Speaking of abroad, in 2010 SixFtHick were the subject of a documentary, 6ft Hick: Notes From the Underground, that followed the quintet around Europe for three months, showing the band in all their glory and ingloriousness.
Chatting to Beat from sunny Queensland is the band’s vocalist Geoff Corbett, who shares vocals with his much taller brother Ben (the six foot hick). Corbett discusses what it took to let a camera crew follow him and his band mates around for a couple of months.
“We were all into the idea because the production company pitched the idea and part of the funding paid for our airfares,” Corbett says.
He goes on to admit that not even one of Australia’s most credible bands can escape the Faustian prophecy that ‘there’s no such thing as a free lunch’. “It was probably harder than what we originally anticipated because we were getting followed around 24/7 having a camera stuffed in our faces. After a while it can really piss you off, particularly when you’ve been on a bender for 20 days and all you want to do is to be able to go and take a piss without someone looking at you.”
But the documentary did have its advantages beyond the free flights, and that was in giving the band a talking point beyond their live shows considering that their last major release was the On the Rocks album in 2008. However, Corbett is excited to announce that album number five will, hopefully, be out in the first half of next year.
“We’re going back in the studio next year to do another album […] because we haven’t put anything out for a long time. We want to make another record because it crept up on us that it’d been so long since we’d put anything out… The band as a whole came to the decision that ‘we don’t want to be that band of old guys that play these songs from 15 years ago, so we have to do some new shit!’”
Corbett explains that over their 19 years together, the band’s songwriting process has changed due the band members’ side projects along the way – the most notable being Gentle Ben and His Sensitive Side and The Tremors.
“Everyone, without exception, has had other bands and very different bands in style to SixFtHick, so that has influenced the process when we come together to write, which is kinda cool. I like that our other bands are not like SixFtHick; it’s what makes doing another record so interesting. We haven’t been sitting on our arses for the last five years; we’ve been doing other projects, so now we can draw upon those experiences to go into the new SixFtHick record,” he explains.
Finally, Corbett had this to say about their upcoming shows at The Day By the Green event and The Tote: “When we first started coming down to Melbourne 19 years ago, St Kilda was where we played. I mean, for a few years we probably never ventured out of St Kilda, so that was the main reason we wanted to play Day By The Green – what can be more old school St Kilda than the bowlo?
“And The Tote. What can you say about that venue that hasn’t been said? We love playing there because it’s everything that’s good about the Melbourne rock scene!”
BY DENVER MAXX
