Redro Redriguez & His Inner Demons
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Redro Redriguez & His Inner Demons

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Upon listening to Whip singing in a fantastic rock’n’roll sneer while also displaying an adept stoner/blues song craft, it is clear this band isn’t his first rodeo. Yet, there appears to be a certain magic communicated through the music, that implies this band represents a musical sweet spot for Whip.

“This is probably the third band that I have been in that has really had any traction,” he says. “After the last band I was in, My Little Tornado, broke up in 2010 I had trouble getting the energy up to do another band. But my friend Jay [Richmond], who had moved up to Brisbane, he’d saved part of his holidays to come down and play drums with me sometime – bless him. So that gave me the impetus to start this one. That was around 2013 and before that I had just been sitting on my arse – musically – and he pretty much shamed me into starting this band.”

Whip dismisses the notion that his reluctance to start a new band was potentially due to a feeling he may be judged harsher than regular bands because of his profile in Melbourne’s live music scene. “I was worried that people would complain about me using some of my old songs,” he admits. “But I wasn’t worried about being judged.”

The lineup of Redro Redriguez & His Inner Demons features Liam Cuffley on drums (who also plays in My Left Boot and Matt Sonic & The High Times), bass guitarist Mike Findlay (frontman of  Dukes Of Deliciousness), and guitarist Toby Brandon (who is a very established Melbourne sound engineer). Easy Magic also features additional guitar work from Redcoats’ Neil Wilkinson and Low Fly Incline’s Tarek Smallman.

Track one, Laurel Canyons, is a grand and expansive stoner rock statement that perfectly sets the scene. “It was the other guys in the band that really made that the first song on the record,” says Whip. “We would go into the rehearsal space and that would be the first song they would want to play. So as a result of that, it became our little warm-up track and the first song that we would play at gigs, so it ended up being the first song on the album. The track listing was organically put together because we basically just played the song that would be the song we would most like to play next.”

BY DAN WATT