Eskimo Joe
Aus music legends Stuart MacLeod, Joel Quartermain, and Kav Temperley – aka Eskimo Joe – make tracks to Darwin this month for one huge night of sweet, sweet music.
Hits like ‘Black Fingernails, Red Wine’, ‘Sweater’ and ‘New York’ have won the Eskies a legion of fans. The alt-rock band has achieved huge things in their 28 years of show biz, with a swag of worldwide shows, six studio albums, and 35 ARIA noms under their belts. And they’re not done yet.
A pretty excited Tierney White caught up with Temperley for a yarn.
28 years, that’s a long career in the biz. How’s it feel to be kicking around doing what you love, all these years later?
Well, right now, it feels amazing. We’ve kind of hit a real purple patch creatively and workwise, I mean, we’ve just come off the back of about two years of going away pretty much every weekend and playing shows, and in that time, we’ve managed to put out … a new song, and we’re about to put out another new song which is really exciting.
So we’ve played a whole lot of festivals, then we did this huge regional acoustic tour, which was absolutely beautiful, telling stories just the three of us on stage, and that’s what we’re bringing to Darwin.
Oh lovely. And what’s your secret, to the band’s longevity, do you reckon?
We actually like each other as humans [laughs]. If you see any band that stays together longer than about two or three years, it’s generally because they get along well. People always ask us what’s the secret to our success, and it’s just because we have a lot of laughs and we get along, as people.
You’re still releasing new music, another one incoming soon as you mentioned, does that mean we can expect another album release soon?
I don’t know if we’re gonna sit down and do a traditional album, as much as I love making records, you know, we go away and do our Eskies thing on the weekend, and then we come back home and all have other things that we get our hands dirty with … What we do is get one song, and get it to a point where we’re super happy with it – which takes a long time ‘cause we are ridiculous perfectionists – and then we put it out.
We’re not really a ‘get into the room and just jam, press record, that’s the album’, we’re very much from that Beatles songwriting place, where we construct the song, every part of it, until we’re happy with it, so that takes a lot of time. So, one song, maybe once or twice a year, is pretty much all we can afford these days.
You’ve soundtracked a lot of our lives – I always feel nostalgic when I hear you guys, ‘From The Sea’ takes me back to high school – any cool or quirky stories fans have shared with you about what your music has meant to them?
Absolutely, especially doing these acoustic shows that we’re bringing to Darwin. We’ve been coming out after the show and meeting everyone hanging out at the merch desk and hearing everyone’s stories, ‘cause we do a lot of storytelling on stage. We get these amazing, multi-generational Eskimo Joe stories coming back.
This one family, this guy, he moved over from Japan and the first two albums he bought was Songs From the City and Black Fingernails, Red Wine, and he met his wife and they had, like, three kids, and that was the one band they could agree on as a family all to listen to. They came along to this acoustic show and were telling us that these shows that we’d just played, called Good Things, which were these massive rock ‘n’ roll big shows, their son, who’s now like 17, 18, was at the front, knew all the songs, and that was because he’d grown up with his dad, who’d moved here from Japan!
That stuff gives me goosebumps, and blows my mind, and we’re so thankful that people have taken our songs into their lives, and made them the soundtracks of their lives, as you say.
Just thinking two generations of the same family have had Eskimo Joe there throughout is a pretty special thing. It’d be such a trip for those kids’ parents to be able to take them to those shows?
Yeah, absolutely!
So, you mentioned it’s an acoustic show – you playing your classics, some new stuff?
Yeah, it’s kind of like a trip down memory lane, we go through all of our back catalogue. Because it’s an acoustic show and it’s a bit different to a big rock ‘n’ roll show, it’s a much more intimate experience, so we get to tell a lot of the stories behind the songs, and ‘cause there’s the three of us on the stage … everyone remembers a story on the night … so, it’s a lot about the music, but it’s a lot about the stories behind the music.
That’s really special. We’re pretty chuffed you’re coming to visit us in Darwin, are you as excited as we are?
Yeah, absolutely, we love Darwin! And we’ve been going there for years and years. The very first time we played a proper show in Darwin, we were supporting The Living End, and we’re from Perth, we don’t really have a lot of humidity where we’re from, so we were playing some outdoor gigs and I got out and jumped around like a 19-year-old punk rocker, like a crazy man, and I could not cool down, it was so hot! I got offstage and absolutely died because it was so warm [laughs] so I learnt to pace myself a little bit more when I’m in Darwin outside, and we’ve since played many shows in Darwin outside, so yeah.
Well done, well done [laughs]. It’s a big adjustment coming up to the Top End for a gig, that’s for sure, especially if it’s outside, but lucky you’ll be air-conditioned this time at Darwin Entertainment Centre, so you’ll be right!
Oh, phew! Well, as I mentioned, we’re precious flowers [laughs].
WHEN SAT 12 APR | 7.30PM
AT DARWIN ENTERTAINMENT CENTRE
COST $55 | $50 MEMB/CONC
INFO yourcentre.com.au
