Tumbleweed is a name those of you around the live music scene of the early 90’s in New South Wales will remember well. A band out of time they captured the spirit of the day with their take on Stoner Rock. They were huge, they toured like demons, and if you wanted to you could see them multiple times in a week from Sydney City all the way to home in Wollongong. After a few years out, disbanding in 2001, they returned eight years later and have sort of been around ever since. This year sees them return for the release of a huge singles collection box set and some hometown shows before taking stage at Uncaged in the new year! We caught up with vocalist Richie Lewis to relive the old times and to look ahead!
Mark: Hi Richie, how are you mate?
Richie: G’day Mark not too bad! Yourself?
Mark: Very good thanks.
Richie: Excellent!
Mark: It’s great to hear things are happening on the Tumbleweed camp. I just purchased something that takes me right back – one of your singles box sets.
Richie: Oh really, awesome, that’s a cool little thing.
Mark: I think I still have a lot of the originals somewhere but it’s nice to get them all and on vinyl.
Richie: Yeah, it’s a fantastic little thing. We thought with it being our 30th year we had to get something out and it seemed like a good idea being such big fans of 7″ vinyl singles like we are.
Mark: I must admit to having far too many.
Richie: Yeah, I love ’em – you can’t beat singles.
Mark: 30 years is a long time for any band, I know you had a bit of a break from 2001 but you came a few tears later back for Homebake and Big Day Out and now we’re looking a a couple of new Festivals that we’ll get to see you on – there’s Spring Loaded in May and before that Uncaged in January and February.
Richie: It’ll be pretty awesome.
Mark: You’ve been one of my Festival Highlights over the years and we’ve lost a lot of Rock Fests over the last few years so it’s great to see a few new ones coming back with great local acts, probably aided by the pandemic I guess?
Richie: Yeah that’s true hey! I suppose having those restrictions have limited who is available but even when we had teh Big Day Outs when there were all these incredible International acts I did always look forward to seeing the local acts. Australia’s always had, I think being so isolated physically we’ve all had our own way of regurgitating Rock and Roll, and doing it our own way with our own style. I used to really dig the 90’s watching the Australian bands – bands like Spiderbait, You Am I or the Meanies. I think collectively it was a very interesting time and collectively very different to the rest of the World. I really liked that and it continued to get batter and better as the 90’s progressed, that cohesion, or that scene that was unlike anything anywhere else in the world. The music that Australians played was different. So I think it’s good, it’s really worthwhile. I used to love Homebake as well – just a great celebration of Australian music and I think that’s a really important thing for us all. You know there’s so much great Australia stuff out there and people in Australia are doing themselves a disservice if they don’t go and check it out because it’s so good.
Mark: Absolutely – everyone who can should get out there to Uncaged and Spring Loaded! It should be a fantastic tome for all.
Richie: The thing I like about that Festival is that you’ve got a lot of old farts like ourselves, and I’m really anti-ageist at the moment because I’ve gotten old! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Richie: You know when I was younger I was probably not too cool about it, but I really like to see things like Uncaged where they’ve got some new bands, some old bands, a whole mix – just bands that fit their ilk in being a great live Rock and Roll band. And that’s pretty cool.
Mark: Absolutely I think that’s the appeal to me the best of the old and some really fine young talent too!
Richie: Absolutely.
Mark: 30 years on! You must reminisce when it gets to such a landmark? I think the first time I heard of Tumbleweed was when you supported a little band from Seattle called Nirvana when they came over to see us in round about ’91, ’92?
Richie: Yeah it would have been ’92 I think. But this year in particular because we’ve been putting together a few things – we’ve got a scrapbook coming out that goes through our history, and we needed some words for that so I’ve been trying to sort of dig through the memory and put some pieces together and try and remember so stories. So yeah that has been a bit more reminiscing than usual this year. And you travel around, well not recently because we’ve ben in lockdown, but prior to that you’ll visit places and you’ll think “Oh I remember playing here way back when, and places do really prompt memories. But surprisingly these days we’re pretty much in the present and looking to the future, but this year’s been a lot of retrospection. And it’s been cool, because I’ve been able to look at the past with a fair bit of distance and have some space so I’m not so emotionally attached to things and I can be appreciative of having the opportunities that we had, and meeting the people that we got to meet and I’ve learnt about, you know, the good that came out of the past 30 years more so than any of the things that used to get up my nose or whatever! So yeah, it’s been really cool in that aspect.
