The Mavis'sThe revered Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival returns this year with a stacked line-up of music, brewers, food vendors, market stalls, and Silent Disco DJs.
The line-up already features the iconic TISM, American singer-songwriter Ben Kweller, art rock supergroup Tropical Fuck Storm, and the next generation of hardcore, SPEED, plus Ratcat, The Mavis’s, Party Dozen, and more.
Held at The Drive Friday, 10 and Saturday, 11 July, there’s even more on the menu, with Gold Coast cult craft outfit Balter Brewing, Victoria’s Bells Beach Brewing, and Adelaide’s own Pirate Life Brewing, Mismatch Brewing Co, Jump Ship Brewing, and others keeping audiences warm and satisfied.
“It's a really unique festival model,” Beer & BBQ Festival co-founder Gareth Lewis told The Music in a recent interview.
“The festival doesn't break even just off ticket sales. It breaks even off all of the bar inputs [revenue from brewers and drinks] and the barbecue chefs that are there exhibiting. Without them, we don't really have a festival.”
Lewis added, “This line-up feels like a really true Beer & BBQ line-up, but it's not something we could have done at the Showgrounds. Like, the TISM show is physically too big to fit where we used to be.”
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With so much anticipation in the air, two of this year’s acts, The Mavis’s and Ratcat, have interviewed each other for The Music, discussing unexpected reunions, learning to use Spotify, old-school crowds, and more. Here’s what they had to say…
The Mavis’s Interview Ratcat
The Mavis’s: What is your writing process, and how do you choose which songs will be used in the band?
Ratcat’s Simon Day: The writing process varies. Sometimes it starts with a guitar riff or a chord sequence. Other times, it may start with a lyric idea, then the melody. Jamming at rehearsal can also produce the seed for a song. Deciding which songs? In a funny way, I think the songs kind of present themselves in the way they sound.
TM: How did Simon deal with the fact that the band was suddenly thrust into the public eye, and he was seen as a heartthrob? How did this sit with the local scene that you were in?
SD: The heartthrob thing was a bit confronting and an unusual experience, for sure. I dealt with it by shrugging off and not taking it too seriously. The local scene? Most people were happy for us, I think. Some may not have liked it.
TM: RatCat toured in the USA in 1991. What was that experience like, and do you have a standout story from that tour?
SD: Touring the USA was great fun. We did the East and West Coasts. We were treated very, very well, and New York was the highlight. Particularly playing at CBGBs on Halloween that year.
TM: Do you still have the iconic striped shirts from the 'Don't Go Now' video? Were they your own shirts, or a stylist's idea?
SD: Yes, I still have the striped shirt, it was made by Skin Deep, and I still wear it at times. They were our shirts, not a stylist's idea.
TM: Are there any plans for a new RatCat album?
SD: We recently discussed doing some recording, so the answer is yes. There are a few songs lying around and a few to be written. So, we may start with an EP.
Ratcat Interview The Mavis’s
Ratcat: You disbanded in 2001 after a farewell tour, and nearly two decades passed before you started finding your way back to the stage. What was the moment — or the conversation — that made returning feel possible again?
The Mavis’s Matt Thomas: As we’re siblings, Beki [Thomas] and I remained singing together for fun through the years, and we both went off to develop our songwriting. We both had a few different bands and would always support each other in our respective projects. We’d often arrange duo gigs if Beki was in town, just cos we wanted to sing together, and it was always vaguely in our minds to put The Mavis’s back together.
When we got asked to do the TISM tour in late 2024, we really felt it was the right time. We were treated so well by them and got to experience that our music had connected with an audience, and we felt the love. It was something we weren’t really expecting. That’s the wonderful thing about music... it time stamps a point in people’s lives that remains forever.
We understand that we have that connection with music and songs throughout our lives ourselves. It was a real humbling experience. We really feel it was that TISM gave us that gift.
Ratcat: Cry has this incredible staying power — it still sounds fresh. When you play it live now, does it feel like reconnecting with an old friend, or does it belong to a different version of the band?
Matt Thomas: We are forever grateful to CRY as it crossed over to a different and larger audience, which then opened up our whole catalogue and an interest in the band that we might not have had. We’ll always play that song, and we were reminded of that on the TISM tour.
Ratcat: You came up in Ballarat, which is a long way from the Sydney and Melbourne scenes where most of the attention was. Do you think being slightly outside all of that shaped who The Mavis's were — and are?
The Mavis’s Beki Thomas: Growing up as teenagers in Ballarat, we definitely had our own weird and wonderful music scene going on there. All the bands were really supportive of each other, and they were all completely different… We would put on these wild nights, and it was a really unique and creative experience.
Ratcat: Audiences who loved you in the '90s are now in their 40s and 50s. Have you noticed something different in the room when you play now — emotionally, energetically — compared to back then?
Beki Thomas: Yes, and it’s magical! Some of the faces in the crowd have been there since they were teenagers, and now they are bringing their kids to the shows in Mavis‘s T-shirts—it’s really sweet and quite emotional. One of the couples actually met at one of our shows, got married and had a Mavis’s baby. Back then, there was more moshing in the crowd and no phones. I feel that people are craving a live experience more than ever these days, so it’s exciting.
Ratcat: You worked with producer Mark Saunders on Rapture — the guy behind records by The Cure and Neneh Cherry — which was a pretty bold move for an Australian indie band. What did that experience teach you about what The Mavis's could be, and does any of that inform how you're thinking about music now?
Matt Thomas: We went to NYC and LA in 1999 to meet with a wish list of producers. We decided to work with Mark because of his energy and the way he talked about music. He was very song-oriented. I think the end result left us with some really beautiful takes and mixes, and some of the tracks on that album remain favourites of ours.
The record company was sold by the time we returned to work on the album, and we didn’t have the support we’d once had, and they were unsure where we fitted into their roster. Some radio stations at the time saw us as a ‘commercial’ band, and some saw us as ‘too alternative’, so the album wasn’t given the care and support it deserved at the time.
Favourite songs from that record for both Beki and I would be Coming Home, Drive, Keeping Low, Only In My Head, and Burst Into Space. We’ve remained in touch with Mark Saunders over the years, and in fact, I was just chatting to him right before this question came through.
Ratcat: Be honest — when you agreed to come back, how long did it take before someone in the band Googled 'how to use Spotify'?
Beki Thomas: We are still figuring it out lol—Matt and I were only recently sending videos of ourselves to each other, trying to navigate Spotify for Artists. We are old school! It was more satisfying pressing play on a cassette player, putting a needle on a record and having physical copies of our CDs flying around everywhere.
You can find tickets and more information about this year’s event on the Adelaide Beer & BBQ Festival website.
