Ten years ago, KINGSWOOD firmly staked their claim as one of Australia’s finest new voices in rock music with the release of a dynamic and electrifying debut album, MICROSCOPIC WARS. Following a string of successful EP releases that helped define the band’s early sound, generating momentum and fan bases around Australia. When it came time for Kingswood to deliver their first studio album, they went big. Drenched in rhythm, carried by the band’s strong chemistry, bolstered by a confidence and swagger felt between songwriters Alex Laska and Fergus Linacre, MICROSCOPIC WARS heralded not just an exciting jump off point for the Melbourne group; for fans, it was the start of a journey with a band whose ambition would see them navigate a diverse range of music influences to follow.
To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the MICRO WARS era, Kingswood are taking their ARIA Award nominated record around the country this August. Kingswood are excited to breathe new life into this beloved material, with a live show set to impress and show love to the music, but also to the fans – longtime and new alike – who have been part of the journey. Fergus Linacre talks to Hi Fi Way about the tour and tenth anniversary of Microscopic Wars.
There must be that real sense of anticipation with this a upcoming tour to celebrate ten years of Microscopic Wars?
Absolutely! There has been a lot of that. There’s been a lot of reminiscing and I guess reflection with the original Kingswood WhatsApp group. Someone posted an old video of us playing Ohio in some dingy little bar and it was great fun. It’s been really nice and we’ve been touring post Covid on our tour bus going pub to pub. Our mission has been to play all around Australia regionally in little rooms and but also going back into the big rooms and the big cities is. It is going to be fun. It’s been a while since we have done a tour like this.
When you look back ten years, can you believe how much has actually happened in that time?
It is a little bit of a blur, but we feel incredibly lucky and privileged to be in our position and to still be playing music, especially in this climate. Music is a funny one where you know there’s a high drop off of people who get into the music industry and at some point they stop and I think that’s the industry in one way not supporting longevity of bands, but also it’s a very difficult thing to do amongst other big life things like having family and security and all those kind of things. To be in a position where we maintain it is pretty special.
Have you gotten a little nostalgic preparing for this tour?
Yeah, we’ve still got our old posters in our studio around with old photos and things like that. So, you don’t notice them every day, but now it’s like going through a little gallery and you’re looking back and that’s when we did the AC/DC tour, which is what we did after the first Microscopic Wars tour. There was all the members and experiences around that. One of our original sound guys is coming back to do this tour with. All the friends and relationships that we made in that period, we’re still quite close with everyone, so it’s been great and this is going to get better and better. We’re going to have a nice big tenth anniversary dinner and the tour is going to be amazing, we’ve the Delta Riggs, who were coming up with us at that time as well. It’s been really nice. We haven’t done anything like this, so it’s a new experience to celebrate the record and then old era..
What’s your favourite story or memory when the album came out?
It was a crazy thing to do, we were inspired by how adventurous and ambitious we were at that stage. We worked our arses off and saved up enough money to go to Nashville and record with Vance Powell, who is a producer that made Blunderbuss (Jack White), we love that record. We wanted our record to sound like that. We went to Blackbird Studio, which is where some of our favourite records were made. So, we went to the extreme of how to make an album for our first one, which is kind of a crazy thing to do. We didn’t have a record deal or anything like that. We made the record ourselves and then got a record deal after it, so we did it off our own back and met Eddie Spear who engineered that record and has worked on every record since. We’ve been back to Nashville many, many times, it’s kind of our second home. We went there and we got delayed by a few weeks because I think we were booked into the studio in advance, but then the Arctic Monkeys bumped us.
They were coming into town and wanted to take a week with Vance and let them do their thing. So, we had a week of just craziness in Nashville. This was kind of a little bit unique to be Australian in Nashville, now there’s a billion of us there, but at the time people would be like, oh, you’re going to Nashville, it was very exciting to say and a really incredible experience making the record. We wanted to do it live to tape like Blunderbuss, but we weren’t good enough and he told us that. He said no one is, just Jack and his crew. So yeah, it was a great learning experience and all the albums really special to us. I’ve been learning parts and piano parts and things like that. So, it’s been very nostalgic and even something like Eye Of The Storm, which was a really emotional, personal song for me at that time about a break up. All those feelings come back as I’m reliving that song again.
How have the rehearsals been relearning some of these songs? Are you looking to play the album start to end?
Yeah, we are. We’re going to do it start to finish and then we’re going to play other era appropriate tunes, all the heavy stuff. We’re not going to play Big City or Golden. We’re going to play the album in full and a bunch of other songs that suit that vibe. That always changes our genre a little bit and experiments and goes with whatever inspiration is taking over our lives at the time and we have been open about that. We do understand we have our we have our frog stompers and so we’re going to really honour them and play a set that takes them back to that time.
We are learning the songs again. We haven’t rehearsed as a band yet we’ll do that a bit later, but we’ve been working individually at learning all the parts so that when we get there, we’re ready to go in a rehearsal sense. I was talking with Al the other day who said we’re so much better musicians, singers, performers than were then, like drastically better musicians. He said, these people that are coming to the show, they’re going to get the best version of that album that they’ve ever heard and that’s inspiring for us as well to make it really special with all the musicianship and all the parts. We’ve all worked really hard on it to make sure that we honour the record.
Is there going to be a vinyl release to commemorate the occasion?
There certainly is going to be a remastered version of the album available on vinyl, which you will be able to get at the show. There’s been a lot of technological advances since then, so this addition is pretty exciting.
Interview By Rob Lyon
Catch Kingswood on the following dates, tickets from Destroy All Lines…