Mark: It is fantastic just to remember the scene back then. But we all want more than memories and I heard talk that there were going to be some new releases as well as the Singles Box Set?
Richie: Yeah. We had this idea prior to the lockdown to record a single a month or every couple of months and just put out vinyl 7″ singles but I suppose just having a lack of access to the studio during that time and losing a bit of momentum, that idea kind of slipped off. We recorded eight songs I think prior to the most recent lockdown and we’ve been sitting on those for months. They weren’t finished, they were sort of demos and so I’ve started going back in the studio, I went in with Rob Younger the other week, and we’re going to finish up one single for early in the year, probably in January and get that out before Uncaged. And then we’ll see what we’ll do with the remaining songs, but we are looking at doing another record – another album.
Mark: Fantastic.
Richie: Hopefully out in the first part of next year.
Mark: That sounds great and you’re also playing Live in ‘The ‘Gong” – I think you’ve got five nights at La La Las?
Richie: Yeah, that’ll be really awesome La La Las is the best venue in Wollongong, run by a mate of mine, and I suppose we had a big year planned to celebrate our 30th and tour the country and what not, but all those plans we laid to waste with the covid pandemic. And it was all going to end with a big show with Kiss in Townsville in December, but that got put back first and then our tour got cancelled. But we thought we have to somehow celebrate and say “Yippee! We made it to 30!” so we’ve decided to do just five shows in our home town Wollongong. it only holds a hundred people and so it will be a hundred people per night – a really intimate awesome five nights.
Mark: It would have my name all over it, sadly the problem being in Perth at the minute is that we never know if we can get back without locking ourselves away for fourteen days!
Richie: That is a shame.
Mark: Let’s step even further back in time now. Where did your love of music come from? And when did you know it was going to be so important to you?
Richie: I think I always dreamed of doing music. My parents used to play a lot of Beatles stuff when I was a kid. But the first album I bought was Adam and the Ants ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’ and I became obsessed with Adam Ant for a couple of years – I joined the fan club and put posters up on my wall, all that kind of stuff. And I used to play drums which was why I really loved Adam and the Ants – two drummers! And then I suppose I just always wanted to do music – I was always trying to get bands together in High School but none really very successfully. I was a bit weird and I stood out and so I met other weirdos that stood out when I was about 16 when we formed Protein Energy Pills. There weren’t many bands around in Wollongong in those days and we just loved doing what we loved – like Sex Pistols, Celibate Rifles and New York Dolls, and we were discovering music like The Stooges and MC5 and all this stuff. And I think as soon as I really heard all of that music, it hit me and I always wanted to do it from that moment. I think when I started seeing bands as well it made me more determined, I saw the Celibate Rifles, I saw the Hoodoo Gurus as well on their Mars Needs Guitars Tour with the Stems. So I fell in love with The Stems I think when I was 15. I really wanted to do it from then.
Mark: Some great bands in the mix there who I’m sure influenced many, and I’m sure some of the younger bands on Uncaged would have Tumbleweed in there too. It’s great how Rock and Roll turns in on itself and keeps coming around with fresh energy and new eyes.
Richie: I think so. And I really still respect all of those that blazed the trail before we did in Australia, when we picked up the same touring circuit as bands like The Hard-Ons were doing, you’ve got to have respect for that that’s important.
Mark: It is, and just that knowledge and appreciation gives another level of depth. What makes a great sing for you as a song-writer? What are the ingredients that are important to you?
Richie: For me number one is the overall feel and vibe, right? Whether it’s authentic – that’s what hits me first. Then I suppose melody hits me second, I do like breaking convention a bit, I mean it can be anything for me – I’ve got favourite songs from all genres but they all seem to be authentic and from the heart and they’ve got to have a melody that hooks me in. Or it’s got to have a beat that gets me, or something like that. But there’s no hard and fast rules, I just think it’s authenticity, or something different that steps out of the box. I can usually hear when something is being contrived to have a hit. But the lyrics surprisingly only get me third or fourth in the list.
Mark: The added bonus. Talking of words, I’m loving reading some of the stories on the Tumbleweed social media.
