Sal Kimber and The Rollin’ Wheel
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Sal Kimber and The Rollin’ Wheel

Beechworth’s Madman’s Gully, located in the stunning rolling hills of the former Mayday Hills Lunatic Asylum, will echo with the hard driving beats of Australia’s favourite 1990s stoner-rockers Tumbleweed as part of Beechworth Music Festival on Saturday 26 January. Alongside Tumbleweed, North-East Victorian alt-country five-piece Sal Kimber and The Rollin’ Wheel also join the lineup. We chat to Sal ahead of the festival.

Hi Sal, thanks for chatting! Congrats on the upcoming Beechworth Music Festival! Have you ever played that one before?
No, never! I’ve played Yackandandah Folk Festival and heaps of festivals around North East, but we’ve always been away, so this is the first year it’s lined up with dates which is good. I love Beechworth and we play Beechworth whenever we release an album or something; we always play The Beechworth Town Hall. We really love the Beechworth mob, they dance, they always dance and they’re really fun. I’m excited about playing this one. I really love the idea of a festival with just one stage, a bit like Meredith Music Festival. There’s one stage and people don’t need to move. They can just stay and have a beer and some food and enjoy the music.

Is there anyone else on the lineup you’re looking forward to seeing?
I’m actually excited about seeing Tumbleweed. I loved them when I was younger. When I saw them on the lineup, I was like ‘wow, I didn’t even know they still played together.’ But I’m so excited about that. I grew up in a small little country town and the only bands that really came out our way were grunge bands, or triple j would do these little tours like The Push tours and stuff. I really loved grunge music when I was young. I think we’re playing just before them actually. We can be quite rocky, but we’re aware of the different genres going on with us playing just before them. But it will work and I can’t wait!

Will you be heading up for the two days or just the one?
I think that the Friday there are quite a few bands that are playing that are from North East Victoria that I’ve actually mentored so I definitely would like to go and watch them play and make a weekend of it. So the band that I’m in is a little incestuous, so my sister is in the band, and the bass player is dating my sister, things like that, so often when we play festivals gone are the days where we stay out to midnight because we’ve all got kids now. If we’re at a festival, we make the most of it and try to catch all the other bands.

Tell us more about the band, has it being the same lineup the whole time?
It’s kind of changed a bit, mostly because everyone in the band are also in other bands as well. So our drummer, she spends about six months of her year in North America touring with another band. Hence why we call it the Rolling Wheel. We try and play with her when I can (she’ll be playing with us at Beechworth Music Festival), but sometimes it just changes. My sister who plays keys, she’s been in the band forever but she had a baby last year and she hasn’t played for a while. The band is always pretty solid, but if people are touring, we just swap in a bass player or anything. It kind of makes it doable for me. A lot of my friends who are in bands got together like 10 years ago and have either broken up, but in this band we keep it going, and if someone’s away, we just get in a fill in and just make it work.

How do you find regional Victoria comparing to say places like Melbourne in terms of what it does for you musically?
One thing about regional Victoria is people still tend to buy albums which is awesome. In Melbourne, they will still buy albums, but I think it’s because people are quite saturated with music. They have music every night of the week. We have a bit of a loyal following in both Melbourne and regional Victoria. The last couple of years have been our quietest, but before that we went pretty hard for a while there, touring all the time and really gaining a loyal base of people who would come to our shows. We do love playing regional Victoria though, people will always dance. We play a lot of hall shows, and it’s kind of that mentality that bands don’t always come so I might as well get on the dance floor and make the most of it.

Are you working on anything at the moment?
So I’ve been playing some duo shows with my friend Tully. He plays lead guitar in the Rolling Wheel and he has the most beautiful voice and he’s a songwriter so we’ve been writing quite a few songs together and working on putting out a little EP together. I’ve also been writing for our next Rolling Wheel album, we’ll be recording in the winter. I think we put our last album out two to three years ago so we’re definitely due for another album. One of my favourite things to do is record. It’s just a bit expensive and a bit of a process but I do love it, coming up with songs and then seeing them come to life on a whole palette when you can add drums and layers of instruments. And also we work with some pretty beautiful producers so they always have some cool perspectives.

What can people expect to hear at your performance this month?
We’ve put out three albums and an EP that was ages ago so we have a bit of an archive but we tend to play a mix from all. It depends where we are, for Beechworth Music Festival it will be a little bit more of a dancey crowd so we’ll play our more upbeat songs. When I play with the duo, it’s a lot of ballads and stories, they are very different shows but I kind of like that.

Besides the album, any plans for the rest of the year?
This summer is looking pretty busy, we’ve got Port Fairy Folkie and a couple of other festivals, right up until April/May and then we’ll bunker down and we’ll record. All the other times we’ve recorded we’ve done it in Melbourne, but we’re going to record in country Victoria this year and do more of a live take vibe so we’ll rent a big old shack that out here near Beechworth and record there. We’re looking forward to that process too!

For people heading to Beechworth for the long weekend, is there anywhere around the area that they should definitely check out?
I would definitely go to the Beechworth Gorge, it’s so beautiful. We’re sort of spoilt for choice around there. There’s an amazing amount of new mountain bike tracks that have been put in which is really amazing, and there’s a new pontoon at Lake Sambell in Beechworth which is cool too! If you’ve got time, get on the Ovens River and have a kayak.

The Beechworth Music Festival takes place on 25-26 January 2019. Tickets available from www.beechworthmusicfestival.com