Words by Tracey Moyle Music Maven
With a massive hit of nostalgia, Australian rock icons Eskimo Joe have released their first new music in five years with their reminiscent new track, The First Time.
Eskimo Joe led the charge in the resurgence of the Australian music scene of the ‘90s, becoming one of the nation’s most beloved bands. If you are over 40 and hold heart-swelling memories of the festivals of that time and the 2000s, you will have undoubtedly seen Eskimo Joe in their live festival glory. Their songs are like time capsules for many, holding memories of where you were, what you were doing, who you were dating, and when ‘that song’ was out on the radio waves.
This latest track is a nostalgic look back at those days, remembering all the first times. Not only is it a brilliant track, the band has also captured that quintessential Eskimo Joe sound and feeling, giving fans something that feels so familiar yet so excitingly new.
The band’s solid friendship and love of their music have kept them alive even though there were a few ‘gap years’ in their release schedule, with each of them having their own individual projects to work on.
Tracey Moyle had a good chat with lead vocalist/guitarist Kav Temperley about the inspiration behind the new track, their upcoming and incredibly unique acoustic national tour, playing to their fans at small local shows and much more.
Congratulations on the new single, The First Time. You’ve brought fans a track that is quintessential Eskimo Joe. After all these years, you haven’t lost who you are with your unique signature sound, but you have kept that sound fresh and new. What do you think is the secret that the band has embraced to not lose who you are after so many years of making music?
Well, I think the secret is that we had a bit of a sabbatical in between. We’ve been lucky enough to be a band for a few years now and for a long time we were in this two-year cycle where we’d write a record, we record a record, we’d tour that record. Then we got up to about 2013 and realised that we just needed a bit of a break from each other and from everything. So we went off and did some other projects and bits and pieces, and when we came back together, it was, funnily enough, during the whole covid thing. I don’t know why we decided that was a great time to start releasing music again, but we did.
The funny thing about that is that we did two songs over that peak covid time, but it was a weird one because we were writing and recording these songs in isolation a lot of the time without being in front of our crowds and fans. When we came back to it, we had this renewed sense of like, “oh, I feel great being in Eskimo Joe”, because we had all these other projects that we’ve started in the meantime that kept us satisfied.
With that curiosity to do all things musical, sometimes, when you’re in a band, you’re like, ‘but I want to turn this into a techno album’ and then someone else in the band is like, ‘we’re a rock’n’roll band were not doing that’, you know. So, it’s nice to be able to go from making your techno album and coming back and being Eskimo Joe.
When we came back everyone had this sense of gratitude to be in the band. We did two songs (Say Something, 99 Ways). It was great, but we weren’t playing in front of anyone, so we didn’t have any litmus of what works and what doesn’t work. And really the success and the story of most bands is that they hit the road, they start playing, every time they do a song, they’re like, ‘oh that worked’, you know. And then they’ll start to infuse that into whatever they write next because they get this direct response from their audience. So, fast forward to 2023, finally the world opened up again. Finally, it feels like we’re doing shows and people are coming out, and we finished the year off doing this great festival called Good Things. We’re from that generation of bands who were lucky enough to play festivals like the Big Day Out, and you would have 30,000 people deep in front of you, and it was that feeling again. We were suddenly out on these big festival stages again with 30,000 people, and there was an electricity between us and the audience. We’d play a song, and they would sing it back to us and we’d be like, ‘Oh my God is amazing’.
So, we bottled that feeling and went into the studio, over the last week of December and then the first week of January and wrote and recorded The First Time and a lot of the feeling that went into it was that electricity of being in front of audiences.
The other two songs we released were great, but this felt like the most, like you said, quintessential Eskimo Joe moment. We were kind of getting back on form, or whatever you want to call it. But also, a lot of these shows we were playing were a lot about nostalgia. We were playing with a lot of bands who had been around for a few years, back in the days when we were signing people’s CDs and doing those kinds of things. So, we wrote this song, which was a combination of that feeling of electricity in front of a crowd, and also this idea of, what is nostalgia? Remember the first time you kissed someone, or fell in love, or smoked a cigarette, you know. You have this idea of looking back and imagining that it was great, but it was always a much more complex story than that, so that that was the story of the song.
