With two new singles released on the world in the shape of ‘Money’ and ‘Lights Out’, The Superjesus are well and truly back and are out on the road throughout the month’s of October, November and December, having kicked off the Lights Out tour back in August. It’s a welcome return for the band who, over their time, have gathered nine Top 50 hits, two Top 10 albums, placed five songs in Triple J’s Hottest 100, won three ARIA Awards from eight nominations, and been inducted into the South Australian Music Hall of Fame.
With two new band members firmly in place and a new album on the horizon, it really feels like a fresh start for the band that has filled venues across the country and by all accounts, with the new tour well and truly underway, is doing the very same once again. We caught up with bass playing founder member Stuart ‘Ruddy’ Rudd to discuss the new material, how it feels to get back out on the road with his partner in crime Sarah McLeod and where and how his musical journey started for him many years ago.
Sean: Ruddy, how are you?
Ruddy: Yeah doing well pal, doing alright. You know, just keeping on rolling I guess. And now we’re just gearing up for another tour and stuff.
Sean: Incredible response to the new singles and the new music. It’s been wonderful to see this resurgence for The Superjesus again.
Ruddy: Ah yeah, thanks mate. Yeah, we’re incredibly sort of proud of it and it is great to see the people are sort of coming back out to shows and not just for us, I mean just for everyone really. Yeah, that sort of 90s style music and the singles seem to be hitting the right chords I guess with people, so that’s fantastic.
Sean: Well, I know speaking to Sarah recently, there’s an real renewed energy within the band, especially with the two new members in Murray Sheridan and Cam Blokland who’ve joined The Superjesus now, as well.
Ruddy: Yeah, there is mate. It’s a great feeling.
Sean: It just must be refreshing to get back on the road, and as you say, seeing the response that music has had around the country since the dreaded C word, where everything was locked down must be so reassuring.
Ruddy: Yeah it’s crazy. Yeah, well firstly just to sort of touch base on the band… yeah, well it just feels awesome you know, we’re sort of all connecting, it’s organic and it’s creative. It’s going really good so we’re stoked for it at the minute and you know that just sort of that makes us sort of want to get out and want to be more sort of active with with writing and touring so.
Sean: Yeah, well of course you opened the Lights Out tour in Sydney. How did that go?
Ruddy: Really good. It was a great response and and we’re stoked. We came to Adelaide and we did a full week’s rehearsal in Adelaide and then we all flew up to Sydney and put on the first show and it felt great. If that’s the starting point for us then it’s a big tick, it’s only going to get better so we were incredibly happy with it.
Sean: Well, I saw some of the footage across social media and the crowd just went absolutely nuts!
Ruddy: Yeah, it was good and there is a lot of familiar faces we’ve seen out there. There’s people that have been following the band for a long time and there’s new faces too so it’s always a good cross section of people that come out and have a good time. You can always see them either enjoying the new songs or they’re singing away to the old songs so it’s always a good vibe in the room.
Sean: Well wonderful, it wasn’t that long ago you were over in WA with the band when you did the Jet Age tour so obviously it must be a real real relief to release some new stuff and play it for the crowd.
Ruddy: Yeah, it is great. It’s just one of those things. We had released a couple of EPs and we had done some things here and there and we just sort of always felt that we had another album in this band and you know, I guess to a point it was a matter of timing. Sarah’s so incredibly busy so to start writing material at home and sending it up to Sarah to get, you know, once she gets a hold of it, you know, she’s either all in or she’s busy doing something else so, you know, she’s invested in it, which is just great. You know, she’s a fantastic person to write songs with. So, yeah, it’s just making it easier. And so writing new songs is exciting again. And as we mentioned earlier, just with the band, it’s just, it’s being played really well, and it’s respected, it’s just awesome.
Sean: Great to hear. Well, I know you’ve released the two new singles so far, and you’ve just said about the writing, but we are expecting the album to be out before the end of the year, which must be slightly daunting as well as exciting for you guys.
Ruddy: Yeah, it is definitely. I think at this point we may be pushing the album back because, look, the first single ‘Money’ got picked up really well around the country and started playing and then we got out on the road and it was a case of, hold on, we’re sort of still out on the road here and it’s three, four months later. So our second single ‘Lights Out’, which is this tour, is taking us out even till December, then we go straight back into the studio in December. We finish December 3rd, we go straight back in the studio December 5th and keep working. So I think, for most part the album’s done but there’s just more stuff we’re going to do but it’s looking at this stage like it’s going to be sort of hopefully out in this part of next year.
