Australia’s favourite country group (and sisters), The McClymonts are returning to the road after a year off and they’re ready to kick it up in style on the ‘Like We Used To’ National Tour, taking in NSW, VIC, QLD and SA to showcase songs from their best-selling new album ‘Endless’ and all the favourites from their previous four albums. We chat to Sam McClymont.
Hey Sam, thanks for chatting! Your band has just embarked on the huge national tour and there’s a lot going on it. First off, what can you tell us about your latest album, Endless?
Well we released the last album, Endless, last January in 2017 and we did go out on national tour for that then but we had to cut it short because I had my baby boy last year. When we released the first single off the album, ‘Like We Used To’ in March this year, we thought we’d give the album the tour it deserved and hit the places that we didn’t get to do on the Endless Tour.
You’ve been performing together for a number of years now, but when did you all get into playing music?
Well Brooke, the eldest (she’s five years older than Molly and I), she always sang and we don’t know where it came from because our parents don’t play music at all. A family friend heard her singing in the bedroom and told our mum to enter her into the local talent quest. It kicked off from there because she got second, and she started playing at the Country Music Club and Molly and I got dragged in from there. Somehow we were able to all do it, and then we were doing group sections and went from there…
Coming out of NSW, can you tell us a little about the country music scene that you were brought up in and how that compares with the various other places you’ve performed?
We found country music was everywhere growing up. There was a huge country music club scene and all these towns have a lot of country music comps which don’t really exist any more. We used to go along to Grafton (where we grew up) every week, and there’d be a band there and you’d give them your sheet music and they’d play along. All these clubs started their own talent quests so you go around and meet all the people playing country music; we were lucky we could go around and do that. Nowadays those talent quests are slowing down a little bit and for a while country music wasn’t on the scene so much. In the last little while though, I think we’ve seen a resurgence of people like Keith Urban and Taylor Swift and Kasey Chambers which has really made country cool again (we never forgot it was cool though).
You’ve made the ARIA country charts with three of your hit singles which is a huge accomplishment; did you ever think you’d reach this sort of level of success with your music?
No, We’d always hoped our albums would do well on the charts but when our second album debuted at number 2 on the charts and then endless debuted at number 3, it was pretty amazing because were just concentrating on the country chart in our own little bubble but to know that so much of Australia is behind your music and like what you do to get you on the chart is really amazing. We’re fifth album in and we were really blown away that after 12 years people still like hat we do and come to our shows and support the music.
When & Where: Gateway Hotel, Geelong – August 24 & The Palms at Crown, Melbourne – August 25.