by Benji Heywood (@benjiheywood)
It’s about noon and Gareth Liddiard is happy to be home. The Tropical Fuck Storm frontman is back in the bush country of Nagambie, a tiny enclave in Victoria, Australia where you’re more likely to hear waterfowl than a motor vehicle. Spring has arrived, with all its songbird and blossom scent, and as Liddiard sits in his studio surrounded by gear, he looks out at the ambling Goulburn River and counts his blessings.
“It’s beautiful here,” says the 47-year-old Liddiard of his surroundings, far from the hustle of the nearest city, Melbourne. “It's a fucking nice place to record because we can do a bunch of work and then we can go and swim. Or we can take a boat into town.”
On one hand, Liddiard has plenty to be thankful for. He lives “the highlife in a cheap way,” spending most of his time in a repurposed 1960s live-work classroom he shares with his partner and bandmate, Fiona Kitschin, and their two dogs. But life has been challenging in the last year with circumstances forcing a restless bard used to touring to adapt to life much closer to home.
Late in 2022, Kitschin – whom Liddiard affectionately calls “Fi” – was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer and has been undergoing treatment throughout 2023, causing the postponement of all TFS touring. Concurrently, the pair discovered their fox terrier Ralf also had cancer and is now receiving chemotherapy. To top it off, TFS drummer Lauren Hammel recently broke a finger in three places, putting the next Tropical Fuck Storm album on temporary hold. Already a lyrical songwriter and oddball experimental guitar player, Liddiard now finds himself in a new role.
“I’m become the caretaker to two very sick people,” says Liddiard. He admits he’s still trying to make sense of what’s been a tough adjustment. “I wake up in the morning, and there's a bunch of tasks that need to be performed. There's emotional support, trying to make Fi laugh and try and make everything normal and comfortable and make yummy food and all that sort of stuff.”
Liddiard calls Fi’s treatment “fucking grueling” but is quick to note “Fi’s doing better. It’s just taking forever. She’s tough. She’s funny. She’ll survive.”
A pause in life as he knew it has allowed Liddiard to revisit past ventures, partly out of opportunity and partly out of need. The recent reissue of his lone solo album, 2010’s Strange Tourist, and an excellent live album chronicling the album’s subsequent tour, Bootlick Series Vol. 1 (Live 2006-2016), has provided a chance for Liddiard to not only support his family but to revisit a suite of songs that have yet to get their proper due. Post-Trash sat down with Liddiard to chat about the reissue, finding the “I” in his songs, his work with the supergroup Springtime, the future of Tropical Fuck Storm and a possible end to the hiatus of Liddiard’s seminal band, The Drones.
The conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
photo courtesy of Gareth Liddiard
Post-Trash: What are you reading right now?
Gareth Liddiard: At the moment I'm reading bunch of books. Short stories by JG Ballard – sci fi stuff – or Diogenes, the philosopher from like 2000 years ago. It’s quite funny. Diogenes lived in a barrel in the marketplace in Athens and was a prick to everybody and was really quite nasty but quite funny. So, yeah, stuff like that. Essays about literature or music or just short stuff. I'm taking notes and putting them in my little book, which then they sort of transmute into something different in the end.
PT: In past interviews, you've suggested that once a song gets to a certain place, then that song is going to become one you release. Where is that place and how do you know when you’re there?
GL: I mean, you know when you get to that point; before, though, you don't really know. Songwriting is like working in a machine shop. It's like having a warehouse stocked full of thousands of car parts, and you kind of just start tinkering away. Even though there's enough stuff to make a hundred cars, you might end up just making ten, but they're ten really good ones, and they've got all the bits that you liked the most.
Think of the way the solar system would have come about. A previous star would have exploded, and then left a big ring of crap everywhere, which because of gravity slowly congeals and became rocks which then become asteroids, which then become planets, and then eventually, you know, kind of cleans itself up and becomes a working solar system that has a balance. That's kind of how an album comes about.
With TFS, we work together more so than other bands I've had. Fi, Lauren, Erica (Dunn, TFS guitarist) put heaps in, kind of generate a bit of gravity and put everything together. Then, in the end, you just go oh, hang on. I think we've done it. I think that's it.
PT: Do people mistake the “I” in your songs for “Gareth”? Seems to me your songwriting is fairly literary, especially based on your process.
GL: Sometimes, but I mean, in in most cases, and about 75% of the “I” is me, but it's not necessarily strictly autobiographical.
PT: I asked because we're having this interview right after the reissue of Strange Tourist. I'm curious, which of those songs do you think has the most of you in it? I would imagine something like “The Radicalization of D” is a little bit more storytelling. Like, you’re not personally driving tanks around Melbourne or plotting terrorist attacks.
GL: (Laughs) The guy driving a tank around really happened! I remember, I woke up and mom was still at home. I was like, what are you doing? She said, there’s a tank driving around the city. So, we chucked the TV on, watched that play out. Yeah, dude had stolen a tank. He went to the big police headquarters where they have this huge car park full of patrol cars and he just fucking ran them over like one of those Monster Trucks. Then he ran out of fuel and the police just blew the top on it and dropped a tear gas canister in there.
