Spiderbait’s Kram Says A ‘Comedy Of Errors’ Led To Their Defining Hit

If ever a band from amidst the fertile ranks of the ‘90s Australian alternative scene was going to score an ARIA #1 single with a banjo-imbued cover of a ’70s smash by an obscure American ‘one hit wonder’ – which was itself a cover of a traditional a cappella work song first made famous in the 1930s by a folk-blues pioneer from the Deep South – it was bound to be Spiderbait.

The trio of friends from the small NSW town of Finley – Mark ‘Kram’ Maher (drums/vocals), Janet English (bass/vocals) and Damian ‘Whitt’ Whitty (guitar) – did things in their own idiosyncratic way from the outset, whether that be naming their 1991 debut EP P'tang Yang Kipper Bang Uh!, whipping up frenetic mosh pits with firebrand renditions of Run by ‘70s UK comedy legends The Goodies and a track seemingly referencing the fictional titular detective from ‘80s UK crime show Bergerac, or later scoring a massive industry win with an acerbic ditty taking aim squarely at the fickleness of the music industry.

Then in 2004 they outdid themselves when the lead single from their sixth album, 2004’s Tonight Alive, the ridiculously catchy Black Betty – a cover of the 1930s song by legendary Louisiana artist Lead Belly, which in 1977 had been successfully remodelled into rock form by short-lived NYC band Ram Jam – became a massive radio hit and began ascending the commercial singles chart.

By both thrilling existing Spiderbait fans and earning them a horde of new devotees, Black Betty had quickly earned a #1 single for a band who, until then, had only cracked the Top 20 once in their storied career.

Now, as the band prepare to embark on a national tour celebrating the anniversary of their epic achievement, Kram explains that it was witnessing the Ram Jam version of Black Betty as a youngster on iconic weekly ABC music show Countdown that planted the seeds for this most random of triumphs.

“It’s weird, there’s some songs which just kick you in the ass and you go, ‘This is sick!’” he laughs. “I remember just feeling it. It’s not like the way you get moved by a Bob Dylan song or some amazing epic emotional track, this just makes you want to want to drive a car as fast as possible off a cliff and into the sun and burn out all the depression and banality in your life. That’s kind of the space it’s in, and that’s one of the reasons that me and Whitt love heavy metal so much and always have. It’s just as fun to play as it is to listen to.

“I remember when I saw King Gizzard [And The Lizard Wizard] last year and I was saying to their drummer Michael [Cavanagh], who’s a mate, ‘Dude, how sick’s the metal?’ The metal stuff they’re playing is just so awesome, and you can tell the excitement and the fun they’re having playing that sort of music, where the audience is almost a bonus – the band would still love to be playing it just as much if the audience wasn’t even there.

“So I think this song had that effect on me as a kid. I’m sure there were a lot of other songs too, but I started mucking around with it years ago and it wasn’t until I cut this demo of it and Sylvia [Massy – Tonight Alive producer] really liked that demo. I [found] my old four-track recorder and took it over to the studio in California, and listened to the demo on that and kind of locked in on the vibe – I suddenly knew what voice I was going to go for.

“Because the way we’d been playing it was a little bit different, so we pieced it together between the four of us as to how we wanted to shape it. It was a weird one, because the song wasn’t really finished until Whitt and I were in the mastering suite back in Sydney and we said, ‘It needs a middle eight, there’s something missing and we need to tighten up this arrangement’.

“Then it ends up becoming this huge phenomenon of a hit, and we basically had to go back and go, ‘Right, now we have to go back and relearn how to play it’. It’s weird how you can reconstruct a track that you used to play, it changes, and then you have to relearn it. Now it’s definitely one of our most fun songs to play.

“Obviously one of the reasons why is because it’s our biggest hit and the crowd goes nuts, but for me personally it’s just such a physical and emotional experience, playing that song on the drums and singing. I’m super high at the end and I just lose my shit, and that’s one of my favourite parts of playing in a band.”

The Spiderbait take on Black Betty shifted enough copies over time to reach double-Platinum accreditation in Australia – also faring strongly in foreign markets – in part because it managed to crossover into the dance realms as well as more than placating Spiderbait’s traditional rock following.

“It definitely did make that leap, and I think that’s one of the reasons for its success internationally as well because it does have that crossover into those two worlds,” Kram offers. “They’re two kind of different ways of kicking ass – one with a guitar and the other an ‘in a club’ vibe – and when you put them together like that it’s really cool.

