Australia has more than its fair share of great Rock bands of course, and like most countries we get the occasional visit from the big international names every once in a while, but distance has always been the issue for Rock fans Downunder. Over the last decade or so there were just so many Hard Rock bands that wouldn’t make the trip, and fans rarely got a chance to see them unless their headed off to Europe or the U.S. There were no promoters out there willing to take a chance on any of the new wave of Hard Rock bands from the US and Europe. Then back in 2018 a new beast raised it’s head in the jungle and Silverback Touring was born, bringing a diverse set of bands in its first year and blossoming in 2019 before being stopped in its tracks due to Covid until 2022. If you read the names of bands on the Silverback roster this year it reads like Hard Rocking heaven! The real magic for me is seeing so many bands The Rockpit has been championing for years visiting our shores in 2022 and it’s all thanks to Danny the man behind Silverback, a man of impeccable taste, obviously who lives by one golden rule… but we’ll get to that later.
Mark: Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to The Rockpit Danny, I really appreciate it.
Danny: All good man!
Mark: Silverback Touring has been with us for a few years now but this year, after such disruption by the pandemic, is looking sensational for Hard Rock fans in Australia.
Danny: Yeah, it’s definitely busy at the moment! (laughs)
Mark: As you know at The Rockpit we love the music you’re bringing over for us and I know that we’ll be heading east a few times this year!
Danny: It will be good to see you over there.
Mark: Let’s start off where it all began then, take us back to the very first show?
Danny: That was 2018 and it feels like a lifetime ago now. Taking Covid out of the equation Silverback has only really been a 2 year operation because 2020 was our last international show before Covid and that was right on our second anniversary. The very first tour we did was (hed) pe in March 2018 and from there we just kept going I guess. We really wanted to establish ourselves as a force in the Rock scene and also the Hard Rock scene as I found there was a bit of an opening in that market. There wasn’t much happening there tour wise, but we don’t just limit ourselves to Hard Rock we’ve done a little bit of Metalcore, a bit of Metal and a few other things as well mixed in.
Mark: There’s been some great acts and it’s good to see some bands you keep coming back, there’s not a band I like better than Hardcore Superstar and in a short space of time you’ve built up that relationship with them.
Danny: Absolutely.
Mark: One of your very first tours and they’re back again to see us soon.
Danny: Covid aside, if you take that out of the equation this would be their third tour in three years! We first brought them over in our first year in 2018 and then we brought them out with Buckcherry as the main support in 2019, and now again this year on the back of their new album. They’re an amazing band and they’ve got a very loyal and fierce following amongst those that know about them, and those that don’t know about them before they see them, they soon become their newest favourite band. They hadn’t been here for over a decade when we first toured them, they were supposed to come out on one of the Soundwaves I believe, but something fell over there. They’re an amazing bunch of guys, I consider them good friends and they’re a joy to work with and they just keep producing the goods.
Mark: It’s so cool to see a band like that over, I was living in Sydney when they came to Australia that very first time, off the back of some airplay on Triple J of all things!
Danny: Wow, it’s a different dynamic now that’s for sure! (laughs)
Mark: The Rockpit is entering it’s 14th year this year and we’ve been supporting the bands that you’re now bringing out for us all for of that time. So to see that this year Silverback is bringing over Hardcore Superstar, Crashdiet, Reckless Love, H.E.A.T., Crazy Lixx, some of the newer names for a lot of Hard Rock fans and bands that sort of reflect that 80’s vibe, as well as Buckcherry, Fozzy, John 5 and of course Skid Row – 2022 is looking like the perfect storm for Rock fans in Australia!
Danny: Look I’ve never done things by half measure! That’s one of my outlooks on life, I’m ‘all in all of the time’ personally, but I guess with the way the programme has rolled out this year, it’s just the timing of it all with Covid interrupting. I mean that Skid Row Tour we’ve had in our hands for a couple of years now. We were always going to do a follow-up tour to the 2018 run, but you know like with everything timing is absolutely perfect the way that has sort of unravelled. Especially with Erik joining the band – there’s an absolute renewed vigour in the band at the moment and the music just sounds incredible and fans are really excited about it.
Mark: And there is of course that ‘new meets old school’ connection there with Erik who was with H.E.A.T. growing up a huge fan of Skid Row and now fronting Skid Row!. Our interview with Jona from H.E.A.T. was up last week. There’s a lot happening for a lot of these bands at the moment so it’s wonderful we get to experience that on the live stage.