Sean: Wonderful, it certainly means you can elongate the tour a little bit longer and maybe even if a third single comes you can do another loop of the country [laughs].
Ruddy: [laughs] A loop? Yeah, yeah, well that would be good. I mean it’s feeling very old school at the minute, you know, the way we sort of use to do it. But that’s how you do it and you get out and you play and release songs and the thing is too, we’re having such a great time with it so that makes it easy and that makes us want to keep doing it. I mean on this tour, this Lights Out tour Seany, we’re going to Wagga, Indigo, Ballarat, we’re going to come to WA, but we’re trying to get regional and trying to get a bit more out there than just the major cities. I mean, we’ve always enjoyed sort of getting out to the country a bit more, so we’re looking forward to it.
Sean: That’s fantastic. And rolling back to the older days, how has the dynamic changed with the song writing? Obviously you touched on Sarah being very, very busy now, but is it still that same structure, the way you both write?
Ruddy: Yeah, I’ll be writing music at home, and I’ll be sending it up to Sarah and if she feels inspired by it, she’ll sort of take it by the scruff of the neck and work on it too, and then work some vocals into it. That can be however long that takes. Sometimes it can take a couple of days, bang, it’s done, and then sometimes it can take a couple of weeks or longer. But, so yeah, it’s sort of still the same way, where we just sort of have an idea. I think for the most part we’ve got, you know, we’re the DNA of the band so we know the sound and we know how it kind of works and we know how we like it. So that’s sort of how it’s been rolling at this minute.
Sean: Taking you back when you guys wrote a song like ‘Gravity’, in the studio, did you all kind of look at each other at the time and go, “this has got something a little bit special?” Or do songs like that catch you out when it elevates to the way it did around the country?
Ruddy: Yeah, it’s a good question because when we were writing it, it’s other people that sort of picked their ears up around the band. I guess when you’re sort of in the nucleus of the band, you’re right in the epicentre of it. And then you sort of hear other people that might be in a record company or management who say, “That’s pretty catchy, that song.” I mean, we felt it was something. It was definitely different to what we had written in the past. So it was just sort of pushing boundaries a little bit, I guess. But no, we didn’t sort of know straight off the bat with ‘Gravity’. It was just one of those songs… it was just another sort of song off the album. And interestingly enough, the same with ‘Shut My Eyes’. We released that, it was our first song off the EP, which went into, you know, started all the triple J’s, we were going to ditch the song, and we weren’t going to play it at all, and we thought, oh no, let’s just sort of go for it, and let’s see what other people think, and there you go, ‘Shut My Eyes’ sort of kick-started the whole thing.
Sean: Isn’t that crazy that something that could almost be put by the wayside or in a box somewhere never to be seen again, is something that springboards something so relevant in Australian music history?
Ruddy: Yeah, and it’s because I think, I don’t know what it is, but I think there’s certainly an element where the songs… if you’ve laboured on the song or it’s really pissed you off at some point, you know, you can’t find those chords that aren’t quite sitting right in your mind or whatever it is, then I don’t want to hear it again, you know get rid of it like it’s done and so there can be that element as well and it’s not until you sort of listen to it, maybe three or four months later which is… some of the music I’ve got written here it’s what’s happened with this new album, the music’s been sitting around forever. You know, when I say forever, a year and a half. But, and I’ve sent it up, gone, actually it doesn’t sound too bad, it’s just that it was giving me a hard time when I was writing it so then I handball it and give McLeod a hard time instead [laughs]. So, I think sometimes emotion can be part of the songs as well, like it where you go, “I’m pissed off for that song. I don’t want to deal with it again” or whatever, ‘Shut my Eyes’ was sort of a bit like that, too
Sean: It’s it’s an incredible thing when you look back, as you can tell by my accent with UK roots, one of the things I’m finding amazing with The Rockpit is connecting all these dots to incredible musicians and the stories and the different music from the different states around the country and Adelaide and South Australia have had some wonderful musicians that have stamped their imprint on the history of this country’s music.
Ruddy: Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. You know, I was talking to somebody recently about Adelaide. It’s always been sort of one of those areas where we always sort of had to travel to the eastern states and then to the west. I think that you have to travel to sort of get somewhere and to go back to the start, to get to travel you have to work extremely hard to get above it all. But I just felt like there was a very hard sort of layer you had to get through in order to go interstate to start with. Competition, if you want to call it that, was always quite high. But yeah, look, the state has a festival theatre here which turned 50 years old. We were blessed to be asked as The Superjesus, to be part of it. But you know, when you think back and there’s Zia and obviously Cold Chisel and, you know, Fraternity and Bon Scott and the Angels.
