Those Bloody McKennas: Summer Lovin’.

Those Bloody McKennas launch Ticket To The Moon / Summertime at The Zoo on Friday and the Great Northern Hotel in Byron Bay on Saturday.

Anyone willing to dismiss Those Bloody McKennas as just another folk band are in for a shock. Their new disc Ticket To The Moon / Summertime double A side single finds the mostly Melbourne, but still just a little bit of Brisbane, quintet melding rock, pop and folk styles and adding in a swag of starting textures. They’re an all-acoustic act, but they’re not afraid to mix things up a bit. How many disc have you head recently with a wash of distorted slide mandolin?

“We’re pretty proud that we’re totally acoustic. We don’t actually have any amps. People see us and kind of go ‘wow, what a big sound, where are the amps’. That’s all going to change I think in the future as far as… things have to change for us to get the big sound we want to get. Some PA systems just don’t sound good enough.”

One things for certain, their new EP is the closest the band have come to capturing that live essence. Just add a smoky room… The need to capture this feeling stems back to a point made earlier, people have been known to make the assumption this is just a folk band.

“We really needed to document how the band sounds now, you know,” percussionist Danny McKenna explains. “The last disc was recorded over two years ago, and we’ve really progressed over the last couple of years in our live sound, and we really needed to represent that in the recordings.”

“One this that’s happened in the past is that we’ve tried to get on rock festival bills, but they’ve said we sound too folk. It’s the opposite with some folk events some times. We sound a bit too rock... It’s been a bit tricky,” he laughs. “Although we have folky kind of instruments in the band, we’re really more into rocking out shows that we wee folky things. We tend to muck around and tell a few yarns on stage, but we hate to be thought of as an Irish folk band.”

“There’s been a lot of work and though put into the EP. We really had to chose well what we were going to do. It’s not like we’ve spent a year putting this together. We’ve chose what tracks represent out sound currently, and which tracks would be better to get our sound out there. It’s basically about those things.”

Logistically, putting the band together for some serious rehearsal and touring is made difficult by the fact vocalist and guitarist Ant resides up here in sunny Vegas, while the remainder of the band are now Melbourne based.

“Sometimes it can be really hard, you know, especially when you’re doing a promotional push in the lead up to the launch. You suddenly realise you need some new photos, and Ant’s up in Brisbane and sometimes the budget doesn’t allow for us to get him down here on a plane. There’s benefits as well with Ant up there, so contacts are better that we, he can sort things out at that end. We’ve essentially got two bases to work from.”

“It can be tough to come up with new material, but we try and factor in rehearsal time along with just general hangin’ out. Because we can’ meet once a week and rehearse we really have to utilise our time when we’re together. Sometimes it works, other times it feels like we didn’t get anything done.”

Fortunately, it seem to have been working of late, and their upcoming live shows should mark a fine testament to the band’s song writing prowess.

“There an be some really good energy when we’ve been apart for a while, and we jump into a show and everyone’s excited about playing again,” Danny enthuses. “That’s a really good thing.”