Richie: Yeah I think I’m going to continue doing that it’s a great way of sort of purging these past memories as I’m remembering them. But I’m just sort of chucking those stories down, I suppose that’s what I meant when I was saying that I have that distance now so I can sort of talk about things that are sort of pretty personal and close but there’s that space there now to enable me to do that.
Mark: It would make a wonderful book Richie – any thoughts?
Richie: (laughs) Yeah I could have the Facebook collection! (laughs)
Mark: (laughs) That’d work!
Richie: Why not! (laughs)
Mark: Now let’s ask you a hard one – I like asking a few impossible questions here and there. If you could have been a ‘Fly on the wall’ for the creation of any great album, just hanging there in the studio watching the magic happen – what would you have loved to have seen come together?
Richie: That’s a good one. Well I have to say, oh jeez, I don’t know. My mind is going to a Beatles record and maybe something like Rubber Soul, not one of the later ones. With Rubber Soul they were starting to experiment a little bit, they’d been to America and toured with Bob Dylan and smoked a joint. They were probably just starting to experiment with LSD but not too much. There was still a little bit of a connection to tradition and to their style and yet they were branching out for the first time. It was a real sort of crossroads Beatles record for me I reckon where they started becoming a little wilder, and they were still all getting along really well. That would have been a great one to have been a ‘fly on the wall’ for. Let’s stick with that one.
Mark: It’s a great choice most people usually go for The White Album or Sergeant Pepper, something seen as truly ground-breaking but I like that you’ve gone for the one that rumbles with change, that transition album in the middle of the catalogue there.
Richie: Yeah.
Mark: You’ve played on some wonderful tours over the years, as I mentioned you were out with Nirvana, I think my favourite was when you did that double bill with Monster Magnet, what have been some of your highlights over the years touring-wise?
Richie: Well obviously Nirvana was really cool, but that’s been spoken about a million times. The Monster Magnet one was a great tour, but that one sort of ended badly – we didn’t get paid. Doing the Big Day Out tours and being a part of this travelling Rock and Roll circus that went around the Country was an amazing experience and getting to chat with guys like The Ramones and Soundgarden and Perry Farrell – he was an excellent guy. That was a fun time – you were on in the day and the whole thing was like a big part for two weeks, so that was amazing. Playing with Iggy Pop was a really good one – we played a show at Selina’s (The Coogee Bay Hotel in Sydney) that was us, The Beasts of Bourbon and Iggy Pop, and while we were in stage Guns ‘n’ Roses were playing the next day at Eastern Creek and Slash and Duff came to the show to see Iggy Pop. While we were on stage they threw our stuff out of our band room and they were using our band room, our drummer didn’t like that – he told them all off and they came and apologized after that. Then we caught up with Iggy Pop and he signed a poster that is still up on my wall right now. So that was really cool. And travelling overseas was really cool, doing a tour of England I got to play in Wales at Cardiff University, and I’m originally from Wales so a lot of family came. It was nice, I didn’t really know them that well so it was a way of introducing myself – they had this weird Australian in town so they came down to introduce themselves when we were playing with Mudhoney at the Uni! That was a cool one, but there have been so many. And I suppose one of the best things that has come out of the 30 years is that through the 90’s those bands that I was talking about like The Meanies and Spiderbait and You Am I – we all were playing with each other so often that we all became pretty good mates, and 30 years later were are still all good friends. We did a show with The Meanies and a while tour a couple of years ago. So that’s why things like Spring Loaded and Uncaged are awesome because we get to hang out again and see what everybody’s been up to. That’s really cool, but there’s been so many great things I feel really fortunate to have experienced those things and pretty much to have ‘lived the dream’ and to have done what I wanted to for such a long time.
Mark: And home still very much in Wollongong?
Richie: Still in ‘The ‘Gong’, I mean we always had a sense of home. At one stage we were gonna move to Chicago – we were signed to Atlantic Records and they wanted us to go to America and my bags were pretty much packed, but it didn’t eventuate. And you know, I moved out to Byron for about a year and moved in with Kram (Spiderbait’s drummer) when we made the Hot Rollers record. But other than that we’ve always been drawn back to Wollongong – it’s our sanctuary, it’s our home and where our family and friends are. And it’s a beautiful place and I wouldn’t want to leave. And I think that’s what’s kept our feet on the ground in a way, and we’ve managed to stay true to ourselves in a large way because we’re not too far removed from who we ever were back then. We’re still walking the same streets, and that’s the unique aspect of our band.
