Coming head-first out of Mansfield, south-east of Brisbane, in 2004, Violent Soho have grown to become Australia’s leading fundamental grunge outfit, with their honest and old-fashioned brand of I-don’t-give-a-shit rock’n’roll.
It’s been a long journey since the time guitarist James Tidswell almost ended up working at McDonald’s when the band was in between labels. “I was on my way to a job interview at McDonald’s, the one at Mt Gravatt on Logan Road,” he remembers, “and I got a text from my mate saying, ‘Congratulations.’ I wrote back and said, ‘Congratulations on what?’ He finally got back to me with: ‘Finally cutting your hair,’ and all I thought was, ‘Fuck, that was weird.’
“Then I went into McDonald’s, went through the interview and walked through the store. This kid saw me and said something like, ‘Hey, I saw you at Splendour and stuff,’ which was pretty funny to happen during a McDonald’s interview.”
By this point in Tidswell’s career, Violent Soho had taken him to New York, where they lived, toured and recorded for over a year, and got him signed to Ecstatic Peace! – the label founded by Thurston Moore, guitarist of Sonic Youth, a band prominent in the seminal grunge movement. Now the bloke was close to flipping burgers at Maccas. “I hopped into my car, put on the radio and listened to triple j, and The Doctor announced the ARIA nominees, and I heard our band announced and just went, ‘Holy fuck!’ It was so far from my mind that that could even be a possibility after coming out of an interview at McDonald’s. I just had no idea what to do.
“I ended up getting the job and on my first day I pulled over and called them up and said, ‘Hey, I’m really sorry but I can’t come in.’ I was going in to pick up my uniform and do my first shift when I called them up – I said, ‘I’m sorry man, I just can’t do this job.’”
It was Violent Soho’s 2010 self-titled album that grabbed the ARIA nomination for Best Hard Rock/Heavy Metal Album, but it was even before that when the real magic happened. They debuted with their EP Pigs & T.V. in 2006, which was funded solely by the sale of Tidswell’s car. “I had just written off my car and bought this Nissan Micra, so this tiny little white thing,” he recalls. “I sold it and got 6.5k for it – that’s how we ended up with the EP sounding so good, because we had a bit of money and got to take our time.”
Having morphed and mutated like the culture they exist in, the underlying truth to Violent Soho’s success is not where they’ve been or where they’re going, but rather where they come from and how the Mansfield ‘4122’ identity has translated into the roots of the band’s sound, attitude and personality.
“Mansfield is important to us because it shaped who we are as people and our band would like to represent what it’s like to just be yourself and not try to be more than that. It gave us the perspective of what things to do now to be ourselves, and that brings a lot of people to shows.”
Growing up together, the band members made bonds that no level of rock’n’roll ego could break. “We were growing up in the Fat Wreck Chords era when Blink was the equivalent of Nirvana and that sort of stuff,” Tidswell says. “Then it turned into My Chemical Romance stuff and the local scene kind of turned shit – people were getting big on bands like Amity Affliction and Mourning Tide and we just didn’t really connect with what was going in that scene.”
As for inspirations, Tidswell doesn’t hide the fact Violent Soho don’t mind their fair share of the mean green. “We like to smoke weed – I’m smoking weed right now,” he says. “We’re not trying to be ‘pro-weed’, but I guess we are – it’s not an issue, it shouldn’t be an issue.
“In America we just put it out there from the beginning. Literally, I walked down the street – I’d been there for three days, which had been the longest I’d gone without smoking weed, and I just started walking up to people asking [for it] and they would start shaking their heads saying ‘No.’ Then I saw a bunch of dudes sitting together on stools – it looked like a scene out of a movie – and I thought, ‘Those guys will definitely know where to get weed,’ so I walked up to them and said, ‘Hey, I’m from Australia, I’ve been here four days, we smoke weed every day there, do you guys know where we could get it?’
“One of them goes: ‘You a cop?’ Straight up. He asked me to show him my driver’s licence, so I get it out and he starts asking me all these questions – ‘What street do you live on? Why did you move here?’ I told him I play in a band and I point at an apartment down the street and say, ‘This one,’ and he just stopped and said, ‘Oh damn, we’re neighbours.’ He starts shaking my hand and introducing me to everyone and then he pulls out this huge blunt, looks at me and says, ‘You wanna get high?’ and gives it to me. So I start smoking it and this big black dude leans over me and slowly booms, ‘Inhale.’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, I know how to smoke weed,’ so I just hit it and the dude watched me and then ran across the street, came back with weed and that’s how we started getting on.”
Hungry Ghost out now through I Oh You.Catch Violent Soho atMetro Theatre Friday December 5 andCambridge Hotel, Newcastle Saturday December 6.
