Straddling The Pond

17 November 2013 | 2:24 pm | Steve Bell

"On this tour I have a full band – the Shovels guys are playing the solo stuff with me – so it’s the same three guys playing two different bands, it’s great."

Michael Beach calls both San Francisco and Melbourne home, although he's legally only allowed to abide in the northernmost of those two cities. His previous Melbourne band Electric Jellyfish recently morphed into new outfit Shovels, so on this current trip Down Under he's both promoting his eclectic and accomplished new solo record Golden Theft, and also rocking out with his mates.

“I went to my last year of uni in Melbourne on an exchange in about 2002, and I went home to LA for two years after uni and then came back [to Australia] for about five years on a bunch of different visas, and wasn't able to keep renewing them so I had to go,” he explains of his dual-country background. “I would have stayed if I was able to, but when my last visa ran out there was nothing else I could do. At that point I'd played with Electric Jellyfish long enough that it was like seeing old friends when you get back together – you immediately pick back up where you left off.

“It's great being part of two scenes, and honestly the Michael Beach [solo] stuff wouldn't have happened if I didn't have to move back to the States – I guess it had started a little bit before, but once I knew that I wouldn't be able to do the Electric Jellyfish stuff full-time I didn't want to wait a year to be able to write, record and play music so I got that going as a way to keep myself busy. Now on this tour I have a full band – the Shovels guys are playing the solo stuff with me – so it's the same three guys playing two different bands, it's great.”

Obviously this cross-continental pollination gives Beach an opportunity to compare the underground rock scenes in Australia and America.

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“Both places have great music scenes, but in America there's definitely a group of people who are just totally Aussie-philes – anything that comes out of Australia they're just immediately onto. And Australian bands generally do pretty well over there in the underground scene, there's been heaps of bands tour there regularly and do great. I personally prefer the more underground, less publicised stuff and in the United States things are either completely off the radar or once it catches on it's gigantic and omnipresent wherever you go, so that adds a different element.

“Both scenes are great, but I enjoy being in Australia – this is where I started playing music so I identify a little more with this process than the really American process of struggling for a long time and then if you're lucky blowing up. I love the underground community here that doesn't give a shit if it gets huge or whatever.”