“We had some time off which has been great,” vocalist and guitarist Nick Finch tells me. “We haven’t played a gig in about five and a half months – it will have been six months between gigs by the time of the festival.” Why such a hiatus for a band on the rise? “We worked really hard for two years before that and our lives were nothing but Graveyard Train,” explains Finch. “So we’re just chilling out momentarily and experimenting with some other things. I just produced a record for Cash Savage, I thought I’d try my hand at that sort of stuff. I had a baby as well about five months ago so just thought we’d kind of slow down a touch.”
“This gig is going to be fun,” says Finch. “We haven’t all been in a room together for the last five months, we’re all looking forward to it.” Graveyard Train have played the Chopped Festival twice before, years ago, despite the fact that Finch doesn’t even drive. “It’s pretty zany,” he says. “Both times we’ve rocked up in a Volkswagen despite the sign saying ‘no Volkswagens allowed’. We know the dudes that organise it and one of them has always been really helpful to us. He lives up in Sydney and in the early days when we used to tour we’d crash on his kitchen floor.”
Finch has enjoyed the odd drunken conversations with these contacts over the years. “They like their rockabilly but they’re not quite as obsessed as the hotrod following, which leads to really interesting line-ups. They don’t go for the straight rockabilly line-up. It’s pretty rad this year – Hard-Ons, Twin Beasts (formerly the Toot Toot Toots), Gay Paris. They’re car nerds. They’re really into their cars, but they’re also really into interesting music.”
Over the years the band has built a diverse following, both in its hometown of Melbourne and elsewhere around the country. “We’ve kind of been real lucky,” says Finch. “We’ve played gigs all over the place and sometimes we’ll have rockabilly guys with neck tatts rock up, other times we’ll have old farmers and really random people coming to our shows. Hopefully there’ll be people coming to this festival who haven’t seen us before – it’s always good to make new friends.”
I first saw Graveyard Train a few years ago, at the Port Fairy Folk Festival, which regularly offers up a diverse and enjoyable line-up. “That was more of an older crowd,” Finch remembers. “People who wire into sitting down while watching shows. That weekend we also went and played Golden Plains where tons of kids were chewing their jaws off. We play lots of different crowds and people don’t seem to hate us.”
When asked about the band’s place in the musical spectrum, Finch reflects on his experiences through his day job. “I work at the Old Bar in Melbourne and I see a million bands a year. There’s some really interesting stuff out there. This country is producing some really interesting, really good music but it’s not necessarily going to be popular. There’s incredible bands playing to ten people but it is what it is.” He believes that part of the fun of music from bands like Graveyard Train is that it’s very much “on the sidelines” of the mainstream. It’s different, and sits alongside a swathe of other Melbourne bands Finch sees on a regular basis.
“There’s a band called The Infants – they’re doing a kind of music which is new to me,” says Finch. “The Toot Toot Toots, now called Twin Beasts, are bringing out a new record which I’ve heard some of – it’s incredible. And I love Cash Savage, I used to play in the band. I don’t anymore but it’s still my favourite band.”
Graveyard Train is gearing up for their next phase of evolution. “We’ve always been pretty DIY and homemade and take things as they come,” says Finch. “As the band gets more professional I guess – you should put that in quotation marks! – we’ve never considered ourselves to be incredibly professional but as we’ve played bigger shows a few of us take care of that side of things. At this stage we’re just writing little bits and pieces.”
“We released our last album halfway through last year and that was fun. We’re still getting together and working on stuff. We have a concept album in mind that we’ve been writing stuff for, so hopefully we’ll do that next. If not, we’ll see what happens. One week we’ll all get drunk and come up with some amazing plan but we’ll generally forget it the next morning. We’re having fun.”
BY JOSH FERGEUS