Sean: It’s incredible.
Ruddy: Maybe it’s in the water, mate.
Sean: Maybe that’s what it is.
Ruddy: We’ve drank the water and survived.
Sean: It’s that amazing wine you’ve got in the McLaren Vale region.
Ruddy: Hey, there you go, down the Barossa Valley.
Sean: I’ve only been over once, back in 1995, I was here on a holiday and I was lucky to catch the last ever Grand Prix in Adelaide.
Ruddy: Oh fantastic mate.
Sean: Unfortunately I couldn’t get a flight so I had to do the 30-odd hour India Pacific and couldn’t get a sleeper carriage so sitting down for 30+ hours was not the best of fun. But what an amazing city and the wineries… I got to try the wineries and the food. It’s just incredible, just a beautiful part of the country.
Ruddy: It is, it is. WA sort of does remind me a lot of Adelaide, like there’s the café culture and the wines obviously in Margaret Rivers and stuff like that too but yeah we’re very blessed in Adelaide.
Sean: Well we get to see you at the tail end of the tour in December, three shows which of course we’ll plug the hell out of because we’re dying to see you over here. I’m going to try and take a few days off and come and see all three shows.
Ruddy: Oh fantastic mate, well you reach out beforehand. Yeah you’ve got to do it mate.
Sean: Oh definitely. So taking you back while I’ve still got you, where did it all start for you as a musician? What was growing up like for you musically?
Ruddy: Well, my parents were Scottish and they came over, they immigrated back you know a long time ago and sort of grew up without a lot of money. Dad was a drummer in a pipe band. And I guess music was just kind of around all the time and it became a sort of an escapism escapism for me when I was younger. I was just natural to put the music on on a Saturday night and mum and my dad would be drinking… you know, you can imagine a bit of a knees up [laughs] so it was always around and that’s why I sort of gravitated towards it. I started when I was young and just the impact that music had on me… my sister was more Motown but my next brother was into Queen and my other brother with into The Faces and The Stones… so there was all sorts going on the record player, so that’s where it all kicked off for me. Then I got into KISS so I heard ‘Kiss Alive’ when I was a kid, maybe six or seven. It was probably more I saw the album cover and I was like, “Wow!” And I was hooked on music from that point on.
Sean: So, when and where did the bass guitar creep in?
Ruddy: You know where that came from? I was playing with my mates when I was young and I wanted to be the lead guitarist. So they told me to go home and learn the song, which was Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re Not Gonna Take it’. It’s about three notes and I couldn’t even learn that and get it right [laughs] so that’s how I got fired from that! So I said, “I’ll tell ya what. I’ll take up the bass.” And that’s what I did and I just fell in love with it. As soon as I started to play the bass I could feel how powerful it was, listening to the punk stuff like The Ramones, The Pistols and The Clash. I just got into it from that point on. So, that’s really how I got into the bass.
Sean: Before you go I’d love to throw some general questions your way.
Ruddy: Of course Sean. Go for it mate.
Sean: I always love to ask my restaurant questions; If you could invite three musicians, dead or alive to join you for dinner one evening, who would you invite?
Ruddy: Well I’d have to say Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix and perhaps Freddie Mercury.
Sean: Great table and straight off the bat… no hesitation.
Ruddy: Wouldn’t that be a good table. I don’t know how sober we would all be though [laughs]
Sean: [laughs] Don’t panic. You have an unlimited bar tab. What was the last album you listened too?
Ruddy: The last album was Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds ‘Council Skies’.
Sean: Wow, didn’t expect that for some strange reason.
Ruddy: Have you listened to it?
Sean: No, I haven’t yet.
Ruddy: Check it out mate. It’s pretty bloody good.
Sean: And finally, if you could be credited with writing any song ever written, what song would you choose?
Ruddy: Aw man, you know what? It would eb a battle between Hendrix’s ‘All Along the Watchtower’ or it would be The Stones ‘Gimme Shelter’.
Sean: Two crackers there Ruddy, especially ‘Gimme Shelter’.
Ruddy: Aw mate! Just fantastic.
Sean: That opening section… hairs standing up on the neck!
Ruddy: Absolutely.
Sean: One of my favourite British rock bands Thunder did a superb cover of that tune.
Ruddy: I’ll have to check it out.
Sean: Ruddy, I really appreciate your time for a chat about all that is going on in The Superjesus camp. We can’t wait to see you all hit WA in December. Good luck with the other shows around the country before hand and excited to hear any more new music before the album drops next year.
Ruddy: Good on ya, Sean. Thanks for having me on mate.
Sean: Cheers Ruddy.
