But when I mention Rude’s sell-out Wrong Hole tour of a few years ago, Cuffley admits a lingering warmth for Rude’s politically incorrect humour. “I’ve actually seen him perform, and I’ve never laughed so much in my life!” Cuffley says. “We’ve got some mates who live in Thornbury, just behind the Croxton Park Hotel, where Rodney Rude was playing a couple of years ago. They were jamming in their back room, and Rodney Rude was in the carpark next to the house, and he stuck his head over!”
My Left Boot started out almost a decade ago, when Cuffley’s former blues-based band evolved into what would become My Left Boot. “A couple of us where in a band, and we came across our singer Chappy just by accident,” Cuffley says. “It was one of those situations – our singer at the time flat out refused to get up on stage and sing with us one night, so Chappy sang with us, and that was pretty well it.”
Cuffley had already seen Chappy singing in an acoustic folk band, and wondered quietly how the singer’s distinctive voice could be transposed into a psychedelic Sabbath rock environment. “He’s had no training at all, and the way he can sing like that is still a mystery to all of us,” Cuffley says. “He’d played in a lot of bands in Bendigo – where he’s from – before joining up with us. He’s just a freak of nature, and he just keeps getting better and better.”
While My Left Boot has had a regular, and occasionally intense live schedule over the past eight or nine years, it took until last year for the band to release its debut album, Summer Songs. The delay, Cuffley admits, comes down to a combination of logistics and lethargy. “We did put out a single and an EP, but we just didn’t get around to doing an album,” he says. “I think basically we were just too busy – and a bit lazy.”
Despite its name, Summer Songs isn’t deliberately intended as an album for the summer months. “I dunno why we called it that,” Cuffley laughs. “I suppose one of the songs probably is a summer song, but they all seem to work most times of the year. I think the title probably comes down to the fact that we set ourselves a deadline to finish the record.”
Summer Songs includes a cover of Rodriguez’s Only Good for Conversation, from that singer’s legendary Cold Fact album. Serendipitously, the cover coincided with Rodgriguez’s recent Australian tour. “We all love that album,” Cuffley says. “Chappy suggested we do that song on the album – the guitar track is really great. And it helped that the documentary has just come out, so people were more aware of his music.”
An even more lateral promotional activity came when My Left Boot decided to release its own beer, Boot Beer, in conjunction with the release of Summer Songs. “A friend of ours has a brewery in Beechworth, where we’re from,” Cuffley explains. “When we go up there we tend to sit around and get a bit messy, so the idea probably came from one of those sessions. But the way we ended up doing it – rushing it out right at the last minute – probably goes back to our lazy side. We got a bunch of labels from Officeworks and chucked them on the bottles. And I think we’ve ended up drinking most of the beer ourselves, even though we were supposed to sell it,” he laughs.
Having finally got around to releasing an album, Cuffley says the band is keen to continue work on a follow-up record, hopefully ready for release in the early part of 2014. “We’ve been doing a bit of writing recently, and we were wondering if we had enough, but we do now have an album’s worth of songs. We’re also planning to head across to Europe in the middle of next year, because there’s been a bit of interest in the album over there,” Cuffley.
But regardless of any specific short-term plans, Cuffley says My Left Boot isn’t going to eschew its laissez-faire approach just yet. “We’re not hellbent on making it – we just like travelling and playing music,” Cuffley says. “We’ve played a lot regionally, because we’re from the country and that’s been really good – we’ve had some phenomenal shows. Sometimes you can turn up and pull out an AC/DC cover and throw in a Rodney Rude line, and you’ve got it made,” he laughs.
BY PATRICK EMERY