“I think there are certain sections of the song where it really kicks in, and when we’ve played in recent times at festivals and so on to much younger crowds who maybe haven’t seen us play before, just how they know the words and sing along – not just that song but a lot of our songs – is a really great pleasure and a really beautiful thing.”

Spiderbait had been no stranger to success before Black Betty went gangbusters – they’d won an ARIA Award for Best Alternative Release for their third album Ivy And The Big Apples (1996), twice cracked #3 on the ARIA albums chart (with both Ivy And The Big Apples and its 1999 follow-up Grand Slam) and the aforementioned “abrasive ditty” Buy Me A Pony had scored the coveted #1 spot on the 1997 triple j Hottest 100 – but Kram admits it was still a surreal feeling reaching the summit of the singles chart.

“We always talk about how it’s kind of nice to have the ‘double’ of the #1 hit but also being the first Aussie band to win the Hottest 100,” he explains. “Especially given what Buy Me A Pony is about, namely the fickleness of fame and bullshit of the life, and how you can be loved and then loathed within ten seconds, and then loved again. It’s a very cynical song and I wrote it for that reason, and then it ended up becoming the big hit.

“But then with Black Betty as well, it’s another version on the same comment on pop culture, I guess – not the song itself but the whole sort of success. Having both of those two things together is really awesome, but as kids watching Countdown and being obsessed by the charts, having a #1 is ridiculous.

“Like if you were a soccer player you’d want to play for Australia or for Real Madrid or something, and if you’re a rock star you want to have a #1 – it’s just one of those things that you dream about doing. I was pretty unashamed about that as a kid – I’d think, ‘How sick would that be?’ – but when it finally did happen, it was a very numb and bizarre feeling.

“I think that’s a bit of an Australian trait, to not really know what to do with yourself when all your dreams come true. You just go into yourself a little bit – we’re not very good at celebrating our successes, although that is a very endearing aspect of our culture that I do really love.”

The success Spiderbait achieved with Black Betty was validated even further for the band when the family of the man who’d first made the song popular last century reached out to offer their approval. “The ancestors of Lead Belly contacted us on email via our label,” Kram tells. “It was quite distant so we didn’t get to meet them or anything, but it was basically just saying they wanted to let us know that the version we did was fantastic, and that it was great to hear the song again, and they’re rapt that it’s such a big it.

“It really blew us away, and it was really nice to have that recognition and in a sense be given permission to celebrate the hit as well. When it’s not your song – especially when it’s such an old song and comes from a totally different place in musical culture, and also from one of the African-American guys who essentially invented blues and rock’n’roll back in the day, and how that group has been so influential in shaping the overall tapestry of culture despite enduring such hardship – having that contact was a real trip for us, and really awesome.”

In conjunction with the national run, Tonight Alive – which upon release reached a more-than-respectable #14 in Australia – is being pressed onto vinyl for the first time, celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Kram remembers teaming with the album’s producer Massy (who prior to working with Spiderbait had overseen recordings for the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tool and) at her studio in Weed, California, and how the resulting record completely revitalised the band’s career.

“You’ve probably interviewed a lot of bands who’ve had this happen,” he reflects, “but when you start up, if you‘re lucky enough then you get to be the new hot thing and everybody wants to come and see you – you’re 19 or 20 or whatever and everyone’s talking about you – then you have some success with your records, and if you play your cards right, you’ll get really big.

“But then inevitably everyone has a bit of a dip. And we’d had this dip period with [2001 fifth album] The Flight Of Wally Funk, and even though we love that record, it was probably our least successful one as far as sales go. And when that starts to happen, the Buy Me A Pony thing comes in again – all of a sudden relationships can change and it can be weird.

“So we went over to America. Our A&R guy at the time, Dave Shrimpton from Universal, said, ‘Look, I’d love you guys to make a really raw rock’n’roll record’, and we were like, ‘Yeah, that sounds sick!’ But we weren’t actually all that well-prepared for it. I remember Janet only finished the artwork on the album with literally five minutes to go before deadline!

“It was one of those experiences, she was stressing out and swearing and just said, ‘Fuck it, I’ll just do this fuckin’ silhouette’ and we were, like, ‘That’s cool! That looks awesome!’ It’s one of our most iconic covers and one of my favourite covers because it’s her silhouette and she looks so rock, although it’s just taken from a photograph.

“But just like that, the songs were all put together pretty quickly. It’s probably not our most even album, but one of the things about the record is that it has some of our best singles on it – obviously there’s Black Betty and Tonite, I really love those two songs, but Janet had Fucken Awesome, and all of her songs on there are really strong.

