My Dynamite

“Yeah, that's going to be a big night,” he says. “We've got the full 11 piece band playing with us, which is a bit ridiculous! But we had all those instruments on the album, we had the horn section, we had keys, we had backup singers. So we're going to be playing most of the songs from the album. We wanted to really represent it as best we can. So we're doing that, and we've got some great support bands as well.

"Basically it's just a fun night all round,” he continues. “We don't take ourselves overly seriously. We take our playing seriously, but the whole idea is just to have fun and enjoy yourself. We try as much as we can to get the crowd involved. If I see someone out the back who's really not getting into it, I'll get 'em up on their feet and just try to give everyone a good night. That's what it's all about and when you listen to the album, you can feel that that's our intention, to get you shakin' your arse and having a good time, basically!”

And so what do you expect of the crowd in return? “Generally we're pretty well received,” he responds. “I think, especially on our album launch, there's been a lot of people who've been waiting for this album to come out, so I think everyone's going to be nicely fired up. With the great support acts we've got, they're gonna be fired up before we even get on there. So yeah, hopefully make it a big one.”

The album has indeed been a long time coming. This is due to the band doing most of it by themselves, under some duress, and generally wanting to make it as close to perfect as possible as possible, without the pressure of a record company or management breathing down their necks.

“The initial recordings were done at (guitarist) Jorge's house,” he explains. “He lives out on a farm out near Riddell's Creek. We basically just set up his garage, into a little makeshift recording studio, in 40 degree searing heat. We stayed there for a week, and just sat in his shed and basically recorded the bulk of the tracks there, and then did some overdubs and vocals at Woodstock studios. Which is Joe Camileri's studio.

“It took a while because we had to do it in bits and pieces here and there with the overdubs. The other thing is we wanted to make sure everything was right. We didn't have a label pressuring us to release an album or anything like that. We didn't have pressure to have it out by a certain date, so we just wanted to make sure it was right when we got it out.”

Beyond the Melbourne launch, the band are taking their blistering rock show to Sydney, nationally and then internationally over the coming six to 12 months or so. From there, it's back to writing for the second My Dynamite album.

“[We're] going up to Sydney in July,” he says. “We're playing with some mates up there, a band called The Heavies, and from there we're doing the major cities, but the main focus at the moment is to also do a European tour at the end of the year. Because our record label is a French record label, we've got more support in Europe than we do here at the moment, so it makes sense to get over there and have a crack. Realistically, that looks like it will be happening end of this year or early next year – we're just in the early stages of planning that now. It's definitely on the cards.

“We've got a three album deal with Listenable Records, so we've already started demo'ing tracks for album number two,” he explains. “We're just trying to stay creative and keep producing new music, while still getting around and playing live shows, 'cause at the end of the day that's really what we're about. We're a live rock'n'roll band.”

BY ROD WHITFIELD