Sydney’s Lime Cordiale and their infectious brand of jangly rock are back on home turf.
Earlier this year, when they were touring drought-stricken areas in rural Queensland, founding members and brothers Oli and Louis Leimbach made it a family affair, taking their dad along for the ride. The video clip for their new single ‘Not That Easy’ is a montage of these tour shenanigans, captured on film by Leimbach senior. Being on tour with their father seems like something that most musicians would baulk at the idea of, but for Oli and Louis, it seemed like a natural decision.
“We were on tour in outback Queensland, playing a few shows for drought relief, and in between cities there was ten hours of dead dirt road with nothing around,” says Oli. “Dad decided to come along with us and bought his camera and filmed the whole trip. We’ve never been on tour with our dad before, but it was interesting, and then when we looked back at the footage, we realised there was a lot of good footage, so we ended up turning it into a music video and dedicating it to drought relief.”
The clip is made up of a number of outlandish scenes – think quintessential country pubs, large fake dinosaurs and Segways, all in the middle of the Australian outback.
“We were at this festival in Winton called Vision Splendid, which is this really small town in outback Queensland, and we had been asked to play there,” Oli says. “People from all around the area came to the town, then two people rocked up to the festival with Segways. We saw them riding down the road, and we were like, ‘What the hell? What kooks.’ It was just the weirdest thing to see people riding Segways in the desert, so naturally we hailed them down and asked them if we could have a go. We filmed it, and by that point we thought that we might be doing a music video, so we were trying to find a few opportunities that were entertaining.
“The same thing happened with the big drone shots that are in the music video for ‘Not That Easy’ – some guy was just in town with this drone helicopter thing, and then he filmed our show and we used the footage.”
Most of Lime Cordiale’s time has been spent playing house parties and bars up and down the east coast, so their most recent tour gave them the chance to reach out to a different audience.
“We didn’t know much about Vision Splendid, and when the organisers asked us to go up and play at the festival, we thought it would be pretty cool to do something different,” says Oli. “A lot of actors fly up to introduce their films, but we were the only band that were playing up there, and we went up thinking, ‘Yeah, we’ll go up and see this place, and it’ll probably be pretty weird,’ but we ended up staying in Winton for a week and then played shows in Longreach and Townsville.
“The thing with country towns like that is you go in there thinking it’s going to be full of bogans, but these were proper country towns, there’s no such thing as a bogan out there – there’s just farmers and country people who are the most genuine people and awesome Australians. We would just sit in the pub and sit there all day having some of the best conversations with such weird and different people, who all have great stories and all have time for you.
“We really got into being up there and hearing all the stories of the drought and people struggling and having to move out of the town, which is when we started to feel like we should get more involved in the drought relief program. We sold raffle tickets along the tour, raising money for the drought appeal.”
The Sydneysiders were taken aback by the level of hardship being experienced in these rural areas, and Oli returned home keen to share some of the stories he learnt along the way, hoping they might raise awareness and spur other bands to get out into rural Australia.
“Everyone we met was extremely positive, but we were continually hearing stories of people having to sell their farm, or their home being taken from them by the bank because they were out of money. A lot of farmers’ properties aren’t worth anything because of the drought, so people were losing their homes for a lot less than what they bought it for. This leads to these people having to move out of the town and find another occupation when they’ve been in the shearing shed for generations.”
It’s always refreshing to see a band break well out of the east coast touring circuit, especially considering this was the scene that really shaped Lime Cordiale’s sound. So will they be making it out to the country again?
“Yeah, I’d like to,” says Oli. “It’s just different, and people get really enthusiastic; they don’t have that much live music around there. We’d definitely like to get back there, for sure.”
Lime Cordiale’sRoad To Paradise is available now through Chugg/MGM, and they play theMetro TheatreonSaturday December 19with Ayla and Australia.
