On Balancing Life And Tour

Kickstarting a band in Australia can often be a difficult task with a goal of a worldwide audience in future sight, but starting out in Australia’s island state Tasmania is a whole different level.

For four-piece rockers, Luca Brasi, growing up on the Apple Isle was something that was never going to hold them back.

“It’s a pretty small island,” Richardson laughs. “You play the two major centres, Hobart and Launceston, and that’s it. It’s easy to over-saturate that scene but at the same time if you don’t play a lot of shows then no one knows who you are. You’ve got to find the right balance of getting in everyone’s faces to begin with then pulling it right back.

“Now we’re at that point where we don’t really play Tasmania at all. It’s so small you do a couple of headline shows and then that’s it for six months then you go on tour and come back again.”

Luca Brasi live for the road, supporting bands such as You Me At Six and recently retiring Australian icons, Kisschasy. Despite the touring life being a rough schedule the group are showing no signs of slowing down.

“We love touring,” Richardson claims. “It’s such a good time. If we could do it all the time we’d love to. The hardest part is coming back and trying to adjust to normal life and going back to work.”

“A couple of us are studying full-time and some of us work part-time. Pat’s the most grown up of us all us; he has a pretty gnarly engineering job but he can do a lot of work on the road with the magic of the internet. It’s really lucky the set-up we have at the moment.”

“The tour we did in March last year with Narwhals was my favourite tour to date. When we started to see shows pre-selling out that was an unreal thing for me to put it in all this work and see someone come and check it out was nice.”

With seven years as a group under their belt, Luca Brasi have come a long way since their first release, Extended Family, an album Richardson has only vague memories about.

“I don’t remember writing that record or playing anything. I’d never sung before, I didn’t know what I was doing. I always wonder what happened. I think we’ve come a long way from there for sure, especially with the current line-up. Now it’s a family, we’re such good mates, we work so well together and travel well together, it’s nice.”

Having recently released two new singles in Aeroplane and The Cascade Blues, Luca Brasi have big plans for 2016 with a new full-length release on the horizon.

“Aeroplane is already up there as one of the most popular songs. A lot of the places we played it for the first time on the tour we just finished and already the whole audience knows every single word. It’s phenomenal.

“We put out another single, The Cascade Blues, which is a nod to a Tasmanian beer. It’s leading up to album which should drop soon.”

The group will be back in Perth this weekend, with a combination of new and old tracks in hand for what should be an energetic set.

“We haven’t been to Perth since the Narwhals tour. We spent most of the time writing and did a few tours in between where none of them ended up in Perth. Now that the record is done and ready for release we’ll definitely be in Perth, which is good to see.

"I think we’re going to try have the whole thing ready live so we can alternate between songs. You don’t want to go to a show and watch a band play a new record so it’s fun trying to find the right balance and see what works.”

Originally published in X-Press Magazine