane roads, where no-one is really sure who has right of way. Someone at the festival drunkenly walked us through the etiquette, ‘if you have a bigger car you have right of way, but if you’re going down a hill you should concede, that said always make space for the milkman, and tractors…’ This all goes out the window when we’re actually driving, because it turns out no-one else knows the rules either. The sides of the lane are giant hedges, stretching up above the height of the car, and every mile or so there is a little slip lane cut out to let people pass. You can reach out either window and drag your hand along the hedges as you pass. We manage to get caught in the middle of a section, headbutting up against a car coming the other way until eventually they conceded and reverse, pulling backwards down a country lane for five minutes while we ashamedly give them thumbs up through the front windscreen. We arrive at our next ‘festival’, a much smaller affair on a farm near Totnes, where a handful of people sit around on rugs in a field. It’s a stark contrast to Glastonbury. I assume everyone here knows everyone else by name. We play a loose set. A very loose set. Up until now we’ve been crafting sets, trying to figure out a flow that will catch the Glastonbury crowds walking past, draw them into our tent, keep them engaged. This festival is small enough that everyone is already in the room with us, so we pass it to Maddi our bass player and tell them to call out whatever songs they want to play. I’m finally feeling well again, after a week of battling a cough, and i’m in a silly mood, so I spontaneously shift feels in the middle of songs. Oom-pah becomes reggae. Funk becomes reggae. Rock becomes reggae. Everything becomes reggae, until the last song where I try to make the shift into reggae and Sam and Maddi side-eye me back into the original feel. The crowd is surprisingly excited for whatever we throw at them. We invite an audience member up on stage to rap over one of our songs. Meg takes a bongo solo. Everything is nice and loose, a cathartic release from the last week of shows.