Getting to Know The Tommyhawks
Western Australia-based fourpiece, The Tommyhawks, are touring this September and October in support of their debut EP. We asked them to tell us about themselves:
We are Axe, Ness, Thea, Jess.
‘We’re All Meat and We’re Gonna Get Eat” is a cute lyric from Mr Magpie; which is a pretty sinister song about Axe coming to Australia (she’s from London – where they only have little things that chirp and tweet n shit) and getting swooped for the first time. A rite of passage for all us Aussie kids; but obviously a slightly traumatising experience as a fully grown adult who’s probably only been pre-warned about drop bears and the 600 types of snakes that will kill you and not so much the birds that actually want your eye ball. Anyway, that aside, it’s also the title of our debut EP; which we recorded with Dave Parkin at Blackbird Studios; who is one of the biggest legends we know. Yep, we’re into birds. Bluebird was our debut single.
Fremantle is where 25% of us live (where we will all live one day, maybe in a big happy share house overrun with dogs and stray guitars and coconut water and oil. Maybe not. The life of a musician is not necessarily predictable we’ve learnt). It is where we drink cold beer and hot toddies and where we feel patriotic to WA. Where all those beautiful things Tim Winton writes about are all true. Where we feel inspired. Actually I have no idea if that’s true. Just sounded poetic.
Our debut Australian tour will be equal parts awkward and fucking rad. Because there is something very unique about touring to a place where no one has heard of you (“place” being Australia in general); so there are kind of no expectations; which means that every thing is a bonus and if no-one shows up to your gig it’s totally excusable. And it means that we get to basically do things like ocean and beer for three weeks. Yeah and a shitload of driving. And get to open shows with ‘You guyyyysssss fuckiingnggg rockkkk we loovvveeee Sunshine Coaaasstttt” which we kinda can’t do at the Rosie. Kinda imaging a stadium-type setting here with 50 000 people (this is the ‘awkward’ bit we referred to earlier… the rock god delusions). No, but seriously we’re ridiculously excited. And nervous. we have a camper van that has two double mattresses (one of those is on the roof) so I think we’re probably just going to get really drunk so that all the accidental spooning won’t be as memorable in the morning.
We spend too much time talking about food, bodily functions and alcoholism. Not in that order. But usually.
As far as our current music listening goes, Jess always tries to get us to do Rival Sons covers; Axe goes on about Courtney Barnett a fair bit; Ness won’t shut up about this band called Jebediah; and Thea teaches music all day so I think she just listens to ‘hot cross buns’ on repeat.
It might surprise people to learn that we’re kinda normal.
In the future there will be a lot of animals. Probably not on stage; and more the domestic pet genre than exotic wilderbeast… but the richer we get the more our four legged friends will come on tour/be smuggled into venues/instagrammed ad-nauseum… we’ll become advocates for Bands-with-pet-needs.
You can catch the band at the following venues:
11/9 The Flying Scotsman, Perth WA
17/9 Sonny’s House of Blues, Brisbane QLD
18-20/9 Mitchell Creek Festival, Sunshine Coast QLD
20/9 Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall, Brisbane QLD
23/9 Rad Bar, Woolongong NSW
24/9 The Spotted Mallard, Brunswick VIC
26/9 The Yarra Hotel, Abbotsford VIC
30/9 Lass O’Gowrie Hotel, Newcastle NSW
1/10 Frankie’s Pizza by the Slice, Sydney NSW
2/10 Front Gallery, Canberra ACT
3/10 Narooma Festival, Narooma NSW
4/10 Petersham Bowls Club, Petersham NSW
Keep up to date with The Tommyhawks on Facebook.
Interview by Bobby Townsend.
