West Thebarton

West Thebarton’s Reverend Ray Dalfsen opens up on about breaking out of Adelaide, big gigs and Cry Baby Fest.

What should punters expect from your Cry Baby set?

We’re playing in an old gaol, aren’t we?! That’s something we’ve never done before. I think it’s going to be a little bit crazy. 

Watching West Theb live, it seems like you have the mosh pit in the palm of your hands. How does that feel for you?

When I go on stage, I click into another person. It’s almost like I become a werewolf when the sun goes down. It’s a nice feeling having people melt in the palm of your hands – it’s so much fun. But we really feed off the energy. When people are in mosh pits, having fun, moving around and shedding the stress in their lives, it puts fuel in the tank. That’s probably the best part of it.

Adelaide artists have to grind to break through the music threshold nationally like you have. Tell me about West Thebarton’s hustle early on.

I was fortunate to grow up when live music was super rampant right across the city. When I was coming up –and not just in West Thebarton, in other bands too – it was a time when I went to show after show after show. That’s all live music was to me back then: entertaining people. I didn’t think you could make a career out of it. West Thebarton hit a certain point where every band we were friends with – or bands we looked up to – were moving to Melbourne or Sydney for that opportunity. That was never something we wanted to do. We didn’twant to move states. We wanted to make it, but we wanted to make it from Adelaide. That was what reallyfed the hustle. It was bloody hard. The first album tour, and every tour before that, we werein and out of airports every weekend. I remember we had 15 weekends in a row where we weren’t in Adelaide.But you know, we aren’t only bandmates, we’re so close.Being on the road is so much fun for us, it made the hustle pretty palatable.Playing interstate is almost like [playing] a footy game or something like that. You’re going into enemy territory. An Adelaide band with seven people playing a show in Sydney – you’re going to have to work really hard. That’s where we learned to cut our chops.

What are some shows from that time that stick out for you?

What really sticks out to me was our last album tour, when we went on the road with Pist Idiots. You know those videos where they put Mentos into a Coke bottle?It was like that for five weekends in a row. We finished in Adelaide, and the homecoming show was amazing.

We sold out The Gov pretty quickly, around 800 or 900 people. It was spectacular. After that tour, we had five days off and went straight to Europe. We kicked off at a festival in Brighton and finished at Reading and LeedsFestival. That whole period was like, ‘Wow, these are some bucket-list things that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life.’

Having played globally, how does the Adelaide scene compare?

There’s a lot of good music coming out of Adelaide, but we just have a hustle mentality here. We don’t find ourselves copying the trends or trying to make music that’ll please people. Adelaide musicians have a license to do whatever they want. Think about The EmptyThreats – they’re such an awesome band. WheneverI listen to their music, I’m like, ‘these are people doing whatever the fuck they want, whenever the fuck they want’. That stuff is a bit harder to get in the major cities.

It was a long time between drinks before we heard your Victory EP, which dropped in June. How does it feel to have new music finally out?

It’s been a long time coming. We’ve had so much new music for a long time. On our last tour, before the pandemic hit, we were playing new songs and gearing up for a release. Then, obviously, things happened. But it feels like a breath of fresh air to have new music out there that people know. When we were in New SouthWales over the weekend, we played songs from Victory, and suddenly, people knew them. They were jumping around and singing the lyrics. Whereas when we played six months earlier, we got a good reception, but it wasn’t exactly the high energy you expect from a West Theb crowd favourite.In the time between last drinks, we’ve been jamming out, dicking around and writing so much. We’re constantly coming up with ideas. I think all of us have this weird addiction to writing music – it’s almost unmanageable at times because we all just enjoy it so much.

Where can we expect to hear you next?

We’ve got a few things in the works that I’m not allowed to mention yet. Bad//Dreems said that there were going to be a few [bands] having a big year in 2023. I think 2024 is going to be a big year for West Thebarton!

See West Thebarton play alongside Dune Rats, Jack River, Gyroscope and more at Adelaide Gaol this November 25. Buy tickets here.

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