Towns

Off the back of their killer new release Safe To Stay, charming Adelaide duo TOWNS are stoked to announce they have taken out the triple j Unearthed competition win to perform at this year’s Spin Off festival.

Taking place on Friday July 19 at the Adelaide Showgrounds, Spin Off sees TOWNS join a knockout lineup of this year’s Splendour In The Grass royalty, including Childish Gambino, Catfish & the Bottlemen, Ballpark Music, Ocean Alley, Wolf Alice, Hockey Dad, Mallrat, Ruby Fields, Kwame, and Kian.

The two best mates have just returned home from their extensive national tour supporting Sydney rockers Dear Seattle, and promise to deliver more new music in the coming months. Aston Valladares speaks to Hi Fi Way about playing Spin Off.

Congratulations, it must be really awesome to catch a big break like this by playing Spin Off here in Adelaide?
Dude, I know, it was so insane. I think we saw that line-up and we saw that there was like an Unearthed thing open and we sort of brushed it off like that’s huge, that’s not something for us. I mean, we got the call, I think the shock from the call is still lingering. I’m still on a high from it, that hasn’t gone away, yet. So, yeah, I’m so excited.

Is that the sort of thing you wish you’d captured in a bottle so you could unleash that feeling again?
It’s one of those emotions you don’t get every day or every month. It’s probably the first show in a long time that I’ve been genuinely nervous for, so that’s going to be fun. We’ll see how we go.

Is it hard keeping a lid on the excitement?
Yeah, for sure, every time someone says congratulations, I’m a bit like, “Oh, wow, yeah, shit, that’s so cool.” It’s one of those things that I guess you have to push yourself back to when you’re like fifteen years old going to these things and only dreaming of it, and then putting yourself back in the shoes of maybe nine years ago and being like, “wow, this is actually like so sick.”

Absolutely, I’ve had a bit of listen on Spotify and I’m thinking to myself, “where have you guys been hiding?” There’s definitely a wow factor about your band.
Thank you so much. That’s honestly so mind blowing to hear, especially starting out as just a two piece and feeling not like a joke, but obviously more inadequate as a live band compared to your big four, or even three pieces in a way. We always try and put in one hundred and ten percent effort into everything we do. So, I’m glad it’s giving someone a wow factor. That’s so sick.

How did the whole process of applying for Spin Off work?
It’s super weird how it works. They pretty much just do it by region. They’re looking at all the Adelaide artists on Spotify on Triple J and I think you can only win an Unearthed competition once. Obviously, there are so many amazing Adelaide artists that have had so many opportunities from there we’re hoping that by having our song up there we’d have a chance. Funnily enough enough we got a call. We got told to have our phones out from our manager and we got a call and that was it. There was nothing that physically we did besides just releasing the song on their website.

Do you start setting some goals for yourself or do you just try and let yourself enjoy the moment?
Dan and I both have a list in our phones with big volleyball like end goals sort of dreams. Just little things that we’ve wanted to tick off as musicians since we started playing. Just little things like touring America as a small example. This definitely is going to be one of those things that’s a big goal for us and we’re so thankful. To be having that many people there that early to see this band shoved up in their faces hopefully it will do more good than bad.

Would you approach a festival any different than a show that you might play in a small club?
We had this exact discussion. Do we treat it like a little one hundred capacity rooms that we normally play, just do our thing where we talk, we play our songs and we mess around? It’s probably about seventy percent, no not even, it’s fifty percent music Dan and I talking about our days with everyone and getting them involved. It will be interesting to try that on a huge scale like this and see how loud we can make people and just sort of get them involved as much as we can. That would probably be our goal for this show anyway making sure that we just do what we usually do and hoping for that same reaction.

So maybe just hold off on the pyrotechnics and the laser light show for now?
That’s probably next week!

Do you get to have any crazy rider requests?
I think we had a rider once when we first started, and we never got any of it. Obviously, we had PlayStation on there, and we wanted six bottles of red cordial and weird things like that. We’ve toned it down now to literally to hey if we can have some rum and maybe some crackers, we’ll be happy. We’ll be happy with anything, really. It’s always super nice that riders even exist for bands. I think that’s just crazy that you get free stuff.

Are your mums and dads pretty stoked as well and they’ll be there to see the big moment?
I think so. They said congrats and I think that was the end of it. My parents actually haven’t even seen me play and I don’t know if they understand the size Spin Off or even how many people are actually going to be there. I prefer them not to come and then grow as much as we can and then finally show them when we’re at the pinnacle of what we can do and then have them there. That would be my dream.

Interview By Rob Lyon

Catch Towns at Spin Off Festival this Friday at 11am on the Main Stage. Grab a ticket if there’s any left from Moshtix…