Local rockers The Southern River Band are on the brink of living the dream.
The Thornlie-based hard rock outfit is receiving radio airplay with their hit single Stan Qualen on national radio, clocking up hundreds of thousands of fans in the process and they are about to embark on their first international tour.
But the band’s recent success hasn’t come without hard work, according to founding member and Thornlie local Cal Kramer.
It will be 10 years at the end of this year since we formed. I think our first gig was November 2014 at the Thornlie, we cut our teeth for about a year and a half when we played exclusively around here before we started branching out,” he said.
“I think some might say we had quite a rapid ascent in terms of Thornlie.
“We’ve had to work ridiculously hard; we’ve just got to be stubborn to the point of stupidity really to keep going you know. A band like us doesn’t really fit in anywhere in the modern world.”
The band’s recent fame was given a push last year by Justin Hawkins from by UK rock group The Darkness following a support gig Southern River Band did with them.
“It was since we were on Justin, from The Darkness’ podcast and he put us out to rock ‘n roll fans worldwide because he’s a respected voice when it comes to rock ‘n roll, he’s such a top bloke,” Cal said.
“As soon as that happened, we charted in 23 countries within a month and obviously it’s increased our profile over here, but the best way to describe it is there are places that never knew we existed and now we’re starting to get out into those ethers. People are discovering us and thinking…f**k we didn’t know bands like this still existed.
“In the last six months, it’s just started becoming feasible in every way to the point where everybody in the band has been able to prioritise it. I’ve always done it because it has to be to that point, but I’ve just started to enjoy the fruits of our labour if you will,” he said.
The recent success helped solidify the band’s idea of their first international tour in the UK.
“This will be our first international tour. This one is our dream,” he said.
“When I started this band, I had three goals: one was to be the biggest band in Thornlie as piss weak as that sounds, but that’s what I wanted to do, the other one was to support Cold Chisel, which we also did and the third thing was to buy a house off music, you know, which in the modern world is proving easier said than done.
“When you can take a band from as local as local gets to being able to sell out shows in your hometown, to then being able to sell out shows nationally, to then announce our debut show in London and that sold out in four days, quicker than any Australian show ever and we had to upgrade the venue, which is called Underworld in Camden.”
The UK tour comes off the back of the band’s recently sold-out national tour, proving that live shows and word of mouth is paying off for the group.
“We did an 800 person, sold out gig in Freo, 450 sold out gig in Sydney and 550 sold out in Melbourne,” Cal said.
“We’ve always been able to cultivate Perth because we’ve always done that, but when you’re going over there flying blind you have to put all your money into it, your cash flow, just go get from Perth to wherever you go.
“When we supported Eagles of Death Metal last year, it was big venues, it was $960 one way from Brisbane to Adelaide, so you can imagine you have five members, you’re not exactly bringing home a profit when you’re the support band. But when you’re able to get those numbers going, it’s not just something you love to do but it starts presenting itself as a valid career path.
“We were just starting to get these opportunities and we were selling out big rooms all over the country and there’s a demand for it now and we’ve got to that point where everything is starting to tip in our favour and someone will tell two friends and they tell two friends, like Wayne’s World, and then it became like ‘woah our numbers are up’ and then we started selling like 300 more tickets than we did last time in Sydney and so you can see that it’s becoming more feasible.”
The hit song Stan Qualen has been listened to by thousands of fans worldwide, something Cal Kramer says struck the band as strange.
“It’s the Stan Qualen tour, it’s funny because that was the song that essentially opened all of these doors and the funniest thing about it was we’ve been playing that song since 2015 and we were never going to release it as a single, because it’s six minutes long and it’s got 20 seconds of singing and we thought ‘no one’s going to play that’,” he said.
“Then I don’t know, it must just be a timing thing that people must be crying out for music like that and people haven’t heard hard-edged rock ‘n roll in a long time.”
When asked what’s next for the band’s rising star after their first international tour, Cal is tight-lipped.
“We’ve got a lot of cool things happening, but I can’t say too much yet” he said.
