Once More, With Feeling

Times change – ain't no denying it. And with every shift there are plenty of additional questions to be pondered and decisions to be made. For Gladstone four-piece Epidemic... Over, life is moving forward at a steady rate: work, marriage, children, houses. Unfortunately, maintaining the band through it all hasn't been so easy. Nathan Bedford concedes with a smile that he'd “do this forever”, but something's gotta give, and sadly on this occasion that thing is Epidemic... Over.

“We can't tour like we used to,” he laments. “We can't book 25 dates and disappear for four weeks and spend our time living in the back of a van – we can't do it, we've got bills to pay.”

It's a story told by so many independent bands before them. As much as music is a thrill, a passion, an addiction, the pressure of pulling in dollars turns rock into routine. For Bedford and his band of buddies, without that road-warrior romanticism it was hard to keep the fire burning. “And that can take the shine out of things,” the frontman tells. “A big part of our enjoyment with playing music and touring was the adventure we'd go on. If we see a sign that says waterfall and we know we've got an extra day up our sleeve man, we'll go there and camp there. We've stayed at some of the most beautiful places that I'd have never even heard of or seen just because we took a left turn.

“It's bittersweet I suppose is the only way to look at it,” he carries on. “I love [the band]; it was my first love, y'know. And I'm proud of most of the music we've put out there; there are some great [songs], there's some shit [songs]. But saying goodbye to something is pretty tough. I kinda wish that we could've got one more [release] out, 'cause I had this feeling that the best was yet to come. Just the little things that we'd been working on here and there and just the direction it was going... I thought this next one, this album we were trying to work on, would be our opus.”

Bedford has plenty to smile about, though. He admits that the goals that you tick off along the way make being in a band a challenging and triumphant experience. The vocalist calls the group's best achievement the Long Way Home EP, a five-track they recorded “in a little mining town that no one will ever go to in Central Queensland”, and admits it was with great resolve that they resisted the lure of capital city bright lights to create something in their own backyard. But what will stay with the band are the little things: “Like, you play in a town and you hear of a guy in a wheelchair who drove 400km on a Thursday just to watch you in a room with twenty other people and he knew all the words to the song, y'know – that blows my mind.”

Now, with three more Epidemic... Over dates left, in Brisbane, Bundaberg and Gladstone, the quartet are confident a few more special memories will be etched as the party plays out in long loud night style. “I hope they have a really good time,” he says of the punters coming out to show their thanks. “I hope we all have a really good time together. We've always been pitched as a heart-on-your-sleeve sort of band, and I think you'll really see it this time. It will be emotional every single night, but it could be the three best shows we've ever played, too. I feel like that's going to be the way it is.”