West Thebarton Brothel Party have become Adelaide legends over the last year and a half, it’s pretty safe to say. Nipping at the heels of fellow South Australian rock gems Bad//Dreems, the seven-piece ‘hydra’ of an act have broadened their touring horizons considerably through 2016, playing to more audiences around the country as both headliners and supports for some dope shows.
We caught up with Brian Bolado and Ray Dalfsen at BIGSOUND last week ahead of their official showcase that Thursday to see how Brisbane had treated them so far. The BIGSOUND shows had fallen in line with WTBP’s ‘Four More Years Tour’, which the band is set to wrap in October, before hitting some festivals before the end of the year.
“It’s a little bit tricky to juggle,” Brian admits. “We’ve all played in bands before and we’ve all done touring before in our separate bands, so I think we’ve tried to figure out a way to do it sustainably with seven people, getting schedules right. It’s not as hard as I actually thought it would be; we’re all in our mid-20’s now and we’re not shitkickers like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to scrounge up money…’. It’s much simpler than I thought it would be .”
“We all really do just live for playing live shows,” Ray adds “That’s why we get our shit together and organise ourselves to move around, even though it can be pretty hard…!”
Having toured quite a bit through this year with their EP material, the guys reflect on how their profile has grown noticeably interstate.
“We went to Sydney for the last tour,” Brian remembers. “This was probably one of our first headline shows in Sydney for about almost nine months, so we weren’t sure what the turn out would be. We played the Botany View and there was heaps of people; we’d just released “Red or White” and all of a sudden when that song kicked in, heaps of people knew the words. We’d played it heaps in Adelaide but interstate was a different story, so that was nice. Almost really angry! It’s like, ‘You’re really singing “Red or White” really hard, harder than Ray!'”
With the likes of BIGSOUND and Sydney’s King St. Crawl now under their belts, the boys of West Theb have a pretty good handle on how these huge festivals can provide emerging local talent with a pretty sweet platform to not only reconnect with a passionate fan base, but connect with new musicians along the way.
“It seems that, especially in Adelaide at the moment,” Ray explains. There’s heaps of like-minded people who just aren’t afraid to hang out and aren’t afraid to wear what they think and what they like on their sleeve. It’s really cool. Obviously, the guys from Bad//Dreems had some pretty sweet success and I think that was really the start of a lot of people who are into the same thing, just realise that Adelaide is a happening town; it’s not a dead, desolate city like everyone else thinks. There is a reason to go to shows in Adelaide and it’s cool now, more than ever, live music is really kicking goals in SA.”
Watch the full interview below!
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WEST THEBARTON BROTHEL PARTY TOUR DATES
September 17th | Stonecutters, ADELAIDE
September 30th | The Old Bar, MELBOURNE
October 1st | Chopped Festival, NEWSTEAD
October 14th | Jive, ADELAIDE
Header image: Zakarij Kaczmarek.
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