Cate Blanchett Loves Vintage Trouble & So Should You

California-based rockin' rhythm & blues band Vintage Trouble are heading back to Australia in April for Byron Bay Bluesfest (as well as a couple of headlining shows of their own in Melbourne and Sydney) in what will be their third trip Down Under since their formation in 2010. All four members joined us on a conference call from LA recently, and drummer Richard Danielson is happy to relate a very special memory for him from a previous Aussie tour.

"For Cate Blanchett to say she loves my band at the festival while we're playing, that was such a cool thing."

"We played the Sydney Film Festival," he recalls, "[and] the actress Cate Blanchett was there. We were playing that festival — and I love her to death, she's one of my favourite actresses — and apparently she said to somebody, 'Oh my God, I love that band!', and they came running over to me and said 'Cate Blanchett just said that she loves you guys'. I'm not really ever starstruck, but for Cate Blanchett to say she loves my band at the festival while we're playing, that was such a cool thing and I'll never forget it."

This will be the band's second appearance on the Bluesfest line-up, and they are stoked to be returning to Australia and playing the world famous festival again. "It's so great to be coming back for that festival," says guitarist Nalle Colt. "We'd heard about that festival for many years, we've played so much all over the world, and we'd always meet someone who would say 'you gotta go to Byron Bay Bluesfest', and now it's kinda part of our thing. So it's really exciting."

The band's live show is an extroverted, over the top rock'n'roll experience, and frontman Ty Taylor is a massive part of that. Taylor says he loves coming to music and fun loving places like Australia, as our crowds' enthusiasm feeds their performance and vice-versa. "We love it when people get rowdy, and Australian culture is up there with the rowdiest," he says, "it's really great for us to know that we're going to be challenged to be even crazier. I do things like jump into audiences, and I don't know if our reputation has preceded us or not, but in Australia, before we'd even thought about going into the audience, they were there already 'Come on! Come on!'. Normally I wouldn't be thinking about going out into the audience in the first song, but there I was."

The band are currently working on their fourth record, and they have a plan for ensuring that their fans get what they want from Vintage Trouble's recorded output. "We're just recording individual songs at the moment," Taylor states, "and then we'll hopefully collect them and put an amazing album together, we're going to allow our fans to dictate the feel and vibe of the record. If you put out songs, little by little, you can see what people are responding to and what to give the fans, as opposed to us just assuming we know what they want."