The Gospel according to British India – AKA The Four Musketeers

British India wrap up their The Gospel Of St Luke national tour in WA this week with shows at The Tambrey in Karratha on Thursday, October 9; Rosemount Hotel on Friday, October 10; Prince of Wales in Bunbury on Saturday, October 11; and Indian Ocean Hotel on Sunday, October 12, with tickets on sale now. BOB GORDON chats with drummer Matt O’Gorman about the band’s first new music in eight years.

You’ve been on the road, on and off, for the last month with the tour for the new single, The Gospel of Luke, and you’re wrapping it up in WA this weekend. How has it been to be hitting the nation again?

It’s been awesome. It’s probably been a year since we played our last national run, which is a long time for us. So to get back out there and play and have some new stuff to play as well has been really fun. And, you know, just seeing the guys and hanging out, since as you get older, you get busier and busier with work and life. So it’s been great to get away with the guys and see them properly, hang out and just play. It’s just been super fun.

How does the nature of a band change when you start looking at more than a decade and then head to two? The Perth band, The Chevelles, in November, will celebrate their 35th anniversary, and they’re still going, but the way they go about the band is different. You guys have always been a road band. What are the different ways you’ve approached touring as life goes on and becomes more evolved?

I think it’s definitely booking it a lot more in advance than back in the past, when we could book a tour and be ready to go straight away and ready to play. There were not too many other responsibilities as far as working and things. So we could just dedicate a whole life to it, which was great at that stage, but now everyone’s kind of got their own thing going on.

So when it comes to booking a tour, it’s about finding a block for a couple of months that works for everyone and then getting together and rehearsing and playing the set. We still like to get out there and play as much as we can when we can. So any given opportunity to go anywhere, it doesn’t need to be a capital city, which is why we love coming to WA because we’ve been here for a couple of days, and we go to Karratha, and then we come back and we do the Rosemount, then we go down to Bunbury, and then we come back to the Indi Bar. We can really kind of immerse ourselves here for a week, or a little bit longer, rather than just being weekend warriors and doing it the other way.

It’s a nice little travelogue while you’re here, and it’s also cool being able to spend a few days hanging out beforehand…

It’s awesome, mate. And you know, we’re from Melbourne, so to play and even go to a place like Karratha is so different from what we’re used to. So we just really embrace every opportunity we get to go regionally. We’ve played Bunbury probably over 20 times, but it’s such a fun drive down. We’ll stay upstairs at the Prince of Wales, and we’ll see people there that we’ve been lucky enough to meet and call dear friends over the last kind of 15 to 20 years. So that’s another thing that’s good. Not only playing live with the guys but also getting to see friends again and catching up with them too.

It’s an amazing thing, really. Over the years, there are little cities and towns across Australia that you may otherwise never have visited, but you now know well, and you know people there. It must have made a nice impact on your life.

It was something you’d never think about when you just start out. You don’t think that you’re going to meet people like that. You know, we met previous partners when we’ve gone to certain places and families there as well. You’re right, it’s just a great opportunity to meet people, but just something you don’t really think about too much when you’re starting out, I guess, is the relationship that you’re going to build with people all over the country.

The other thing that’s changed as a band goes on longer, or just with the changing nature of the music industry as well, is that you guys have maintained touring, but in a more focused sort of manner. It’s the nature of releasing music. So in June, you released your first new material, a new single, The Gospel of Luke, in eight years.

It was in the last five or six years that we’ve welcomed Jack (Tosi) into the band on guitar, and we’ve been able to really nail and get the live stuff down. But when it came to kind of recording and writing new stuff, that’s something we hadn’t really tried just yet. You know, through COVID and life and not being able to. So naturally, when we started playing shows, I think we all kind of thought it’d be great to have some new stuff to play as well and to write and record with Jack.

So that was kind of like the next step, and when you haven’t done it in a while, you second-guess yourself, kind of like, ‘Oh, how are we going to do this?’ It’s kind of like starting afresh with a new member, especially when you’re writing, but it’s just been awesome. We’ve gone away into the studio and put together some amazing tracks. So this new one, The Gospel Of Luke, pretty much Declan (Melia, vocals/guitar) came in with the whole song written, and we just kind of went to the studio and banged it out, and that’s what you hear. It wasn’t a struggle or hard to get back in there and put ideas down. It happened quite naturally, which has been awesome.

How’s Jack going? Is he like the perennial new guy, like Ron Wood has been with The Rolling Stones?

No, no, no… The Four Musketeers is us, because we’ve known Jack for a really long time. He played in a really awesome band called Stealing O’Neal. So when it came to getting someone to jump in and play guitar, it was a no-brainer with Jack, and he just pitched in so well. It’s four best mates on the road now. It feels like that’s the way it’s always been.

So what about the freshness for you of the new material, and how much do you have? Is there an album in the offing?

There’s an album, definitely. So it’s just a matter of getting together, mapping out a few more weekends in the studio and putting it all together. But we will release another single for sure, and before you know it, the album will be fully recorded. That’s the beauty now. I mean, I remember when we started, we needed to have a whole album ready to go and the first three singles. But now it’s a beautiful thing where you can just put out music essentially whenever you want. So that really suits where we’re at right now as a band, and that’s something we’ll probably continue to do until the album is done and dusted.

British India bring their The Gospel Of St Luke tour to The Tambrey in Karratha on Thursday, October 9; Rosemount Hotel on Friday, October 10; Prince of Wales in Bunbury on Saturday, October 11; and Indian Ocean Hotel on Sunday, October 12, 2025. Tickets are on sale now from oztix.com