Its been nearly four years since WA was blessed with a performance from Ed Kuepper (The Saints) but he’s back this weekend with a somewhat stripped-back set featuring drummer Jim White (Dirty Three), on a tour that has hiccupped its way across the country with forced breaks due to the pandemic. But now its full steam ahead and Ed is pleased to announce that many of the shows have sold out and that even though they had to reset & restart a few times, it hasn’t taken anything away from what they set out to achieve.
We spoke to Ed as he prepared to pack his bags and head to the airport for a flight over the Nullaboor before playing Freo.Social on Friday 13 May and then heading south west to The River in Margaret River performing the night after, on Saturday 14th May.
Sean: Hi Ed, its Sean from the Rockpit over in Perth. How are you?
Ed: I’m very well Sean. How are you?
Sean: Very well thanks Ed. It only feels like I last spoke to you a couple of years ago but looking back it was 2018! That must have been one of the last times you were here in WA when you toured The Aints! album ‘The Church of Simultaneous Existence’. Where does the time go?
Ed: That is a really good question [laughs].
Sean: Well we can’t wait to have you back over here but it’s been a very stop/start tour for you and Jim. I’m sure you are so relieved to finally get back out to complete these shows.
Ed: Yes, well I think we had about four goes at it last year and only got about halfway through the tour but so far this 2022 catch up has very much gone to plan. I don’t want to jinx it [laughs]
Sean: Its wonderful to see music coming back into WA because we have very much been starved of touring artists but what can we expect to hear and experience from this tour?
Ed: Well it’s Jim White, on drums and me on vocals and guitar… or guitars and we play a really broad range of material going back to when I started up to now and we do a kind of different take on the songs every night. The shows have been fantastic. We’ve found a really great spot between structure and improvisation… maybe improvisation isn’t the word… spontaneity is probably a better way of describing it. We’ve done nights where we have played exactly the same set but they sound completely different to the night before.
Sean: Its been dubbed ‘The Greatest Musical Match in Australian Music History’.
Ed: It is…it’s phenomenal.
Sean: Well, what must be refreshing not just for you and Jim but for music fans alike is to see that ‘Sold Out’ stamp emblazoned on the posters at various venues across the country.
Ed: Yes, its great. Quite a lot of the shows have been sold out and that has been really fantastic.
Sean: You are playing two wonderful venues here: Freo.Social on Friday 13th May and they down to Margaret River the following night to play The River, which is another cracking venue – I was there just last weekend actually.
Ed: Yeah, that’s great to hear Sean. I’ve played the Social club before a couple of times but I’ve haven’t been to that venue at Margaret River yet so really looking forward to it.
Sean: You touched on the fact the shows were very much in the balance by the way of flowing along, with the restrictions & lockdowns very much running the timetable of events but what did you do in those downtimes? Did you manage to get any writing done or did you use it for a bit of relaxing?
Ed: No, I tried to sort of work on my overall approach to music. I tried to keep sane. Like in a lot of ways, in 2020 when everything kind of went into shut down for long periods of time I found that a lot easier to deal with. I kind of enjoyed the quietness & solitude. When the tour got going again last year, that was kind of harder because we started to get a bit of momentum again and then we would have to stop and then go back…then we were stop/start. The great thing about about what we were doing though meant it didn’t stop the musical or artistical momentum. We did shows then we couldn’t do shows but when we started up again it was as if we had been playing constantly, sort of thing.
Sean: That continuity must make you feel comfortable when your out there playing too.
Ed: Yeah, for sure. I like to give Jim the same feeling to – I let him pick the set list so I think both of us are feeling pretty good and pretty confident in what we are doing with out being complacent about any of it. Its still a challenge. I thought it started off fantastically well, and it did but its actually getting better as we go.
Sean: Its a fairly timeless songbook that your picking from too. I know you said you are ad-libbing most nights, so to speak but its a set list which will interest all generations and hopefully pull in younger audiences to some of this wonderful music.
Ed: Thanks Sean. I’m still surprised how some of the earlier songs that we are playing… they are looking at their 50th anniversary next year…they look at them as if they were written last week, you know? And that’s a pretty good thing.
