Kingswood

“We’ve been together for a long time and to be honest we have much bigger goals than where we are now. So we just keep our heads down and keep working hard, we’re not sort of saying ‘Oh how good is this?’ we have a long way to go,” says singer Fergus Linacre on their current popularity.
There’s no denying the bands seemingly sudden rise to fame, but truth is the band members have been playing in Kingswood for around six years now, despite their popularity in the last two years. And the fame is something the band have fully come to embrace, with completely no ego in sight.
“The band is much more fun. Say we have two weeks off and we all come home, we don’t really know what to do with ourselves. We usually end up going to a café with each other,” he says.
“You’d think we’d be sick of each other but we’re not. We’ve been together for so long now that that’s just kind of what we do and we’re very used to it.”
Another thing the band have become known for across various venues is their unusual request of a garden gnome on their rider. With leaks of bands outrageous requests a gnome is rather innocent, and it actually serves a specific purpose, as Fergus tells me.
“[The rider] says ‘We need one garden gnome to lift the spirits of the band and crew in dark times’. Most of the time it does, which is wonderful, and if I turn my head left in my bedroom I can see a handful on a shelf, which is a bit creepy because I don’t really like them but often I end up keeping them in my room –but they’re good fun,” Fergus says.
“We also have a surprise which can be absolutely anything. Most often Kinder Surprises, soometimes it’s even a piñata. It’s a good way to get a vibe for the venue, if it’s a really good crew of people and they’re all happy and they get a rider they go, ‘Oh that’s fun they want a surprise’ and say ‘What should we do?’ But sometimes they hand the rider back and they just put a line through it like we’re not getting you a garden gnome and we’re not getting you a surprise.”
It’s a sweet request but it really brings home that Kingswood aren’t a band of egos, they simply love their trade and bring as much fun to what they do as they can. See any live performance from the four-piece and it’s also instantly clear.
For Fergus maybe it stems from his early days in Sweet Garlic with Alex Laksa, or possibly the inspiration Rob Hirst gave him after a Midnight Oil gig when he was 15, either way the passion is still there years later and serves as the constant drive for what they do.
“I think we sort of just kept playing and then the band became more popular and it got to the point where we couldn’t work so much and it took off, but I’ve always wanted for this sort of thing and I guess I just never believed that it would happen – it just kind of came along and we’ve worked really hard,” he says.
Something that’s been a little bit harder for the band to accept is the constant exclamation that Kingswood have revived the Australian rock scene, something Fergus thought was far from dead before them.
“There’s always been rock n’ roll bands – good ones and bad ones. But I don’t think we’re responsible for any kind of revival. Look at Violent Soho and before them Wolfmother, I don’t think it’s ever been dead so it’s just good to be a part of it,” Fergus says.
“There’s definitely less of it than I guess there was 10 years ago, but that’s because people are experimenting and there’s new ways to make music – I think that’s exciting. Rock n’ roll isn’t going anywhere and the more genres there are the more interesting things will be.”
Whether they revived the scene or not, Kingswood will certainly remain a linchpin in the genre for a long time to come. Hopefully inspiring future emerging bands to get into good ol’ Australian rock.
When & Where: Torquay Hotel, Torquay – April 5
Written by Amanda Sherring