So, yeah, it's all drawn from experience. That song is about a guy called David Hicks who went and joined al Qaeda after 9/11. People instantly wrote him off. But he grew up in a similar way to me. Whereas he grew up with single parent father, I grew up with a single parent mother, and I can kind of see why he might be disenfranchised with the West. Other people just said, well, what an asshole. I said, yeah, he might be an asshole, but why did he do it?
There's an Alan Vega song from his solo album, Collision Drive called “Viet Vet” which is like a ten-minute dirge telling the story of a returning Vietnam veteran whose life just slowly falls to pieces as the song goes on. In the end he gets shot by the cops. I always thought that song was fucking great. With the “Radicalization of D,” I guess I was doing something similar. What I didn't expect was the song to be fucking 16 minutes long. I thought it was like seven minutes long. Until I timed it and then I was like, shit (laughs).
PT: The Springtime (Liddiard’s pandemic project) version is closer to 20 minutes if I'm not mistaken. What was it like working with Jim (White of Dirty Three) and Chris (Abrahams of The Necks)?
GL: Chris I'd worked with before. He was playing in a band called The Triffids who began in the early 80s in Australia – great band – and the singer died. And then occasionally, they'd get back together, and I would sing for them.
Jim I've known for fucking ages, like, through the Dirty Three because I used to work in Western Australia and do roadie work. I'd drive rockstars around and stuff and set them up and change their strings and I knew Jim from that time. Then through the 2000s we’d see each other at, like, All Tomorrow’s Parties festivals because the Drones would be playing and so would he. Then, because of the pandemic, he got stuck in Australia. And so we just did gigs together for something to do and for a bit of money, and then we got Chris to join.
Working with those guys, they're amazing. They really are singular musicians. It was really cool. Because it was me and Jim, at the beginning. And then when we got Chris involved, it was just great. We were like kids in a candy store because Chris can do anything. He can do Chopin, or Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner or even more out-there shit. Chris did all the heavy lifting.
PT: Let’s talk about the live album Bootlick Series Vol. One you just released. How did it come about?
GL: Doing solo shows is weird. You are literally sitting there and everyone is looking at you. There could be 400 people in a room and 399 of them are facing your direction. It’s very uncomfortable in a funny way. Plus, the songs are pretty grueling. I always feel guilty that I'm wasting everybody's Saturday night by bringing them down. So, I tried to make it a bit more comfortable for everyone. Crack stupid jokes in between. It's fun to talk to a crowd. It keeps the interest for me otherwise it would get boring after about ten shows.
But yeah, I always recorded or tried to record shows on my cassette four-track I bought in the 90s. Basically, Bootlick uses the best versions I could find, but the recording tapes were all fucked up. They'd been rained on, so it was a salvage job [editor’s note: this is especially evident on the Warren Zevon cover “My Shits Fucked Up”]. But it was fun.
PT: Did people think that Warren Zevon cover was your song?
GL: (Laughs) Yeah, a lot of people. It's a great song. It's right up my alley. It's quite funny for a song about terminal illness – ya know, everybody's eventually going to die – and I like that. When I was young, I listened to a lot of Townes Van Sant. I love his live album Live at the Old Quarter. That's got the same vibe (as Bootlick). Very grim songs with just silly, almost dad jokes, in between – because you can kind of tell Townes feels a bit awkward for being such a drag.
PT: Oh yeah, totally. Now that you mention it, I can definitely hear the similarities. Gareth, I’m growing conscious of your time, but I wanted to ask before I let you go: Do you have a different perspective on the Drones hiatus now that you're like, seven, eight years out?
GL: Sure. At the end, it just got so hard to organize a bunch of guys with families and kids and other things going on. We were all in our late 30s. We'd say, well, let's go to Europe or something. And then we'd be planning the Europe thing, then someone would pull the pin and just go I can't do it now. And it's like, fuck, man. We just did four months of planning. You know?
So, Fi and I thought, wouldn't it be better just to find a couple of people who were ten years younger than us who were still keen to tour? Because, you know, touring is fun! It can be hard, but at the end of it, you’re sitting on a beach, on a Greek island, you know what I mean? With in-jokes and hangouts. It’s a laugh and a half.
As far as the hiatus goes, I see those guys quite often. We go out and get drunk and just hang out, or we talk on the phone. We've always been friends. Eventually, we will need to make a new album as an excuse – I wouldn't want to be in some legacy band. It's not like we were fucking Talking Heads where we were really famous, right? We can’t just go around and play gigs of old hits. We'd have to do something legit and make a new album. And yeah, it's been something I've thought about how we would do that. It'll be good because TFS is more experimental; Erica and Lauren are way more punk rock. So, the two projects are completely different.
Strange Tourist, reissued by Joyful Noise, and Gareth Liddiard’s live album Bootlick Series Vol. One (Live 2006-2016) are both out now. You can contribute to the GoFundMe for Fiona Kitschin here. Tickets to Liddiard’s solo tour are on sale now.