Sean: I had ‘The Church of Simultaneous Existence’ on at the weekend and listening to it again reminded me of that wonderful horn section you had with you for those shows. I saw it at Rosemount Hotel back in 2018 or 2019 and that really gave the sound so much depth – it really was an incredible evening of music.
Ed: That was really important part of the act. A lot of those songs had been written with horns in mind and they were an integral part of the performance in a lot of ways rather than an arrangement just added on afterwards.
Sean: I remember looking through the crowd, and we just touched on it, there was a real age diversity in the room.
Ed: That’s brilliant. Its not something that everyone can kind of do, even though I’m sure everyone would like to and I never take that for granted because, you know, musical tastes change from generation to generation but if what you can do can break that barrier then I think that is fantastic and extremely gratifying to see.
Sean: At the beginning of our chat you said you were bringing guitars, in plural. Will you be bringing many along?
Ed: Just the two. Yes, just the two…which is quite a lot [laughs]. The two are set up to do quite a lot is what I kind of mean. I was carrying more last year when we started the tour and one of the reasons I decided to prune it back a bit was because it actually makes me work a bit harder on what I’m doing. There is a fair range of stuff that we are covering and to do it all on certain instruments is a real challenge and it makes the approach different to last year so I forced a little hurdle on myself.
Sean: Reading back through our interview from four years ago I was reminded that it was your mum that got you into music by wanting you to play the piano.
Ed: Yeah, that’s right.
Sean: Was that something you ever continued with over the years?
Ed: I do a little bit of keyboard playing but I don’t boast about it though. I keep it quiet. I wanted to play music for as long as I can remember but mum thought the piano would be good and I guess, as I probably mentioned before, I thought the guitar would be cheaper so I got my way [laughs].
Sean: I remember you tell me that in your eyes, “The guitar is King!” and we were discussing Elvis & Johnny Cash at the time.
Ed: You know, its the portable instrument. You can walk around and do a whole bunch of things with it… its hard lugging a piano around [laughs]. Andrés Segovia the classical guitarist talks at great length about how the guitar is the number one instrument in the world – obviously he was biased. I think I would have played something irrespective of playing the guitar and it would probably have been the piano. I love the piano. I try to go for the richness of piano chords with a guitar and try to get that depth in there. Sometimes I get it and sometimes I don’t.
Sean: With that in mind Ed, when you write does the melody come first of do you find you have a lyrical theme in mind?
Ed: I just do whatever really. Sometimes I won’t even have an instrument and a tune will just appear to me or I’m writing some pros and there maybe are some line that I think maybe have some musicality to them that end up in a song. Probably what I do the most is just start p[laying the guitar and something just comes out of that. When I do that approach its usually the music first and then the lyric. Irrespective of how you do it, its the doing it that’s the important part of it… and I’m not lecturing anybody here, I’m just about myself and my processes. I have to actually do it, not wait for inspiration. Things come to you when you start doing them. If I waited for them to happen then I’d write very little.
Sean: Before I lose you I just wanted to mention some of the shows at the tail end of the tour because there are some incredible venues you will be playing including Sydney Opera House and also the Forum in Melbourne. Having such a long career Ed is there still a time you play a venue like the Opera House and kind of just go “Wow!”?
Ed: I think with places like the Opera House… when we were touring last year we managed to do two shows at the Opera House on the first part of the tour and yeah, you can’t play at the Opera House and not be… you know they have nice dressing rooms and a great view out of the window [laughs]… you know its a venue with some real significance but as long as its not a really crappy venue you still put in the same kind of effort into every performance wherever you play. People have paid to come and see you so you want to impress.
Sean: Sadly, it all ends on June 8th at the Forum. So, what next for Ed Kuepper?
Ed: Well, I will be doing some more shows with my other band Asteroid Ecosystem. We started doing some shows earlier this year, which were fantastic. We played Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne and the Adelaide Festival. So, we are looking to do some more shows. Then there are a number of other things which are a bit hard to be all that specific about right now because I don’t know how things are going to pan out. There’s a fair bit of stuff, including some recording so I’m really keen to kind of stay active.
Sean: Well, we can’t wait to see what you have lined up in the near future Ed and we thank you so much for your time. Its always a great pleasure to talk to you.
Ed: Thank you very much. You too Sean. Take care.
For ticketing info for the remainder of Ed Kuepper’s shows visit HERE
