The Neverending Party

Officially still travelling on their second album, Sirius San And The Promised Land, released last year, Adelaide’s raggle-taggle busking collective, Dr Piffle & The Burlap Band do have a new “interim” release titled Forest Bootleg, aptly enough recorded in a forest.

“That was just four of us from the band,” singer and guitarist Alex Harris admits. “We went and did a busking tour through Tasmania and played a few gigs over there, but it was mainly just busking. There are a few similar folk-punk kind of bands over there that we linked up with and played some shows with, and while we were there we thought we may as well record, ‘cause we were working with all this new material. So the four of us just went into the forest one day with an old tape recorder and recorded some songs. In Tasmania, all the old-growth forests are just incredible so we wanted to capture some of that while we were over there. We just felt those songs were really alive and happening – that’s why we just threw down Forest Bootleg.”

It might have only been the “core” four – Harris, harmonica player Paul McCarthy, banjo player John Bowler and rhythm guitarist Rob Smith – playing to the trees of Cradle Mountain, but the songs they’ve been developing naturally feed into the ten-piece line-up. So do the messages within those songs, songs that will make up the bulk of the forthcoming third album.

“We’re always playing music when we’re travelling and moving around, and then when the whole band gets together, that’s when we do shows, but we started out as a street band – that’s where our roots lie. Now we tour a lot and play a lot of venues, festivals and bigger shows and such but our roots and where we’re happiest performing is acoustic folk-punk loud on the streets.We’re building our own studio at the moment and that’s where we’ll be recording the new album over the next few months. There are lots of songs coming out and this record will actually be really big on the message front. We’ve been touring and recording for the last three years as a band and it’s been really fun, but I think these songs are much more about what our message is as a group. I think they’re a lot more politically-minded. With the political system in Australia how it is right now, we’re really focusing on that as our message, with all the things we’ve learnt in travelling, especially in Tasmania, seeing some really magical nature and forests get cut down for mining and things like that. They’re the things that we want to say, because we’ve seen some things in Australia that are beautiful that are going to get destroyed for the purpose of short-term resources and money.”

While the message night be serious, ten like-minded musicians travelling together means “it’s usually quite a party by the time we jump in the van and travel to a gig”.