Stolen petrol, scallop pies, a mugging and plenty of vino. JESS CORNELIUS (aka Teeth & Tongue) writes on Jack Ladder’s national tour.

NSW

“We’ve had a report of theft from this vehicle,” said the cop, bending over to look through our van window. The police car had approached from the opposite direction, pulled a U-turn and then put its siren on. I guess they’d been looking for us.

“Oh shit.” I said to Patto. “The petrol. Did you pay?”
“I thought you paid!”

It dawned on us that we’d unwittingly nicked 50 bucks worth of fuel from a Lake’s Entrance Caltex, and we were now 80 kilometres away on an isolated stretch of road somewhere in NSW. I’d heard bad things about the cops too.

“I could have you arrested,” he stated, peering into the van. Empty beer bottles rolled under our feet as Marc adjusted the guitar case that lay across his lap.

But we were lucky this time. As the cop made awkward conversation with Patto – “So … um, what kind of music do you play?” – I called the service station in question, apologised profusely and read out my Visa number. Crisis averted, we drove on.

Food in this part of the world is strange and varied. Earlier in the day, as we drove up the east coast, we passed a sign proudly announcing the sale of curried scallop pies. Steve looked dejected as we drove on without stopping, and assuming that these pies were a culinary anomaly, I comforted him with tales of seafood poisoning. But there was no need. The next town we stopped at boasted scallop pies in every form: curried scallop, plain scallop, scallop with kidneys or scallop with a potato top. Never one to let an opportunity pass him by, Steve braved the sullen tearoom lady and ordered one for lunch. The tearoom lady glared at him. She also wanted to charge me $3.50 for Nescafe in a foam cup so we left town quickly. I think that’s how we stole the petrol.

The first gig of our tour (but not included in Jack Ladder’s schedule) was in the coastal town of Bateman’s Bay, NSW. Arriving at the tiny venue we discovered that our accommodation was not, as we’d assumed, a small piece of grubby carpet, but a pre-booked room in the motel across the road. We were given fluffy towels and clean glasses wrapped in paper. The toilet had a weird “sanitary seal” stretched across the seat like a pageant sash. I’ve never felt so wanted in my life.

We played our set on the concrete floor of North St Bar and Cafe, aware of a marked absence of people our age. There were plenty of teenagers though, and plenty of middle-aged women. The men hung up the back with stubbies and the women and teenagers filled the dance floor, throwing their hair and bodies around with abandon. They clutched their glasses of wine and mouthed the words to as many songs as they could manage. Afterwards we hung around in the commercial kitchen and the owner, Drew, cooked us an impromptu omelette at three in the morning. It was a little runny but we didn’t care. Bateman’s Bay sure knows how to host a band.

Sydney

Jack Ladder was soundchecking as we arrived in Sydney for our strangely early show. We were booked to start at 6.45pm, and as it began to pour with rain I wondered at the dedication of the Sydney people. Surprisingly, we played to a half-full venue, which became an almost-full venue by the time Jack Ladder came onstage.

This was the first time I had seen him live. He shook his imposing quiff and long limbs like a less-sexual Elvis, and turned his brown-velvet voice into yelps and hollers. But it was his new guitarist Kirin J Callahan who inspired my fascinated gaping. Dressed in pale brown pantaloons, braces and oversized Buddy Holly glasses, this man danced like Rowland S Howard would if Rowland were a topless dancer. “He’s got reverb in his legs!” Marc exclaimed. Which wasn’t unlikely, as there was so much reverb going round. Banging great shards of it from his guitar, Kirin made it difficult to tell what instrument was making the wonderful clanging percussion sounds that I had previously thought were drum effects.

“We were left to our own devices in an eerie maze of red corridors and abandoned bathrooms. Half expecting to find a corpse in one of the bathtubs, we gathered in the abandoned bar, with its ’50s decor and non-stop video hits, and re-enacted 'Thriller' in our own drunken tribute to the weird king.”