The video you released and the new single is a retrospective look at your whole history as a band in a bit of a snapshot. How did it feel when you created that video? How did it feel seeing it all together for the first time?
For us, it was a really lovely surprise, because we don’t really go back and watch old footage of ourselves or even listen to old records. Once we’ve made the album, we’re generally moving on to the next thing, so it was great to go back and see all these different versions of ourselves through the years and to remember it was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, we did ‘that thing’. Oh, that’s right. We did ‘that’ thing’. You kind of forget the story, so that fit into the whole thing, which was lovely.
It was even like that for me, I was thinking oh my God, I remember what was I doing then? And what festival is that? Was I there?
Yeah, there were moments there. There were some great festivals like Homebake; I think there’s a bit of footage from that. There’s some Aria’s stuff in there, some things behind the scenes, probably Big Day Out bits and pieces as well. All of these kind of festivals were such a big deal for us at the time and it was nice to look back with a sober head space.
Over the years, you’ve won ARIA’s, you’ve conquered triple j’s Hottest 100, you went platinum with Black Fingernails, you played some of the biggest festivals in the country. Do you feel like there’s still more to achieve with Eskimo Joe or have you found a different drive forward with the music you’re creating? Is it more just about touring and getting what’s in your heart out with your music and not so much looking for anything from it, apart from the love of it?
I think that’s a really great question. When we were coming up and looking at albums like ‘Black Fingernails, Red Wine’ we were so ambitious in this idea that we wanted to conquer the world, we took it very, very seriously and were probably painful to be around at times. But going away and coming back, when we stepped away from Eskimo Joe, we felt like we were at the end of a wave we’d been riding. This wave of success or whatever you want to call it. When we stepped away in about 2013, it felt like the right time just to have a bit of a break. Like I said before, we needed a bit of a break from each other, but we also were just kind of like, well, let’s not stop being Eskimo Joe, but let’s just step away and let some other people fill that space for a while.
I don’t think we’ll sit down and make a whole record again in the near future because we have these other projects going on.
And now coming back, it’s not really about trying to ride this next wave or anything like that. We like going out and playing these festivals. We just seem to occupy this Eskimo Joes’-shaped hole in the Australian music industry and when we play shows we have kids who are 20 years old who were probably about four to five years old when Black Fingernails came out and were being pushed around in a supermarket trolley as Black Fingernails played over the woollies PA or whatever.
And then you’ve got people who are in their 60s and 70s who got into us when we first started. So, we have this amazing amount of and age range, who come to our shows and we have nothing but gratitude for these people who have taken our music into their lives.
As far as the motivation to do it, I don’t think we’ll sit down and make a whole record again in the near future because we have all these other projects going on. But we really love just coming together and working on a song and then putting that song out like we did with The First Time. We’re going to probably try and put out another song before the years out, and we really do it just for the love of getting together and making music. We’re still very ambitious about trying to make music that we think is great but we’re not trying to conquer the world, we’re just really making music for the people who love us. For those people who turn up to those shows who have loved us for years or finally seeing us for the first time because they just turned 18. We’re making music for those guys so that’s our motivation now.
You’re about to embark on a five-month, 22-show acoustic tour across Australia. You’re taking this show to regional cities, which is something that you’ve done a lot over the years. Can you tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to do an acoustic tour and what fans can expect from the shows?
I love doing acoustic theatre shows because I’m a chronic storyteller. My kids just roll their eyes and are like, Dad, stop. I love telling stories. The theatre shows, and acoustic shows are just a very different experience than doing a big rock’n’roll show. Rock’n’roll shows are like, you’re like a superhero, everything is big and you’re shouting “Come on, everyone!”. You do that whole thing. But then when you do acoustic shows, it’s just it’s a gentler experience and you bring people in and it’s a much more intimate thing. Then you tell the stories between the songs and that becomes part of the whole experience. I love that and we haven’t done a proper tour like that ever. I do a lot of them in my solo world, but I haven’t done it with Eskis.
We’ve been doing a couple of shows here and there when people ask us to, we call Buskamo Joe’, which is just us and two acoustic guitars. So, we will expand that show into something a bit more beautiful and special.
