Hobsons Bay Coast Guard’s seven-date tour to support new single, Tidal Wave, kicked off on October 29 (at The Eastern in Ballarat), and wraps on December 17 (at the View Street Amphitheatre in Wollongong).
A little maths reveals the recuperation windows between tour dates here are enviable. While the Tidal Wave tour is structured to accommodate Hobsons Bay Coast Guard’s endeavours to balance band life with civilian life, it undeniably keeps the band youthful in road dog years nevertheless.
Chris Loftis, the surf-psych act’s guitarist and vocalist, acknowledges that.
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“We’re not exactly sure what the conversion rate is on road dog years (RDYs), but we feel younger already,” he says.
Loftis rates the Tidal Wave tour a 10/10 so far. And that’s saying something. Because, as Loftis simultaneously laments, the band’s tour dates keep getting rained out. As does so much life in general, of late. So much so, in fact, Hobsons Bay Coast Guard has been enlisted to play an additional (free-entry) show at the B.East on Sunday December 4th, alongside Tragic Carpet & DJ Softserve. The show will raise funds for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities who have been impacted by the recent floods in Victoria.
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The B.East is donating all funds from the gig to the peak representative for the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torrest Strait Islander people in Victoria, VACCHO (the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation).
These funds will be used in full to help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in Victoria get their lives and homes back together.
Right now, there is a major need across the state for items such as children’s clothing, non-perishable foods, and toiletries.
Loftis, who has worked with the B.East’s booking on previous fundraising shows, says Hobsons Bay is chuffed to be involved with this one too.
“It’s always regular people that have to deal with the destructive consequences of climate change,” he says. “If we get the chance, we think it’s important to lend what resources we have to causes like this.”
Along with the B.East show, the band still has tour dates booked in Kyneton, Sydney, and Wollongong.
Tidal Wave, the single, is an ear worm of reverby garage rock-vocals tattooed over a bed of all-out surf-thrash guitar fit for a freak scene movement, and it’s a long-time coming. So far, it has lived the vast majority of its life in demo form. Although, as you can surmise now that it’s a mixed and mastered single, it came into life as a matter of urgency.
“This song was fully written and arranged in about an hour!” Loftis tells. “It seemed to just flow out. We wanted to capture that ease of vision in the final recording, and we think it turned out pretty well.”
There’s no disagreeing with that.
Tidal Wave, which is self-recorded (with mixing and mastering help from Erik Scerba), captures the energy of six band members – a wild wash of guitars, drums, keys, percussion, and bass – who always reserve the song as an unhinged end-of-set barn-burner, when they do it live.
The new single is part of a forthcoming record from the band (due in 2023), which includes songs that all touch on a different natural disasters or extreme weather events.
“In general, all the tracks on the new record… — including Tidal Wave – have a succinct and to-the-point vibe to them that sets them apart from our previous work,” Loftis says.
The Tidal Wave Tour has been a good opportunity for the band to settle into its life as a six-piece. Loftis says that playing as a group of six is a different experience from playing with a smaller band population.
“It’s definitely more fun! You have to be more alert and aware of your comrades in arms as you play. With every new instrument making noise, it is another chance for something to go wrong! Luckily we have a great team of talented musicians that don’t take themselves too seriously.”
On tour, the band has discovered Loftis’ predilection for playing Seal’s “masterpiece” Kissed by a Rose, to fire up for shows. As for those shows, they’ve been memorable for various reasons.
“The second day of Loch Hart Festival, the whole thing was shut down by a crazy storm. The place was basically flooded, but Harvey Sutherland still managed to pull off a last-minute tent DJ set until 3am….
“We dressed up as emo-goths for our Naarm show with matching fishnets. It was Halloween and we wanted to embrace the darkness.”
Find Hobson Bay’s Coast Guard’s Tidal Wave tour dates here. Get full details about the B.East’s Dec 3-4 flood fundraiser here. Donate to the floods here.
