New Zealand born, now Melbourne based folk rock trio Woodlock recently released their impressive new EP Sirens and to celebrate they’re currently on the road playing a string of shows nationally.
No strangers to the road, the guys are (very young) busking veterans, having performed on the streets for a few years now both in some of our biggest cities to some of this country’s most regional towns.
When we’d heard that the guys have actually managed to help build a school in Africa with some of the proceeds of their music and other charitable efforts, we wanted to know the story. We chatted with one third of the crew – vocalist and guitarist Eze Walters who told us all about their incredible experience. For more info on Woodlock or upcoming shows visit www.woodlock.com.au.
Moving to Australia
“In 2009 me and another bandmate (we’re brothers), our family moved over here [from New Zealand] because our Nanna was living in Australia, we moved for her to be closer to us. We didn’t start busking until maybe like three years later. What happened was our local church was doing a fundraising event for children in Africa, so we were hosting sausage sizzles and stuff. Being musicians we were like ‘oh well we’ll play to get people up’. We wrote a silly little song about sausages and how they’ll save the African kids, and we’d play it to try and get peoples’ attention. That’s how we first started playing in the streets.”
The Birth Of Woodlock
“We didn’t think anything of it, we did it for fun and to raise funds. We did enjoy playing with each other so we ended up still playing together, jamming at the house. Then one of our friends whose Dad worked at one of the local pubs in our town Yarrawonga, he picked up a job doing the odd pub gig, a few times a month and we’d just go in and play to older to crowds as background music for people when they had their beers and stuff.
[include_post id=”456956″] We ended up really enjoying that and when it came to the end of the year, we were like ‘oh this was a bit of fun, maybe we could try making money playing music’ so we organised an idea of a road trip around Australia starting from Melbourne. We were going to pour drinks, fruit pick whatever we could to get money for petrol and the odd slab of beer.
So we travelled up. It was fun, we’d play a small town busking and every now and then we’d have someone come and give us beer or something or coins. We got a lot of cool random things actually.
Then we went to Sydney without knowing how professional it was. In Sydney they also have like elder buskers – who call the shots. We got to Pitt St, went down there and there were all these buskers waiting in a line, they were pulling in huge crowds and making quite a bit of money and we were like ‘what the heck these guys are buskers’ – so we lined up and on our first day trying to busk in Sydney it poured down raining.
We enjoyed it and made quite good money, we were doing better than we thought we would. With the money from that we went up to the Sunshine Coast and the money started to run out a little so were were like let’s go back to Sydney and try make some more.
We were going to move to Sydney because of the scene. Before we moved, we thought ‘oh we’ll go down to Melbourne to see how it goes’. We got to Melbourne and it was crazy because they didn’t have buskers like us in Melbourne, people loved it.”
Busking Schedule
“These days we try and busk 3-4 times per week, we’re just doing Bourke Street, sometimes we do the markets around. These days we do it full time, so I don’t actually have any other job, so I have to do it you know? Tours are expensive! We manage to pay our way by playing in the street.”
Visiting Africa
“My Dad is a Pastor, he had been doing a few missions in Africa with another guy, he’d been travelling around Africa preaching and stuff, he then organised his own trip. It was Dad, me, Zech, Bowen and another guy called Darren. We went to Africa, travelled around different parts and we used our music to kind of advertise you know, and get people interested and then Dad would preach to them.
Then my Dad got a call from another guy who who wanted him to check out another place because he was looking after like 34 orphans that were all in a little mud hut, he was really struggling and needing help. So we all travelled up there in a van, we’d never been to this place before and looking around it was a huge culture shock for us, ’cause there’s no power and no water, nothing. It was a real eye opener.”
The Tipping point
“We went back to NZ after seeing these kids, and a lot of these kids have HIV and some don’t have parents – it’s a real tough situation. Coming back to Australia I had the weirdest thing happen to me, I was going to the Berrigan Cup, we were all on bus travelling to this place, everyone was handing around shots and getting drunk and I got hit with massive guilt, it was like nothing I’ve felt before. I was like ‘here I am living it up and there’s people really struggling to get by’.
I just went home and wrote a song. Then my Dad started circulating word of this project to raise funds, not for World Vision or anything but for ourselves so 100% of what we made from our work will go towards the project in Africa. We did music, fundraising nights, and then all that happened. I haven’t gone back to see it yet, but my Dad has gone back twice a year.
We bought land, we built maybe four classrooms and one is an office for teachers, but there’s opportunity to extend on it, like we want to build a playground. Another big priority is getting the kids uniforms. The crazy part was that it was origninally intended for 30 orphans for somewhere to stay, then what happened is people from the town heard that it was going up so they wanted to bring their kids in, so the school went from 30 students to 140. Each of the classrooms are so packed out but they’re loving it.”
How It’s Influenced The Band
“We’re always going to be a part of that project, and I’ve made a pact to go back regularly – every year or every two years so I can visit and have a look. I highly recommend the experience to anyone.
It’s easy to be in Australia and be like ‘we should look after our own first’ but there’s a huge difference between being homeless in Australia and having nothing in Africa, these people are born into disadvantage and everything is against them.
The musical culture in Africa is so interesting, their sound systems were all broken – so they had things where they were like stripping wires and sticking them into prongs in the the wall and taping them on!
Their music is very community based, you know? They have like 30 songs and most people know and sing them and just everyone can sing along, they’ll literally sing a song for like 20 minutes straight and it’ll get more intense, then they’ve got classic African beats.
The jump from four years ago to when I went a month ago, their music has improved massively. To give you an idea of the cultural difference, when I went there four years ago we walked past a bar and these guys were sitting in there listening to ‘Who Let The Dogs Out’ [Baha Men] – they were listening to that like it just came out, man! Like yeeeeeew [laughs].”
National Tour Dates
Friday 9th Oct Albury All Ages VIC
Saturday 10th Oct Birregurra Festival VIC
Friday 16th Oct The Northern, Byron Bay NSW
Saturday 17th Oct Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane QLD
Friday 23rd Oct Newtown Social Club, Sydney NSW
Sunday 25th Oct Swagger Music Festival VIC
Friday 30th Oct Max Watts’s VIC
Sunday 1st Nov Northcote Social Club, VIC *All Ages
Friday 6th Nov Odd Fellow, Fremantle WA
Saturday 7th Nov Settlers Tavern, Margaret River WA
Sunday 8th Nov Four5Nine, Perth WA
Friday 13th Nov Pirie & Co. SA
Sunday 15th Nov Secret Show SA
Friday 20th Nov Transit Bar, Canberra ACT
Saturday 21st Nov Between The Hills VIC
Wednesday 30th Dec NYE on The Hill, VIC
Tickets and info at www.woodlock.com.au.