Like you said, it’s the chance to get into some of these regional centres people don’t usually get to. We’re going to places like Mt Isa, which is really out there. I don’t think we’ve ever been there before. So, I think some of those places would be great and I’m sure people will be excited to have a band in their town. We’re going to Carnarvon, some crazy regional places, which I think would be great.
But also, it’s like shifting gears. We just played heaps of shows in 2023, we played little pub shows, we played big festival shows and really just re-engaged with our fans. We spend a lot of time going into the suburbs where most of our fans live these days. Everyone’s got families, you know, no one can buy a ticket to the big day anymore and take a couple of days off. But if you play at a great venue down the road from their house, they’re so happy to come and see you. We spent a lot of time re-engaging with people, and I feel like this is an extension of that. It’s a different gear. If you’ve seen the rock’n’roll show, you get to come and see the songs you know, stripped back, a bit more intimate and have a bit more of that connection going. I think it’s going to be really special I can’t wait.
Eskimo Joe has never been a band to focus solely on their own music. You have been active supporters of the local music scene and up-and -coming younger musicians, mentoring bands, and artists for many years.
We had a glorified back shed for a long time where we recorded all of our Eskimo Joe stuff and we started recording other bands which it started in 2004, bands like Little Birdie and End of Fashion and The Sleepy Jackson. We grew, out of this jam room because we had recording gear and everyone was hanging out helping each other with song writing, and it was just a really great moment. That progressed to the point where, in 2010, we built our own recording studio. We bought a warehouse, built the whole thing from the ground up, and we ran that for a couple of years until no one was willing to be a full-time studio person. Now we do most of our stuff out of the room that you see behind us, and I do all kinds of bits and pieces here. We do Eski’s here, I produce other people’s stuff, sometimes school groups come through and I show them what a recording studio is. I do lots of mentoring, for up and coming artists and I guess as far as putting back into the same thing, it’s not really a conscious decision to do it.
We were really lucky to come up through the years when there were big budgets to make records. So we got to go into some of the best studios in the world and work with some of the best producers ever. We did albums with people like Gil Norton, who recorded ‘Colour And The Shape’ by the Foo Fighters and The Pixies stuff and another producer, Ed Buller. We learned so much from these people that it’s really nice to be in this environment in our hometown. So to have people who live locally come and work with us, and you know, we learned these skills from the masters and to be able to pass these on feels really good.
ESKIMO JOE – UPCOMING SHOWS
SAT 06 APR | LOOKOUT FESTIVAL, SANDSTONE POINT, QLD
SUN 07 APR | LOOKOUT FESTIVAL, SOUTHPORT, QLD
SAT 13 APR | LOOKOUT FESTIVAL, MORNINGTON VIC
SAT 20 APR | LOOKOUT FESTIVAL, WHITFORDS WA
SAT 27 APR | CIVIC HALL, BALLARAT VIC
SUN 28 APR | WYNDHAM CULTURAL CENTRE, WERRIBEE VIC
SAT 25 MAY | CASULA POWERHOUSE, LIVERPOOL NSW
SUN 26 MAY | THE CONCOURSE LOUNGE, WILLOUGHBY NSW
FRI 31 MAY | LOGAN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, LOGAN QLD
SAT 1 JUN | PROSERPINE ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, PROSERPINE QLD
FRI 21 JUN | RED EARTH ARTS PRECINCT, KARRATHA WA
SAT 22 JUN | CARNARVON CIVIC CENTRE, CARNARVON WA
FRI 28 JUN | ALBANY ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE, ALBANY WA
SUN 30 JUN | ESPERANCE CIVIC CENTRE, ESPERANCE WA
FRI 5 JUL | THE WEDGE, SALE VIC
SAT 6 JUL | KINGSTON CITY HALL, MOORABBIN VIC
SUN 7 JUL | QUEANBEYAN PAC, QUEANBEYAN NSW
TUE 9 JUL | HORSHAM TOWN HALL THEATRE, HORSHAM VIC
FRI 12 JUL | SWAN HILL TOWN HALL PACC, SWAN HILL VIC
SAT 13 JUL | THE ART HOUSE, WYONG NSW
FRI 26 JUL | MOUNT ISA CIVIC CENTRE, MOUNT ISA QLD
SUN 28 JUL | ROCKHAMPTON RIVER FESTIVAL, ROCKHAMPTON QLD
Thanks to On The Map PR
