INTERVIEW – B.C., Dune Rats – May 2014

INTERVIEW – B.C., Dune Rats – May 2014
By Shane Pinnegar

Brisbane’s DUNE RATS have had a busy year already, organising themselves a tour which has taken them all the way around the world, and with their debut self-titled album just out, they’re bringing their scraggly-haired, stoner-party-vibe coast-to-coast across our far-flung land.

When I get drummer B.C. on the line he’s still in the middle of the Asian leg of their tour, half-asleep in bed at their Kuala Lumpar hotel, and obviously tired, considering the constant yawns throughout our fifteen minute conversation.

So how does a bunch of scruffy Brisbane dudes who describe themselves on their Facebook page as ‘3 hyperactive stoner cunts who didn’t come ear [sic] for a hair cut’ end up on a worldwide tour through South Africa and Europe and Asia?

“Good question,” he laughs quietly. “I don’t know. A bit of luck and an awesome manager and a couple of songs…?”

This doesn’t sound like the ambitious dude I was expecting. I mean, most people would go, ‘well maybe this time around we can do a tour including Sydney and Melbourne, maybe we’ll squeeze in a gig in Perth as well…’ but Dune Rats have made that look like a pint at the pub on a Sunday arvo. B.C. offers a little more explanation when prompted…

“Well we started touring like this about a year ago,” he says slowly, “and we were in Kuala Lumpar about a year ago and South Africa and most places through South East Asia and America and stuff. Just because there’s only so much that you can tour in Australia without people getting over you. So, yeah… [we’ve] just been touring, we’ve just started trying to tour as much as we could because we don’t have any jobs or anything like that. Otherwise we would just sit around at home getting up to no good.”

How does a band of jobless ‘stoners’ (their word) afford a couple of months of international touring?

“We get money from our shows in Australia,” says B.C., “and we signed with Warner as well and they give us a little bit of cash too.”

The international touring seems to be going well, with a fan base building up right across the board.

“Europe was awesome – that was really good,” he says. “We had some really good shows in London, they were probably the best out of U.K. and Europe. It was just awesome to see a bunch of those places. Paris was really good as well and we played in… where was the Great Escape [Festival]? Is that Brighton?”

Guitarist Danny confirms this in the background.

“Brighton,” continues B.C. “Great Escape was a really good show as well.”

B.C. says they had a few incidences of cultural confusion while bouncing from country to country.

“It was confusing in Paris – they didn’t speak a lot English there, where we were,” he says, perhaps stating the obvious. “There wasn’t too much confusion, like, we can generally get around pretty sweet. It’s just maybe hard sometimes trying to order food if everything’s in a different language.”

The big Australian tour kicks off tomorrow night in Fremantle at Mojos (full tour dates below) and the band are likely to be a pretty lean, mean, fighting machine on stage, having played so many gigs in such a short period of time.

“Yeah exactly, pretty well machined,” confirms B.C. “We definitely get a lot tighter the more that we play live and the set comes together pretty well. We don’t have a set list, we just have a pretty rough set that we play every night just off by heart, know which songs go where just from playing so much. Then anytime we’ve got songs to throw, maybe we’ll adjust the set depending on how the set goes… seeing what the vibe is like and changing it as we go.”

To add a funny twist to the Australia tour, the guys are offering pre-party pub crawls for each gig. I ask B.C. what that’s going to involve.

“Just getting pissed before we play!” he laughs. “That’s pretty much what’s going to happen. Yeah, we generally get pissed before we play anyway so we figured we’d just do it with some of the people who are going to come to the show and that would be a pretty cool way to start.”

How do the band go playing to a big crowd when they’re half cut?

“It comes from muscle memory I reckon,” he says, “playing the music after you’ve played it so many times when you’re inebriated. Just play the same thing – like second nature stuff… or maybe we sound like shit but we just think that it’s good because they jump!”

There’s more yawning down the line, and I’m starting to think that B.C. needs to catch up on some sleep.

“Yeah, I kind of do.” He agrees.

Living the rock star life, hey?

“I’m hanging in there…”

Further to the pre-party pissups, they’ve also offered local high school bands to open up all ages shows on the tour. It’s great to see a young band on the rise paying the love forward so generously. B.C. agrees.

“You know it,” he laughs. “We’re the nicest guys ever.”

First single Funny Guys was filmed on their European tour, and it’s a trippy one-shot affair that ambitiously references Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues… in clown makeup and wig.

“It was supposed to be in Amsterdam but it ended up in Paris…” he says, laughing, “walking around in clown getup, looking like a fucking idiot.”

Tour stories of mischief and misadventure abound, with rumours of the band missing a flight from Cape Town because Danny was feeding hungry cab drivers; commandeering a low-ceilinged pub in the small town of Flamstead run by the self-proclaimed ‘town’s only gay man’ where they were joined by the entire town and ‘together solved the mysteries of the world’; losing a passport the night before ferrying from Liverpool to Dublin causing a full strip search of their mobile home and all inhabitants; and even having coconuts thrown at them from a third story window in Liverpool by a caring woman concerned about their unhealthy diet.

“Yeah, we did have a coconut thrown at us by some crazed woman,” B.C. recalls vaguely. “From her window into our RV, like she sort of believed she had to throw a coconut at us…”

So, without any offer of further elaboration, I reckon it’s time to bid B.C. adieu and suggest he grab a few more Z’s before the Aussie tour kicks off.

“Yeah, no I will. I’ll get some sleep on the plane,” he says, still yawning his head off..

 

12th DUNE – MOJOS, FREMANTLE – WA
13th DUNE – AMPLIFIER, PERTH – WA
14th DUNE – UNI BAR, ADELAIDE (AA) – SA
15th DUNE – THE GRACE DARLING, MELBOURNE (u18s) – VIC
19th DUNE – KAROVA LOUNGE, BALLARAT – VIC
20th DUNE – THE CORNER, MELBOURNE – VIC
21st DUNE – OXFORD ART FACTORY, SYDNEY – NSW
22nd DUNE – THE LAIR, SYDNEY (U18S) – NSW
28th DUNE – THE ZOO, BRISBANE – QLD
29th DUNE – ALHAMBRA LOUNGE, BRISBANE (u18s) – QLD

 

Category: Interviews