LIVE: SOUTHERN RIVER BAND – Fremantle, 4 October 2024

Shane | 5 October 2024 | Reply

LIVE: SOUTHERN RIVER BAND – Fremantle, 4 October 2024
With Carla Geneve and Blue Shaddy (duo)
Freo Social, Western Australia
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar

To say there’s a BUZZ about Southern River Band right now is an enormous understatement. In recent years I can’t think of a single Perth band who’ve been so poised to properly crack it overseas, and with third album D.I.Y. selling extremely well, and them heading back to the UK and Europe in a few weeks for a second run of – undoubtedly sold out – shows, this is make or break time for the band.

Opening tonight’s show – the second hometown show capping off yet another successful lap of Australia – is Blue Shaddy in duo mode, Jim and Billy on vocals/guitar and harmonica respectively. Blue Shaddy gave SRB mainman Cal Kramer his first gig as a ten-year-old drummer, then made him a full-time member as soon as he turned eighteen, and Cal’s never forgotten that break.

Their set is rootsy and bluesy, Billy’s Dougal-esque shaggy hair bouncing around animatedly as he leaps and stomps and shakes and blows his harp and they ensure a healthy crowd are whoopin’ and a-hollerin’ from the start.

Carla Geneve and her superb band take the baton and deliver a great set drawing from an impressive palette of colour – laid back, almost whimsical, country folk tunes through to raucous, ragged Neil Young-like rockers.

Luke Dux’s guitar work is as brilliant as always and helps Geneve win over new fans a-plenty, and highlights include Brighter Than Blue about a night out in Freo, the swampy rocker Bills To Pay (“thankyou SRB for paying my bills this week”), a cover of the Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks Refugee, and closer Obscene, during which Geneve steals a sneaky few steps out onto the runway jutting into the crowd, the look on her face priceless.

Many new Southern River Band fans may not be aware of this, but cheeky rapscallion Cal Kramer – frontman, mainman of SRB – has always been a rockstar. He was just born that way. We’ve seen him through a variety of bands and early incarnations of SRB and he has always been the same dude – a born musician, hugely talented, with a comedian’s sense of bogan humour and comic timing, and an entertainer’s gift of the gab. There’s not a shred of artifice to the man, and that shows – that’s why he’s seemingly suddenly ascended to shake his tush in front of 700 people going off on a Friday night in Fremantle. That, and years of slog, of course – people always forget the years of work to make someone an overnight sensation. His success now is not only well deserved, it is his time. To quote one of his own songs, “you only get one shot – you better not miss, if you come for the crown.” He’s hitting the mark every time right now and the crown is his for the taking.

SRB’s intro tape is a self-aggrandising rock/rap track bigging Cal up, then the red curtain drops, the lights go mental, and the band are ON. We’ve come a fair old way from Cal chatting casually with the crowd at Blues At Bridgetown ten years ago.

The band – this may be the Callum Kramer show, but they are the engine room that allow him to be larger than life up front – of guitarist Dan Carroll, bassist Pat Smith and mohawked drummer Tyler The Hawk are absolutely in the groove, honed to a whip crack razor sharp edge and providing rock solid foundation for their extroverted frontman.

Opener Cigarettes (Ain’t Helping Me None) leads into Watch Yourself (You’re Gonna Hurt Somebody) with barely a swig of red wine and an enthusiastic “fuck” betwixt the two, then it’s a roller coaster of favourites, all full of energy and enthusiasm and all showing why and how they’ve amassed such an enthusiastic and adoring following far and wide from their stomping grounds.

In fact, they probably deserve the keys to the suburb – after all, I can’t think of anyone else acting as such enthusiastic ambassadors for Southern River and Thornlie.

He’s squirming a little as they launch into Second Best due to a “homemade g-string” he’s wearing to avoid undie-lines on the video they’re shooting, and by the time they play Vice City III – which had its own epic Miami Vice-styled music video – it’s easy to see why The Darkness’s Justin Hawkins exclaimed of the band, “now THIS is a fucking rock band!”

New song Fuck You, Pay Me gets us excited for their next album, then the Blue Shaddy boys join the band for Let It Ride and The Steve Miller Band’s Rock’n Me, before the six-string explosion of Stan Qualen, the raucous Accadacca-meets-Van Halen romp that broke them internationally. It goes off like the proverbial frog in a sock, the crowd down the front a tumultuous frenzy of whirling dervishes, then Vice City II closes out the main set.

Of course there’s an encore – and just as well as the crowd may not have let them out alive if they hadn’t come back for more. Cal invites his Ma onstage (“in the last thirty-five years she’s the only one who’s shagged my Dad – that we know of”) along with Carla Geneve, to join in on Nights – complete with Slash-alike solo and Cal running offstage for a lap through the crowd. “I like it when things are real,” Cal states before finishing a triumphant show with Chimney, one of their early singles, and it’s as real as it gets.

Southern River Band are a band on the cusp of something very rare and very big. The only things that can sabotage their trajectory now are too little money, or too much ego. Personally, my bet is on them going the distance.

Set List:
Cigarettes (Ain’t Helping Me None)
Watch Yourself (You’re Gonna Hurt Somebody)
Second Best
The Streets Don’t Lie
Vice City III
Chasing After Love (I’ll Burn a Hole in Your Shoes)
Fuck You (Pay Me)
Let It Ride
Rock’n Me
Stan Qualen
Vice City II

Encore:
Nights
Chimney