So, I’m a guy in a suit who’s just booked a sweat-box of a meeting room inside a large, soulless, corporate building, yuppie iPhone in hand scribbling madly on a pad.
I find myself trying to work out how to dial out from a phone – that has enough buttons and special features to launch a nuclear missile – whilst conducting something resembling an interview.
It’s 5pm. Looking outside of my glass prison I see my co-workers looking tired and stressed, and.it’s only Monday. Enthusiasm is sadly lacking.
It’s with great pleasure that I inject a sense of hope and optimism into this article in the form of Richie from Tumbleweed. You see, over the past four months Richie has been involved in getting one of the seminal Australian rock’n'roll bands of the early-mid nineties back into the consciousness and forefront of the punters mind.
This project of reasonably epic proportions culminated in the original lineup of Tumbleweed’s first gig in about 15 years, occurring last Saturday night in Woolloongong.
So how was it?
“Absolutely awesome – it was incredible. It was sold out before the doors were open – which was a good thing”
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Tumbleweed
“It was a huge group of people from the past 20 years of our lives there, so it was a really special time and it sounded great. We played well and everybody enjoyed it – it’ll be something I’ll remember for a long time.”
Delving into Tumbleweed’s past, it’s a minor miracle that the gig on Saturday night ever came to fruition.
“I didn’t think it would happen, I don’t think anybody in the band had given it any thought that we might get back together again.” However, this year marks the 15th Anniversary of the Homebake festival and with Tumbleweed’s long history with the event, it seemed like now was as good an opportunity as any to rekindle the magic.
“We hadn’t talked for a long time and I suppose when Homebake was offered to us earlier in they year they asked if we could do it because we had so much to do with the initial Homebake,” adding, “They thought it would be a good thing to do to come full circle and all that”
Some local press may have also been a contributing factor in the band reforming. “A story in our local newspaper eluded to the fact that we would never get back together again, because of me, and I saw our guitarist by chance out at dinner one night about four months ago and mentioned it wasn’t exactly true what the newspaper article had said.”
“We ended up back at his place, had a few wines and kept talking and he said: ‘if that’s not true, we need to talk about this,’ and you know we had a band meeting and within two weeks we were in the jam room. I think from the moment we played the first song together it felt right, it felt fantastic and we thought it was something that we felt we could do so we decided to embark on this thing.”
Asking my best Richard Wilkens-like questions, I ask them about their new album.
“It is one gig at a time at the moment, like the old footy cliché.”
“You just don’t want to ruin the magic and if you start looking too far ahead you lose what’s happening in the moment and what’s happening in the moment is pure enjoyment – we are absolutely loving playing the songs again and loving sort of getting to know each other again after 15 years”.
He adds, “When we broke up it wasn’t pretty and there has been a lot of water under the bridge. We’ve actually started becoming friends again and its absolutely awesome, not only for the collective of Tumbleweed but individually for all of us its just an amazing period in our lives – so we don’t want to ruin that. Never say never and maybe the opportunity will come to record something or think about continuing it on but at the moment we are giving people a taste of what we thought was an incredibly special moment and that was the original Tumbleweed lineup. We are trying to represent that as true as possible and you know if Saturday is anything to go by it’s just absolutely amazing – I just cant explain how incredible Saturday was.”
“I think the danger is getting trapped or caught up in the game, we are not sort of into doing that, we just want to live outside of Tumbleweed, outside of music” muses Richie when questioned about what they will do differently this time around.
“It’s something we don’t have to do, it’s something we wanted to do. I don’t think in our music lives, post-Tumbleweed, we have experienced anything quite like it. It’s not about the popularity, its about the sound and the effortlessness of having those 5 individuals in the room. There is a magical quality that comes out of it and it something that took a 15 years break to get back, to realise that’s what was so special and that we loved the songs and to let go of the negative aspects of what it became when we were young and not wise enough to appreciate what we had. Now it’s just an absolute revelation to play our songs again. It’s the most magical thing in the world.”
With upcoming Melbourne shows at the Hi-Fi Bar (10/12), Meredith Festival (11/12) and The Espy (NYE) it dawned on me that there will be a sizable chunk of kids who have never experienced a Tumbleweed gig and know them only from their back catalogue of albums.
“I was surprised by the amount of young people who rocked up to the Wollongong show the other day” he notes. “I don’t know whether it’s because we have a name in Wollongong or older brothers have passed on our albums. The sound hasn’t changed, we’ve still got the original amps we used back in the day, original pedals, original guitars – everything is original.”
“There’s been no modification to the sound and I think young people will be surprised with the sound. I know that even after hearing it back myself I was surprised by the sound. I forgot it, I’ve still got our records but they are not a true indication of what our live sound was. It’s honest, it’s true, we deliver it with the same passion we always did. It’s timeless and I think the kids will accept it no differently to anybody else.”
So about the level of commitment required to undertake a tour after such a significant break?
“We have been practicing every week, every Sunday” (We are) doing pretty good, still on schedule, we were pretty conscious of getting up there an not being able to cut it so we have been putting in the hard work, and its pretty much on schedule. So by the time we get down to Melbourne we should be in form. If the other night was anything to go by it’s gonna be great”
I leave my translucent cage with an unnatural sense of enthusiasm for a Monday and the promise of some amazing shows to come.
In this age of bland, corporate, middle-of-the-road rock’n'roll, occasionally circumstance impregnates necessity, giving birth to something the masses crave without ever realising it.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you Tumbleweed. Enjoy.