Mark: It is fantastic. I remember back in the 90’s I was living in Cronulla and we used to get on the train and come down to Wollongong, great times. I think I used to see you at Promises in Miranda?
Richie: Yeah, and we used to do Coyotes out at Carringbah and I think there was Bizzos in Carringbah too, a few there and a few in Miranda.
Mark: Those were the days weeknights and some wonderful sticky-carpet venues we all used to cram into.
Richie: It was amazing back then the amount of venues in suburbs, every suburb had a pretty good venue – like Penshurst’s Den and Petersham Inn, and Sans Souci had Micks.
Mark: Yeah and the Sailing Club there too.
Richie: Yeah that was amazing.
Mark: I was talking to Nick Barker too the other day about the scene in the 90’s – you used to be able to come out play the suburbs during the week and then the big show in the City in the weekend, and touring you could do five or six days a week, but it’s changed a lot sadly since then.
Richie: Yeah, yeah, we used to do five days a week – I remember doing Blacktown, then you’d play Paramatta and end up at the Metro on a Saturday night.
Mark: Great days, and it will be wonderful to see you again when you get to the West in May. Just before we go I did get asked about the Hot Rollers album from I think 1998, was there anything more recorded other than the tracks that made the album?
Richie: Yeah, the Hot Rollers thing was me and Kram from Spiderbait, we’d just done a tour with Spiderbait and we became good mates on that tour, juts sort of hanging out. I remember we were backstage at a Canberra gig and there was a piano back there and we just started playing the Sesame Street Thee and singing it…
Mark: (laughs)
Richie: And we thought ‘We sound pretty good together’ and at the end of the tour he got evicted from his flat so he called me up and asked if he could crash. I had a spare room so he pretty much lived in Wollongong for a couple of months and while he lived there we pretty much four-tracked the Hot Rollers record and then the record company decided to finance it so we did it properly a few months later. So yeah, it’s a project that’s very dear to our hearts – a lot of it was off teh cuff and experimental and just something we really loved doing. And interestingly we’ve just been talking about a Hot Rollers part two next year! That’ll be fun, it’s been a long time coming and a long time in the making really.
Mark: That will be fun, I loved that record! We’ll close with a couple of fun ones: ‘You can invite three musicians from the past to join you for a meal when we finally get to crack Covid. Who would you like to be there for a chat?
Richie: David Bowie… then I’d have Paul McCartney and Elvis. I’d feel completely out of place of course (laughs)
Mark: (laughs)
Richie: That would be an interesting conversation.
Mark: Three legends for sure.
Richie: Elvis because he could sort of take over the conversation which he would…. actually maybe I’d trade Elvis in, I don’t want him there anymore, but I can’t have Iggy if David Bowie is gonna be there because they’d just nick off… Maybe somebody like Beck – he’d be interesting.
Mark: Three creative geniuses there then now. And we always end with the easy one – ‘what is the meaning of life?’
Richie: (pause) I’d have to say love…
Mark: Sometimes it’s as simple as that.
Richie: I think maybe it might be different for everybody, if there is a meaning at all. I know that you’re either motivated by fear or motivated by love and you have that choice. I know that on my life I’d rater be motivated by love and I’m not talking about love like “I love you” more a love for all things, so yeah, that’s mine.
Mark: Thank you so much for your time today Richie, it’s been an absolute pleasure, you’ve taken me right back to the days I used to see Tumbleweed back in the day. It will be great to catch you when you come round.
Richie: Thank you, I really miss Western Australia and I can’t wait till borders are open and we can get back over, it’s been a long time Thanks Mark.
Mark: Thanks Richie.
.
UNCAGED Festival Dates:
Sat 22 Jan – Brisbane, Showgrounds
Sat 29 Jan – Melbourne, Coburg Velodrome
Sat 12 Feb – Sydney, Showground
Members pre-sale commences: Thursday 14 October to Sunday 17 October.
General on sale: Monday 18 October at 9am
Tickets and information: uncagedfestival.com