By Parker Mckenzie
Ahead of The Smith Street Band playing Sooki Lounge when they embark on a regional tour later this year, front-man Wil Wagner caught up with the Star Mail to talk touring in the Covid-19 era, what’s next for the Melbourne-based rockers and how performing in Belgrave feels like a hometown show.
After releasing their sixth album Life After Football in November 2022, the band went on a national tour of major cities and is now launching a regional tour including a gig at Sooki Lounge on Friday 7 June.
Mr Wagner said the band is visiting places they didn’t get to play during the major tour across the New Year.
“It’s fun getting to places where people are sort of bands go less and people are less likely to get to see music,” he said.
“I feel like crowds are always really appreciative and there’s sort of a bit of a different vibe than playing in Melbourne, where there are ten shows on a week.”
He said Belgrave feels “like it’s in the middle” of a regional and city show.
“Our guitar player lives in The Basin and we all grew up kind of out that way, so it feels like a hometown show for us more than a regional show,” Mr Wagner said.
“It’s always good to play at Sooki, and we might have even played it when it was Rubies. We definitely went there as teenagers.”
The Smith Street Band was formed in 2010, and the Melbourne-based rockers have become a fixture on the national music scene.
Mr Wagner said he sometimes wishes he could go back to the “16-year-old version of me who just wrote ten songs a day and none of them were very good.”
“We just covered an Alanis Morriset song for Like a Version on Triple J and it was one she wrote as a teenager. I went back and listened to that album and listened to a few people’s first albums and there’s something so beautiful about that unpolished and unsculpted music” he said.
“The more you write and record and the more time you spend as a band, you practice more and get better at what you do, but when you’re just a kid writing whatever comes to your mind and you’re not worried about appeasing an audience or jaded.”
He said touring now feels as normal as it is going to after a few years disrupted by the pandemic.
“for so long, it was like great we’ve got 30 gigs coming up that we’ll probably do over the next year because we’ll have to postpone half of them because I keep getting Covid by jumping into the crowd,” he said.
“I’m fully vaccinated, but I’ve had Covid five times and I keep thinking how did I get it? Then I’ll see pictures of me with someone pouring their beer into my mouth at a gig and that’s probably how I got it.”
The band is now playing an east coast regional tour, including Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay two weeks after the Sooki Lounge gig.
Mr Wagner said he is looking forward to being up close and personal with fans of the band’s music, something that isn’t possible at larger venues.
“It’s nostalgic in a way that you can feed off the crowd a lot more when they’re right there, there’s not a barrier or a gap between you and the people… you’re within Covid-catching distance of everyone in the crowd,” he laughs.
“So many of the best nights I’ve had, either playing or attending gigs, are little packed rooms where the walls are sweating and it’s sort of intense experience, but they’re always fun to me.”
Alongside the band’s six studio albums, including 2020s Aria number one Don’t Waste Your Anger, the Smith Street Band has also released three live albums.
Mr Wagner said after a busy few months of touring, he will start to write the band’s next album and get back to the studio for as long as possible before putting the instruments down for a break.
“I’m having a kid at the end of October, so that’ll take a bit of time off from the band but it’s very exciting,” he said.
“I think I’ll try to get as much done until then and go on paternity leave for a few months.”
He said one thing he is looking forward to ahead of the gig at Sooki Lounge is finding “a nice spot where I can talk to people who want to come and get a selfie, say good day or whatever after the show.”
“That’s a bit harder at those bigger shows, so that’s always a nice thing for the smaller ones. I get so inspired and excited by playing music and talking to people,” he said.
“When you meet people and they have lovely stories of seeing us when they were kids, we’ve been in a band for a while now, you get people saying ‘Oh, I met my now wife or my now husband at your show five years ago.”
For more information on the tour, visit thesmithstreetband.com
