Dropping Honey: Voice Of The Beehive.

Dropping Honey play the Gabba Hotel on Friday, The Healer on Saturday and the Paddington Workers Club on Sunday.

“It’s funny when people keep saying we’re a Wollongong band,” says vocalist and guitarist Damien of Dropping Honey. Let’s just call them New South Welshmen.

“Two of us live in Sydney and two of us live in Wollongong. We met there and formed there, but none of us are originally from there. We play mainly in Sydney, but we practice down in Wollongong. It’s far enough apart to be annoying, but it’s manageable.”

“It’s vaguely study related, and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. You do get less sick of each other,” he jokes, “But I’m sure that will change when we’re all stuck in a van together on the weekend.”

This said weekend finds Dropping Honey making their first trek to the Sunshine State.

“I’ve been up with other bands before, but with this band this will be the first time. When I was sixteen I joined another band in Wollongong, and as soon as I was out of school we were touring to Melbourne and Brisbane and stuff. It was a bit of a crash course in the touring lifestyle. We just haven’t got our act together until now.

Backing up the live set is an impressive eight-track disc entitled Snakes & Ladders.

“Snakes & Ladders was kind of recorded sporadically last year. Whenever we had enough money we’d go in and record another song. We did another CD, Underfoot a couple of years back as well. There’s a lot more varied sounds on Snakes & Ladders. If you take the first song from Snakes, a lot of our first CD sounded a lot like that. Not so much the mood as the guitary kind of sound.”

A guitary kind of sound that has seen the band draw comparisons with acts like Swervedriver and Ride.

“Next time I want to make a very concerted effort to make a very cohesive sounding album. The mixing was done over a week and a half in Wollongong, and I live in Sydney, so I was staying on people’s floors every night and it really wore me down. I think this is the last time that it’s anything goes. I thought we’d much around a bit, and I don’t think all the experiments we did were entirely successful, but I don’t regret doing them.”