THEY’RE DITCHING THE BAGGAGEI’d been doing The Drones
with Fi Kitschin and the guys for yonks, and it occurred to me,
“Fuck, I could be in another band, just do something different.”
If you’re in a band for that long, you start wondering what it’s like
outside. The Drones have all good baggage, but it’s heavy – you
have to deal with a lot of the history and what people expect. This
band is fresh – we can do whatever we want and not care what
anyone thinks. It feels really invigorating.
THEY’RE STILL SURPRISING EACH OTHERYou write to suit the
people you play with, and if you play with the same people all the
time, you keep having to reinvent the wheel. With Tropical Fuck
Storm, it’s a clean slate, and I’m getting to know Erica Dunn and
Lauren Hammel as musicians. Erica has done backing vocals on
tour with The Drones, and I saw High Tension play when Lauren had
just joined as drummer. We got in touch through a mutual friendand here we are. It’s fun figuring each other out and gently steering
them in a certain direction, and just being surprised.BAND PRACTICE IS A WEEKEND GETAWAY Fi and I live in central
Victoria, near the Goulburn River. It’s a good two-hour drive for the
others to get there, but we’ve got three houses – our landlord’s a
legend, so we got them really cheap and there’s plenty of room for
people to stay. They’ll come up for the weekend and stay two or
three nights – it’s like having a little clubhouse. We hang out; drink
a lot of beer; take magic mushrooms; play with our dogs; cook; eat;
go swimming; and generally slack off. It’s not rush, rush, rush.TOURING CAN GET WEIRD We’ve just been touring in America’s
south, and we found ourselves playing a gig in an abandoned Fox TV
studio. It turned out Southern Baptists used it because they had a
spa in the middle of the abandoned newsroom, and they baptised
people in it. We went out the back and there was a carnie ride, a
house of horrors thing, set up in this TV studio – it was bizarre. We
nearly got murdered by the Baptist hillbillies who set it up, because
we broke in and walked around. We made a video in there, and
they caught us mid-filming, so we were confronted on camera. The
sweet-talking was kind of hilarious – they were like, “What the fuck
are you doing here?” and we were just like, “Hi!”LADIES RULE THE ROOST This time around, the main thing was to
be in a band with more women in it than there are in The Drones.
We’ve been touring for decades, and Fi is the only girl, and although
she gets on with the guys really well and has a cool time, I thought it
would be nice if she had some girlfriends for once. They’re all really
cool people, and a lot of fun. I’m the Kim Gordon of this band.THE NAME IS OPEN TO INTERPRETATION We had a studio for a
couple of years in Fitzroy, Melbourne, shared with Dan Kelly and Jacky
Winter. We decided we needed a name for it, and Dan said something
was a tropical fuck storm, so we thought, “Let’s call the studio that.”
When the new band got together, we needed a name again, and that
was the silliest one we could think of. I have no idea what a tropical
fuck storm is – just a massive shemozzle; a fun mess.a few things you
should know about...
SUPERGROUP TROPICAL FUCK STORM,
ACCORDING TO ITS FOUNDER,
GARETH LIDDIARD.
Interview Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
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