“My purpose is to lift people higher,” says Adam Thompson.
Throughout his career he has done just that. His efforts with remote Aboriginal and India community music programs MusoMagic Outback Tracks has seen him and his wife support the uplifting of community through music, but through his band Chocolate Starfish, he has uplifted audiences’ spirits through song.
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As he enters his sixth decade on this earth as celebrated in Italy, Thompson finds himself at another milestone – thirty years of Chocolate Starfish as celebrated on the road.
“Having the shows to look forward to is great because celebrating thirty years is pretty special,” explains Thompson.
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“I feel proud of what we have done but I’m always looking to raise the bar and I think that is the cornerstone as to why the band is probably in a better position than it was in the 90’s because we have made some really good decisions and we’ve grown a lot as individuals and collectively. That’s the reason why our crowds are probably bigger and more loyal than they have ever been, which is pretty special. It’s a great place to be in.”
Chocolate Starfish have been responsible for providing crowds across the country with infectiously optimistic, forget-about-your-worries-for-an-hour sets since their 90’s inception, and providing songs to be belted with the utmost chest. In what is unique to the band, they have taken multiple artists hits and cemented them as their own including Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain’, 4 Non Blondes ‘What’s Up’ and Meatloaf’s Bat Out Of Hell.
They’ve done it again with a new single ‘Candyman Blues’; a daring mashup of the whimsical ‘The Candyman’ from Charlie and The Chocolate factory meets the swamp sludge of The Doors ‘Roadhouse Blues’.
“Funnily enough back in Geelong back in I want to say 1984 when I was at Deakin Uni, I played Willy Wonka in the Geelong Repertory Societies Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and then 30 something years on I call myself Mr Chocolate as part of the Chocolate Starfish, so we started playing around with that song in its original format as Sammy Davis Jr would have done in the movie and it was good but it wasn’t great,” Thompson explains.
“It’s a little bit like the approach we did with ‘You’re So Vain’ the approach we did with 4 Non Blondes ‘What’s Up’ off the last album – it just wasn’t right until that magic appeared and I was literally six months ago driving through the outback and ‘Roadhouse Blues’ came on and I don’t know why but the universe said “sing ‘The Candyman’ over that riff” and I went “oh my god, that’s it. That’s the mash up”. Sometimes these things come from greater places than all of us. It’s one of those things like ‘You’re So Vain’ because it is so unique, I think it will have a long long life.”
To be an original band but take on numerous covers that seamlessly add to a bands identity is rare, but the band surprisingly don’t employ a formula when it comes to song absorption, nor do they constantly seek new covers to onboard.
“They have to have something we feel that we can not only deliver but also deliver it in a better way with the integrity of our band. That definitely is something we discuss a lot. There’s no formula, I just think we’re open to the possibilities. We don’t pigeonhole ourselves,” says Thompson.
Importantly however, the songs need to translate to the live setting, the space in which Chocolate Starfish thrive.
“Live is where we are most known so I think we’re only starting to get our recordings where they should be, which is kind of funny because a lot of bands are the opposite of that,” he explains.
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“It’s almost like we need to do a song for six months on the road and then it becomes ready for recording. Because of the way that we work and the energy that we put out, sometimes the tempos change and the feel changes and that’s kind of what happened with ‘Candyman’. We just have to live with it for a while and feel it out. It’s like wearing a new pair of shoes.”
Audiences across Australia will be able to see the way the song sinks into their live set on their upcoming The Best of Everything 30 years of Chocolate Starfish Tour. Supporting themselves with a thirty minute acoustic set of songs that typically wouldn’t make their live performance, the celebratory event is set to include bold outfits naturally with an interval outfit change, and the engagement of a local choir for a special, heartfelt ‘Like A Virgin’-esque gospel version of ‘Motherless’.
The shows are bound to lift audiences across the country higher, further accomplishing Adam Thompson’s life purpose.
The 30 year Chocolate Starfish tour has been running from 20 July and will wrap 12 October. Tickets to the tour can be purchased here.
