Interview: The Delta Riggs
- Brooke Tunbridge
- May 18, 2015
- 5 min read
The Delta Riggs, Maitland GTM 2015 (photo by Brooke Tunbridge)
Before Groovin the Moo, we had a chat with Elliott Hammond , lead singer of The Delta Riggs to discuss their latest album Dipz Zebazios, their Rolling Stones Live Act of the Year award, their tour with Foo Fighters and of course, who they were excited to see at Groovin the Moo.
Firstly I just want to congratulate you and the rest of the band on all the success with your latest album Dipz Zebazios, all the tours and your award from the Annual Rolling Stone Awards for Live Act of The Year! Those are admirable accomplishments, were these things you guys aspired to or was it a pleasant surprise?
ELLIOT: Yeah thank you. It was just a pleasant surprise; we didn’t have any idea that we’d be nominated for them. I mean there are so many strong live acts in Australia at the moment. Either way, Violent Soho and The Preatures, we play with bands like that all the time and they’re great bands. Last year we were up against Lorde, (laughs) Lorde took that one out.
A little different to this year’s nominees, congrats again! I was reading an article on musicians who run their own record label, and came across you guys and Rah Rah Radio. How do you find the time to juggle running a record label while touring so often and making music?
ELLIOT: We have help from our management who help us to kind of operate a lot of the business side of the label and at the moment we haven’t really expanded it beyond just releasing our own music but that is something that in the next few years we’re going to start to do. Look at some other ways of you know releasing new music off the label and different artists. It’s really early days for that but right now it’s still a catalyst mainly for The Delta Riggs to kind of have more control over what we do. We do pretty much everything in our record label and have Inertia and our publisher Alberts there as kind of like the team, it all comes from us we just have a big team of people working on what happens.
So you guys made Rah Rah Radio specifically to release your own music?
ELLIOT: Yeah pretty much that’s how it started. I mean people do things in different ways; you can sign to a major label if you want and kind of do it that way. For us it just made a bit more sense to maintain a bit of control over what was happening so we prefer to do it like this.
What’s the goal in the long run for running a record label in addition to being a touring and recording band?
ELLIOT: Well we’re kind of getting pretty heavily into production so I guess the long term goals for it are to find some artists that we want to collaborate and work with and release different music. Even signing other bands or other people that we think kind of brings something to it, like I said that’s still a couple of years down the track because you’re right we just don’t have time to put as much effort into the label as we’d like at the moment.
It looks like you guys have been really busy, especially these last few months with the album release. How was your time touring overseas (US/UK)?
ELLIOT: Yeah I mean they’re always just whirlwinds because we have to fit in as many shows as we can while we’re in the country. I mean obviously it’s expensive to have a band overseas so usually we’re playing more than we are in Australia. Usually we’re playing like 4-5 nights a week.
And then straight onto a plane to tour Australia!
ELLIOT: Yeah it can be pretty exhausting but we love doing it.
The Delta Riggs, Maitland GTM 2015 (photo by Brooke Tunbridge)
In keeping with the busy tour schedule, what was the most exciting thing about supporting Foo Fighters on their ‘Sonic Highways’ tour ?
ELLIOT: We were pretty excited to meet Dave actually, and the rest of the band. I’d watched that Sonic Highways HBO series that Dave Grohl directed before the tour and you know it’s really impressive how kind of deep he goes into the roots and culture behind the different studios and how those certain scenes have affected it. It was cool to meet them and be able to see what makes them tick a bit more.
How did you guys manage to get on that tour? Can you talk us though how you felt when you found out?
ELLIOT: We found out at the airport because we played a show in LA and it turns out that someone from Foo Fighters management was at the show and then we flew back to Australia the next day and when we landed we found out that we got the tour. It had been announced, it was all over social media. The first thing I thought when I saw it was just like wow we’re not going to be an underground band anymore, this is taking it sort of masses, you know it’s a stadium tour. I guess that was my first thought like wow this is gonna become something bigger than what it is right now.
Were they some of the biggest crowds you’ve played to, apart from festivals?
ELLIOT: Yeah I think so, I’ve spent some time playing with Wolfmother in 2012 and I did a lot of touring in Europe and we were doing mainstage like 70,000 or something but I think Sydney here is 88,000 so that’s be up there with bigger crowds. Enough to get you excited anyway.
Wolfmother! You’re on the line-up with them for Groovin the Moo this April/May, are you excited to catch up with them?
ELLIOT: Yeah definitely. When I saw that they were on the bill I thought yes, this will be awesome!
Anyone else on the Groovin the Moo line-up that you’re keen to see? Tkay Maidza has had a few shows with you overseas and is now on the GTM line-up with you.
ELLIOT: Yeah we know her! DMAs as well we’re really good friends with, The Preatures, the guys from Sticky Fingers we’ve crossed paths with. That’s gonna be awesome, I think there’ll be a lot of good stuff happening on that run.
THE DELTA RIGGS:
Check out the first single taken from The Delta Riggs latest Album Dipz Zebazios:
If you missed The Delta Riggs at Groovin the Moo, you can catch them in July at Splendour In The Grass.
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