By Casey Neill
The Waifs’ Josh Cunningham is promising “lots of audience interaction” when the band plays in Upwey.
The folk rock trio will bring their 25th anniversary regional tour to Burrinja on Thursday 11 October.
“When I was a little kid I lived in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne,” Cunningham told the Mail.
“My family used to go the Dandenongs.”
The Waifs released their eighth studio album, Ironbank, to mark their quarter-century together.
“We’ll be including quite a bit of material off that album,” he said.
“We’ll be dipping into that extensive back catalogue.
“Songs drift in and out as they find favour with the band.
“Sometimes it just comes down to what songs have been rehearsed.
“We have had those experiences where we’ve tried to honour a request from the audience and someone’s forgotten the lyrics.
“Those moments actually make for something special, something memorable.”
Cunningham refers to Up All Night, which featured well-known track London Still.
“That album was quite acoustic and rootsy,” he said.
“We’ve always had that flavour.
“There’ve been albums along the way that were a bit over produced.
“Ironbark is returning back to the essence of the band – that acoustic sound, harmonica.”
Audience members might hear Cunningham pipe up during the show.
“I’ve started to do a little bit more talking between songs,” he said.
“The girls do the bulk of it.
“They’re really great at engaging with the crowd.”
The girls are sisters Vikki Thorn and Donna Simpson.
“It just feels like a conversation,” Cunningham said of their audience interaction.
“Sometimes a gig feels like we’re sitting in a lounge room with a group of close friends.
“You might even get a bit of good-natured heckling here and there.
“One of the things I really enjoy as much as playing is getting out at the end of the night and meeting people and hearing their stories and their experience of our music.”
He said they’d met a lot of people who’d been heading to their shows since the beginning, back in 1992.
“It’s really special,” he said.
“We now have generations of Waifs fans.
“There’s people who were first generation, then we have people who’ve had kids and raised them listening to the music.
“Even those people have grown up and had children of their own.
“We have waifs grandkids now!”
Visit www.burrinja.org.au for ticket information.
