Kingswood

For years now we have heard various people preach that true rock and roll is dead, but whoever decided that forgot to tell the boys of Kingswood. The Melbourne locals are bringing their own brand of rock to stages across the country, unfazed by the genre’s current reputation and growing a legion of fans in the process.
“It’s just one of those things. You’ve got to do what you feel is you and you’ve got to make music you want to make,” explains lead guitarist Alex Laska. “We are definitely a lot more open now to experimentation and diversity when it comes to our sound and trying to make rock and roll kind of modern. I think rock and roll is a lot more open than it used to be, which is a good thing.”
Over the past two years, the band has not only developed their sound but also their knowledge of what it takes to be a big rock band by playing some massive support slots for Grinspoon and Aerosmith.
“You do learn about the professionalism of the whole thing and the grand scale that things can get to and how you can operate when you get to that level. It’s something to aspire to,” says Laska of their Aerosmith show. “When we toured with Grinspoon that was a great learning process of how to be a professional Australian touring band and how to put it together – that was really a great learning curve.”
Last month saw the release of Kingswood’s debut album Microscopic Wars featuring singles ‘Ohio’ and ‘She’s My Baby’; but there are still plenty of great tracks to discover, such as the slow and sexy ‘I Can Feel That You Don’t Love Me’, where we see Alex take over frontman duties.
“It’s great as a bit of an energy shift in a set. We can pop it in when we need to and it can change the energy of everything,” says Laska. “It’s got its own little uniqueness that’s cool and fun and sexy, so I enjoy it from that perspective, but it’s still quite daunting to be kind of the frontman for that song.”
Kingswood are halfway through an Australian tour to promote the album, playing plenty of rural and suburban gigs alike and seeing the rewards of all of their previous touring and hard work.
“We’ve been pretty good in terms of approaching regional areas when it comes to touring in the past couple of years,” says Laska. “It was just really lovely this time around putting on these shows in rural towns and it’s just like the hard work is paying off now. When you go out to these places and you play for 15-20 people and you drive like ten hours to get there, it can be a little bit trying, but when you return and you see the fruits of all that work are paying off it’s awesome.”
If you’re into blistering guitar solos, excellent harmonies and a band that isn’t afraid to have some fun with their audience, then you need to get along to a Kingswood gig – described, tongue in cheek, by Alex as “the greatest rock and roll show in the entire world”. The entire world might be at this moment a little bit of a stretch, but you’d certainly be hard-pressed to find a better rock show within 100km of any Kingswood gig.
When&Where: The Karova, Ballarat – October 17; Torquay Hotel, Torquay – October 18; and The Loft, Warrnambool – October 23
By Zach Broadhurst