Yarra Valley-based band Smoke Stack Rhino set their sights on the shores of Spain, taking their local sound to Europe at the end of last month.
The band performed a quickfire six gigs in ten days around the country, sometimes on as little as three hours of sleep as they drove between shows.
Founding band member Ash King, speaking on his way to Bridgetown in Western Australia for another blues festival before returning home, said it was their first overseas tour and it was a pretty unreal and wild experience.
“It’s pretty hard as an Australian band to actually get overseas, being so far away from most places, so to be able to go and do it was a really great thing to be able to do,” he said.
“It was a bit of a whirlwind… it’s definitely great to be back in Australia, driving on the right side of the road and I underestimated the language barrier quite a lot, we used Google Translate as much as we could and spoke really bad Spanish to all the audiences but they were cool for it.
“But it feels good to have done it, it’s certainly one of the hardest and most challenging things I’ve ever done, but definitely an amazing experience.”
The band’s rise was clear to see in August 2024 when their album The Mojo Dojo ranked 17th place in the ARIA Top 20 Australian Albums and second place in the ARIA Top 20 Jazz and Blues Albums.
King said the tour was made possible by a grant from Music Australia.
“They have certain funding available for Australian artists, if you meet certain criteria, to help promote Australian music overseas and we had an offer from a Spanish festival to come and play,” he said.
“I put that in the application and spoke to a promoter friend of mine that lives over in Europe and put together a rough application at the end of last year, like totally not expecting it to be successful.
“While I was waiting I had to let the festival know that we wouldn’t be over then, but the next week we heard that we’ve been successful.”
The band started their tour in the capital of Madrid before venturing north to Liérganes in Cantabria, then headed south-west to play in Zamora, back up to the northwestern coast to Laxe, down to the southwestern coast in Vilanova de Arousa, before finishing up in Valladolid, back near Zamora.
King said it was still a massive endeavour, even with the funding, as the band played plenty of gigs in the lead up to help finance it.
“When we were in Spain, it was really funny because all the locals there kept asking ‘Why are you here?’ and we could say our government sent us, but we felt very lucky to have the opportunity,” he said.
“The crowds just got into it so much, they just wanted to sing along and they were just really responsive and happy and just stoked to have us there, we felt really, really blessed and thankful.
“It was a bit different though, I did a call and response vocal part where I get them to sing a ‘whoa whoa’ line before we start a song, we did that back and forward and then the song started but they just kept singing it for the entire four-minute song.”
There was very little time for sightseeing but King did get to enjoy a night on the beers with his brother, who flew down from the UK where he lives to see him, and he found time to check out an art gallery in Madrid, something he likes to do whenever he travels.
King said the Spanish crowds reminded him of the regional audiences in Australia, with the spirit of rock and roll and how uplifting and enriching it can be.
“The booking agent that we were involved with, who booked all the dates for us was really happy and asked us if we’d think about coming back and doing an extended tour, which is something we could definitely do,” he said.
“Then you could tag on another European country or the UK or something on top of that and do like an extended run if you wanted to, closer to home there are opportunities too, of course, like New Zealand or Japan even.
“For me, it’s all about learning new things… if that’s another tour, that’s cool but if its running another festival or writing an album or I’m good for whatever but it would be cool to do it again, for sure.”
Local fans of Smoke Stack Rhino won’t have to wait long to see them back in the Outer East, with a homecoming gig already lined up in Belgrave on Friday 14 November.
