“Err, yeah, it’s a song. A single,” he stumbles, laughing, when asked about the new single. “It’s called White Dress. I don’t know what else to say!” he laughs again. “Yeah, you know, it’s a…song.”
It’s kind of raw and bluesy and stripped back, yeah? “Nah, I wouldn’t have described it as ‘raw and bluesy and stripped back’,” he contradicts, but again in a good-natured manner. “Well, it’s just a rock’n’roll song man, I think, at the end of the day. There’s some elements of bluesiness to it; I don’t think we’ll be able to escape that any time soon. It’s a little bit of a departure for us, it’s kind of indicative of the headspace we were in when we were writing the new album.”
And apparently the new single and this attitude gives a hint as to the direction their next album, which will be their second, on top of three other EP releases. “I think it definitely does,” he agrees emphatically. “I think it makes a statement, I think we’ve settled into our own skin on this one, you know what I mean? The first album was like any first album. I think a lot of bands record [their first] album and just throw shit at a wall and see what sticks!” he says. “You’re just playing your set that you play live, whereas this time it was just fun to record an album, in inverted commas we ‘made an album’. I think it’s a lot more ‘us’, if that makes any sense!
“I guess we realised that we’re just another rock band, at the end of the day,” he continues. “We kind of turned from an ‘act’ into a ‘band’. We realised that [while] we like the blues and we like country and all that kind of stuff, we weren’t a blues or a country band, we’re just a rock band. Maybe wearing a country band or a blues band’s skin, but I think this time we just went, ‘Let’s just play some music, let’s play some rock’n’roll’.”
Unfortunately fans have a while to wait before the full album is released, but the band have quite a few things in store in the meantime, a video, another single and an extensive tour in support of White Dress.
“We’ve got a few more months to wait [for the album], unfortunately,” he informs us. “It’s not out ’til March next year. But we’ve got a video for White Dress coming out real soon, and then hopefully we’ll have another single before the ‘album drops’, as they say.”
And as for the tour? “We’ve been off the road for a while so we’re getting back into the swing of things now. That’s what it’s all about, that’s the reason we started. It’s just what we like doing the most. I think we’re pretty much booked up ’til the end of the year,” he says.
As part of their tour, The Snowdroppers play this the Zombie Shuffle this weekend. For the uninitiated, the Zombie Shuffle is a large gathering of people who dress as the living dead and march through urban streets to raise awareness for causes such as world hunger. It happens in cities across the world, and this year, Melbourne’s event culminates in a big show at The Corner Hotel.
“You know what, I don’t really know!” he laughs when asked how their upcoming appearance at Zombie Shuffle came to fruition. “We got asked to do the show and we said, ‘Yes’!” he says.
“Well, it’s actually a subject that’s really close to our hearts,” he jests, “our bass player’s younger son is actually a zombie, and we wanted to do something that gave back to the zombie community, like some kind of ‘Live Aid’ thing!” he jokes.
BY ROD WHITFIELD