Danny: I think Hard Rock as a genre, and at the end of the day it’s all Rock and Roll to me whether its Metalcore, Stoner, Glam or Sleaze or whatever the media label is. There are a lot of Hard Rock fans out there and if you go back to the heyday of the late eighties and early nineties this music was charting. And while the demographic is getting a little older and there’s a nostalgia aspect to it, what I’m noticing Mark is that a lot of the kids are starting to come to some of these shows. Some with parents, that whole generational thing, but some on their own. You’ve just got to look at a band like Kiss, which is a different ball park all together, but there’s two, three generations going to those shows. And we’re starting to see that with some of the messaging we get about shows like with Skid Row, or H.E.A.T. or Buckcherry. “Can my 17 year old come down?” and queries like that, sadly a lot of our venues are licensed and don’t allow minors but there is definitely a shift in the interest level of the younger generation. Bands like H.E,A,T. and Crazy Lixx in particular – they’re relatively unknown bands, but they have a core following here and the great thing about it is that people would never have expected to have seen them in our market.
Mark: It’s wonderful.
Danny: That’s what’s really exciting to me.
Mark: I first spoke to Danny from Crazy Lixx when they released their first E.P. and we’ve caught up regularly since, but until Silverback came on the scene it was a long expensive flight to Europe to see a band like that. You just made my year!
Danny: Look I’ll be the first to admit I’m relatively new to some of these bands as well. My musical taste is pretty broad but I’ll hear about a H.E.A.T. or a Crazy Lixx, or another band I just heard of over in Europe called The Cruel Intentions who are making a little bit of noise.
Mark: Hopefully you read about them on The Rockpit we gave their new record a good shout out!
Danny: (laughs) When I hear about them I’ll check them out and think “Wow, these guys are incredible” So their shows might not be overly massive but at the same time look at Hardcore Superstar, they really didn’t have a market in Australia pre-2018. There was a little bit of interest in them and we did their first tour that year, built on it in 2019 and now it’s going great guns in 2022 because their core following is following them, and those that saw them with Buckcherry, which is a different market all together, they caught onto it. And now their presence just grows. And that’s how bands will do well in any market – by consistently touring.
Mark: I couldn’t agree more. Starting out it’s always a risk for a promoter but the economics of it are simple – if you want to see these bands back – buy your tickets and buy them early. And cities like Perth and Adelaide need to take note of that.
Danny: Absolutely. It’s simple economics. I’ve had a couple of tours that I guess were really ‘love jobs’ but thankfully they still went OK. But it’s simple commerce really at the end of the day. If punters buy tickets then the bands will keep coming and we’ll keep putting them on.
Mark: It’s interesting that you mention your musical taste is quite diverse because I think we both have that about us. I can listen to Blues, Soul, Rock, pretty much anything but I know that we both have a love of Prince in common
Danny: Likewise (laughs)
Mark: I was lucky enough to get to see him the last time he came to Australia and a few times before that but my love of Hard Rock I think came from the Motown, Blues and Soul that was playing in the house when I was a kid. Where did your love of Hard Rock come from, how did you get into it?
Danny: I guess with me personally, like most people of my vintage, I’m in my 40’s it started with Kiss. I saw Kiss on the TV when I was like 4 or 5 years old they were like Superheroes! It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before and that captured me, so my first interest was always Rock music with Kiss. But when I heard Prince a couple of years later, when I was maybe ten, around the Purple Rain era. I remember seeing ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ and seeing the video to that – I was just transfixed on the TV and could not take my eyes off it. And that’s obviously one of his heavier, rock oriented, tracks of his. So the seed was already planted with Kiss and then the Prince influence led me to dive back with Prince as an early teen, and that’s when I started discovering Funk and Soul – James Brown and George Clinton, Parliament – things like that. So I got into Hip-Hop and RnB off that. But Rock was always what really fascinated me so I was listening to that, but also at the same time in the 80’s I was listening to Gangster Rap and also your ‘Golden Era’ rappers as they call it now, your Run DMC and Public Enemy, stuff like that. But at the same time I was absolutely fascinated by Glam and Hair Metal: you know your Ratts and your Dokkens and your Poisons, and obviously Bon Jovi was a huge one as well as Motley Crue. So I guess I was just a ‘jack of all’ in terms of my musical tastes. My record collection back then was just so diverse, and it still is to this day. But then from there with Prince as the anchor and Kiss as the anchor I went backwards again and through Kiss discovered 70’s and 60’s Rock then through Prince back to Soul and Funk and his influences. But as time went on my tastes evolved. I was an 80’s elitist for a while where I hated the idea of Grunge and anything like that. But one of my things now is discovering ‘new’ old stuff!