“I think going away to make an album can be a bit hit-and-miss because you’ve only got a certain amount of time and you’re never quite sure. We loved working with Sylvia and her energy was great, and the whole adventure was brilliant being in the States to make that record, and asking her all about how she used to work with Prince and all this cool stuff.

“But you don’t really get the chance to go back and change things as easily if you feel that you could have done something better, or if you changed your mind about something, because it’s too far away. You can get her to change a mix or whatever but that can be a bit fraught, so it is hit and miss.

“I think we did spend a lot of time on Black Betty – all four of us – thinking, ‘This could be something really awesome, there’s something to this song,’ but then we didn’t really finish the actual song until we got back to Sydney and me and Whitt cut a different middle eight section in the mastering suite. We’re supposed to be finishing the record and we’re still changing shit.

“So it was a bit like that, a bit of a comedy of errors and things then randomly falling into place like some strange and wonderful destiny. I think the music Gods really shined on us, and I think if the album hadn’t have been such a big hit – and Black Betty hadn’t have been such a big hit – we may not have stayed together, we might have all gone and done other things.

“So in a way we’re celebrating not just the massive hit that Black Betty has become – not just on the charts, it’s racked up hundreds of millions of views on platforms all around the planet – but also that time, looking at it as the rebirth of the band. It’s like the second coming of the band, and we’ve never looked back since. We’ve been this big ever since.

“And it also set us free of a lot of that pent-up frustration that Buy Me A Pony talks about: it made us sort of go, ‘You know what, don’t worry about the fickleness, don’t worry about the bullshit, just know who your friends are, stay connected, just try and do the best work you can and have a great time doing it’. We’ve kind’ve adopted that positivity – or at least I have – ever since, and it’s been transformative to our longevity and our career. Here we are, pushing nearly 35 years as a band, which is a real trip for everyone.”

After 35 years at the coalface making music with his mates, Kram explains that he finds his current status as an Oz rock veteran completely liberating.

“It’s weird, some of our great inspirations are other Aussie bands like Midnight Oil, like AC/DC, like Paul Kelly, like The Bad Seeds – bands that are old, or at least older than us, but who are way more legendary than we are,” he smiles. “But they show that the longer that a band can stay together, and as long as they stay true to who they are and aren’t playing like shit and releasing good quality work, the longer you go can be better for you artistically.

“You can be appreciated more as an older band. I mean Iggy Pop’s one of the ultimate examples of that, how you can possibly even be appreciated more as an older artist than you were when you were younger. It turns the whole pop mentality and what’s expected of musicians on its head in a way, and that’s a really great thing.

“You truly left go of the baggage and don’t care about that stuff anymore and that sets you free, which has a massive effect on your performances and on your writing and on every aspect of your life, which for me has been a really revitalising thing.”

SPIDERBAIT

​AUGUST – SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2024 AUSTRALIAN TOUR

​WITH SPECIAL GUESTS POLISH CLUB, ADALITA, PRIVATE FUNCTION & ABBE MAY

TUESDAY 13 AUGUST - ​The Fortitude Music Hall | Brisbane, QLD (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guests Polish Club

FRIDAY 16 AUGUST - Hindley Street Music Hall | Adelaide, SA (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guests Polish Club

SATURDAY 17 AUGUST - Odeon Theatre | Hobart, TAS (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guests Polish Club

FRIDAY 30 AUGUST - ​Bar On The Hill | Newcastle, NSW (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guests Polish Club

SATURDAY 31 AUGUST - ​Waves | Wollongong, NSW (18+)
​With special guests Polish Club

SATURDAY 14 SEPTEMBER - Astor Theatre | Perth, WA (Lic. All Ages) // SOLD OUT
​With special guest Abbe May

SUNDAY 15 SEPTEMBER - Astor Theatre | Perth, WA (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guest Abbe May

THURSDAY 19 SEPTEMBER - ​Forum | Melbourne, VIC (18+)
​With special guests Private Function

FRIDAY 20 SEPTEMBER - ​Forum | Melbourne, VIC (18+) // SOLD OUT
​With special guests Private Function

SATURDAY 21 SEPTEMBER - ​Enmore Theatre | Sydney, NSW (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guests Polish Club

SUNDAY 20 OCTOBER - ​Miami Marketta Laneway | Gold Coast, QLD (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guest Adalita

FRIDAY 25 OCTOBER - ​UC Refectory | Canberra, ACT (Lic. All Ages)
​With special guest Adalita