The Mud Peas may not be a local band that you are familiar with, but after gathering a developing fan base due to their fun live performances riddled with unique blues rock numbers, they may definitely be popping up on your radar at some stage very soon. I caught up with singer and rhythm guitarist Aaron Salta to chat about touring and all things in the busy lives of The Mud Peas.
“We played in King Island, which is just off Tasmania, and we also played at a festival and another couple of gigs around there – it was a really good experience,” Aaron reflects.
“ We played three gigs in the week and were just living at a local’s house, that would be one of the ones that comes to memory but we always have a story about when we go away.”
And stories are the most important thing to the Mud Peas, who claim to be “doing it for fun and good times”. And I am sure many fun times have been had, with the band members being long time good friends. And part of Aaron’s appreciation for the blues came from his friendship with fellow band member Troy Love.
“I’m not a huge blues musician. Troy is obsessed with the blues, and I have been jamming with him since I was about 15. He taught me a fair bit about how to play and then I got into my own thing and then about three years ago started jamming again,” he says.
“He loves his blues, I like it too but I have a huge range – I like a lot of different things. Troy is heavily influenced by blues and is such a great guitarist. That being said, blues rock covers a lot of genres, I would say AC/DC are almost blues rock, they stick to a 12 bar, but really there is blues in every genre – even a little bit in metal. I think it all comes down a lot to blues I feel.”
Aaron also reflected on the therapeutic process of writing lyrics, “a lot can be said through writing and I feel like lyrics are a big part of a song. If a song doesn’t have lyrics is it even a song?” He laughs before continuing. “I would have started writing in probably my early 20s. I was playing in a cover band and then I quit them and I took off and went to Queensland and was living out of my car and was living really rough. I found myself in really hard conditions so I started writing a lot. It probably wasn’t ideal for the mind but I wrote like 60 songs in a year and that was sort of how I got into writing and I still just write.”
Of all the songs he’s written, Aaron reflect on a track called ‘Fender Boogie’ as being a particularly sentimental one for him.
“There’s a lyric in it that, ‘Don’t you see that life is what you make it, but I will never preach my self content’, it’s just all about living your own life. I like to live my own life – I don’t really like being told what to do. Criticising is cool and stuff but you have to live your own life. And that song is about people telling you how to live your life, and that can be helpful but you have to decide for yourself – it’s about making a statement,” he says.
The lads have a busy year ahead of them hoping to make their way into a recording studio and playing as many gigs as possible, stopping by the Royal Mail Hotel in Birregurra in a few weeks.
“We try to get out of Geelong to play gigs; we find the crowd enjoy it more,” he says with a laugh.
“We really enjoy playing country gigs – Birregurra is a really good one. We have played there once, but we played in Deans Marsh and it was a bit quite the first time, and then a bit more the second time and then a bit more again the third time and then we played at Birregurra and it seems like all the Deans Marsh crew come down which was awesome – we are really keen to head back there.”
Written by Alex Callan
When & Where: Royal Mail Hotel, Birregurra – May 14