Mark: (laughs) A man after my own heart.
Danny: That’s actually one of my favourite things in my life, you know that moment when you go “Wow, Alice in Chains!” They’re incredible and I only just discovered them a few years ago. The penny finally dropped with Nirvana a couple of years ago too. Ironically I saw them live at their first ever show in Sydney and I’ll admit I stood at the back of the room thinking “This is terrible. This is trash.” But now a good few years later, I get it.
Mark: I had a similar experience when I first saw them back in the day on their first UK tour, they were awful, they had such a bad night it completely put me off. Ironically too, they’re also the band that got you up on stage for the first time. How many chords do you have now?
Danny: (laughs) That Nirvana tribute! Look I can play a bit, I know about ten chords. I guess I know enough to start a Punk band!
Mark: (laughs)
Danny: That was interesting, I mentioned to John the singer in that Nirvana tribute band from the UK that it was always a bucket list thing of mine to play a song on stage with a band and it kind of stayed in his head. And then when we were in Brisbane he said “It’s time for you to get up” and it was a bit of a threat (laughs) so I got up in front of 600-odd people and it was fun! We did it a couple of weeks later in Bangkok too and it was just as much fun!
Mark: Tell us about the Festival – Uncaged. I would have loved to have got over for that but we were still pretty much locked down over here still. What are your future plans for it?
Danny: ‘Uncaged’ to put it in a nutshell was a massive learning curve. We came out with a Festival at the tail end of Covid I guess just as things were reopening. I felt that there was an opening in the Australian market for a new Rock Festival that was orientated around the Hard Rock genre, but which also had another range of tastes and influences in the mix as well. Somewhat similar to I guess what Homebake was, in the media there were some similarities drawn with that Festival but that was only because it was an all domestic line-up as there were no internationals available. But certainly a massive learning curve, I’m very proud of the fact that we pulled it off and it was delivered near perfectly. Everyone had a great time, punters and artists alike. In terms of future plans, it’s certainly something that I’m looking at in the future. The program might be a little different, it might be curated a little differently, obviously with internationals being available. But never say never, there’s every chance of it coming back.
Mark: That’s great news. I know that everyone I know had a great time. It would be great to see it back as a regular feature. Lets find out a bit more about you know. What was the first concert you ever went to see?
Danny: My first concert was Kiss. Six years old.
Mark: Fantastic. What’s the best band you’ve ever seen play live?
Danny: That’s a tough one. I would probably say The New Power Generation – Prince’s band. I saw the ’92 Tour when he had the NPG with him probably the most astute and ridiculously talented band I’ve seen – just incredible.
Mark: Every time I interview artists for the first time I always ask two questions, and I’m going to ask you those two now. The first is if you could have been a ‘Fly on the wall’ for the creation of any great album from any point in Rock’s history what would you have loved to have witnessed being made?
Danny: ‘Appetite for Destruction’ hands down. Probably the best Rock album of all time in my opinion and certainly the best debut album.
Mark: Oh yeah.
Danny: Just to understand what was going on with those guys at the time and just to get a chance to decipher if they knew the greatness that they were about to put down on tape. It just stands the test of time, it’s one of those albums that I still listen to from day to day and start to finish, no skips.
Mark: It’s a stunning record and one I can still play from go to whoa. I spoke to Marc Canter the other day, who I guess is Gunners unofficial historian of the early days and he has a podcast that’s fascinating all about Gunners first shows and the making of that record ‘The First 50 Dates’ – its well worth checking out.
Danny: Right. I saw them in ’88 on their first tour as a teenager and I remember thinking to myself there was just something dangerous and unpredictable about them. Not that I knew too much about music at that point in time, but there was just an energy amongst them that was just unbelievable.
Mark: They were a game-changer for so many.
Danny: Yeah.
Mark: We always close with an easy one – ‘What is the meaning of life?’
Danny: (Pause) I live by a really simple philosophy – be cool like The Fonz from Happy Days!
Mark: (laughs)
Danny: Be cool with everybody, treat everybody with respect. And appreciate each day as it comes.
Mark: You’ve certainly always been that with us Danny and long may Silverback go from strength to strength, there’s all kids of original Rock on the way and a few tribute shows in between. The rest of 2022 will be amazing. I can’t wait. Thanks so much for taking the time out to talk to us.
Danny: No, thank you for all your support.
Mark: Take care mate.
Danny: See you soon.
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