Dub-pop stars Sticky Fingers bring their Sun Shine Down On Us All Tour to The Bakery this Friday, September 6, before heading to Rottnest Island on Saturday, September 7, to headline the 2013 Rottofest. TRAVIS JOHNSON gets on the blower to bass player Paddy Cornwall.
Two missed calls and half an hour later, Paddy Cornwall, bassist for Sydney outfit Sticky Fingers, is all apologies.
“I was in a really intense match of FIFA,” he says by way of explanation.
We can’t be mad. The beginning of a nationwide tour is mere days away, and downtime seems to be at a premium for Cornwall and his four bandmates, especially since their first album, Caress Your Soul, blew up big.
Cornwall concurs, explaining the non-stop touring cycle that now comprises their lives. “I think for the past couple of years we’ve been touring so much that being in the band has sort of overtaken any sort of other life that we had outside the band, like any other jobs or stuff like that.
“Beaker, our drummer, is still concreting in between tours and stuff, but that time has mainly become just writing and recording in our garage together, because we all live together in a house in a suburbs in Sydney called Croydon Park. So between tours it’s pretty much just writing and recording demos, gearing up for the next album and just trying to get by on the little cash we’ve got because once we’re on the road we can live off whatever we make on it and save up for whatever we need in between.”
It sounds both heavy going and more than a bit hand-to-mouth, but Cornwall wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s especially looking forward to kicking off the tour in Perth, a frequent stop for the boys. “We love it over there. We’ve been over to WA like five or six times now. We like to play a show in Perth and then Fremantle, make it to Margaret River and Bunbury, sometimes make it down to Albany as well,” he says, demonstrating an impressive grasp of local geography before ruining it by adding. “We’re also playing the Bakery, which I think is in Fremantle?”
Sun Shine Down On Us All represents the band’s last live shows of the year, after which it’s back into the studio to work on their sophomore album.
“We’re really looking forward to that because we’ve got, like, so many songs now. We built a studio in our garage earlier this year and we’ve just been writing and recording non-stop since then, so we’ve got 30 demos and counting. We’re pretty much gonna choose the best out of those and re-record them and then that’ll be the second album.”
Perth fans can look forward to getting an early taste as the band test-firest some fresh material. “We’ve got about four new songs in the set list that are all potentially in the new album,” Cornwall says. “It’ll be the first time we’ve played them live so we’re looking forward to seeing how people react to them in the live realm.”
