It’s been far from a quiet couple of years for the members of The Exploders, but various projects and living in different states has meant a two-year break from playing with each other – a break that will soon end at this year’s Kennedys Creek Music Festival.
“We released our last album Orche.Stratros.Pheric a few years ago and we played gigs in September of 2012, but we haven’t done anything since then, so it will be good to get back together,” says bassist Paul Doery. “They [the festival] have been asking us to play for years. We haven’t really been able to the last few times for various reasons, but this year we could so we jumped at the opportunity. It’s the kind of vibe that will suit us. It’s a small festival out in the country and a lot of the people from the area are into us. They used to come to our gigs when we played in Warrnambool and Geelong, so it should be a good show.”
With their two-year absence The Exploders are a prime example of just how hard it can be to keep a band together, even when you’re all making great music – especially when you all have other projects on the go.
“Basically we all just have other stuff going on and because two of the guys live in WA we really had to string a few shows together to make it worth our while,” explains Doery. “Also, we ended up not having a booking agent or a manager anymore and we had to organise all the stuff ourselves, which makes it a bit tougher, too.
“The thing that people don’t consider, and you always hear people say ‘we don’t know why you’re not bigger or more popular’, but there is a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes that people don’t really consider. As well as being good you’ve got to be surrounded with people who know what they are doing and really believe in you and have a lot of things go your way.”
For now the band is back together and whether it is a one-off or the beginning or more regular shows is still up in the air. But for Doery it’s just exciting to be back playing with some great mates.
“We are all good mates and we get along really well,” says Doery. “Obviously with the other guys from WA we don’t get to see each other very often, so it’s exciting. We’ll just do this and see how it goes and just assess from there, but it would be good to get back together and play shows a bit more regularly instead of two years apart, so hopefully that can happen.”
And for fans that have patiently waited for the next Exploders show Doery has given some insight into what you can expect at their upcoming gig saying, “Seeing as we haven’t played in two years we are pretty keen and we are going to put on a pretty high energy show. We’ll play a bunch of songs off the first album that people are probably more familiar with and then ones off the most recent album, and then sneak in a few songs off the second album as well.”
When&Where: Kennedys Creek Music Festival – October 25 to 26
Written by Zach Broadhurst