After the show one of the bar staff took us upstairs to our sleeping quarters. Our room, which held some bunk beds and a foldout sofa, was right next to the communal band room. Marc returned with something in a brown paper bag, and Brigitte had weaselled cranberry juice from the bar staff. I had promised Jack Ladder some form of drink in exchange for letting me interview him for a magazine, so we settled in under the fluoro lights with a pink fruity beverage and a dictaphone. His band, and the boys from Kid Sam, all went home. So did the punters, the photographer, the kitchen staff, the bar staff and the security guards.

We were left to our own devices in an eerie maze of red corridors and abandoned bathrooms. Half expecting to find a corpse in one of the bathtubs, we gathered in the abandoned bar, with its ’50s decor and non-stop video hits, and re-enacted Thriller in our own drunken tribute to the weird king.

Melbourne and Ballarat.

Nothing much happened. The crowds were great, the attendance was high, and no one got attacked, thrown out, or spat on. I did forget to bring the amps to the Northcote Social Club in time for Jack Ladder’s sound check, and I think Lawrence Pike probably did want to spit on me, but he refrained. These are gentlemen.

In Ballarat, Jack Ladder ate a banana onstage and it rained a lot. Then at 12 am, as we were packing out, the entire population of Ballarat arrived to dance to house music. That’s all.

Adelaide

“Got any Es? We’re on our way to the tittie bar.”

Clearly we’d arrived in Adelaide. Three young grommets had piled out of a car on Hindley street and were kindly giving us directions to the venue. They thought we’d have good drugs because we were from Melbourne and were carrying guitars. Yeah, right. We weren’t carrying any but we still barely made it out of Victoria. Note to self:

Do not leave at 5.30 am for a 6 am flight.
Do not opt to drive to the airport. The cheap long-term “airport” parking is in an entirely different suburb.
Do not try to bribe your way onto a plane using your own CDs as currency.

Having bought the cheapest flights possible, we had arrived in Adelaide at 7am and had to lug our equipment around the city for eight hours while we waited for sound check. We very nearly went to an afternoon showing of Harry Potter just so we could put our gear down. Eventually we discovered a wondrous thing: Big Star Records. If you ask really nicely, and look suitably pathetic with guitar cases hanging off you and tambourines jangling with every step, they may let you leave your gear in their backroom for a few hours. Champs.

Adelaide has a surprising number of decent venues, and Jive is one of them: the band rider consists of unlimited pots of Coopers. And Adelaidians buy merch! They go crazy for it. I also like that the Jive Bar turned into some weird country barn dance while Jack Ladder was playing. It was all, “Knees up and link arms and round we go and let’s have another Coopers and whoops sorry love was that your face?” Brilliant.

Unfortunately it all turned pear-shaped after that. Some prick keyed the JL tour bus, Patto and I had a shit kebab (it didn’t have an actual turd in it though), our cab driver got lost and dropped us off in the middle of an industrial wasteland and then poor Kishore Ryan from Kid Sam got mugged by three dudes while waiting to get into his friend’s house. They made off with his cash and his crappy Nokia, but there were no fatalities. Still, no fair, Adelaide!

Perth

Hyde Park Hotel welcomed us with an empty patch of carpet (the stage) and a lot of wall-mounted tellies showing the horse racing. Spotting a blackboard menu behind the bar, we inquired about ordering some dinner. The stringy-haired barman kindly advised us: “If I were you I’d go to the KFC across the road.” Unfortunately we didn’t take his advice, but the lovely lady in the nextdoor bistro did let me buy a dish of jelly for $1.50.

Finally the engineer arrived and set up the PA for us, and an admirable number of Perth residents braved the revolting weather to watch the show. By this time everyone was looking somewhat disheveled: Jack Ladder’s shirts were all creased, Kieran from Kid Sam looked like he’d been put through a tumble dryer and my eyes were going funny from the red wine I had supped while placing bets. The crowd didn’t seem to mind though, and there were several rather vocal supporters for Jack Ladder, including a man who had dragged his wife and five daughters down to see the show. “They’re all virgins!” he told me. I think he meant “gig virgins”.

I had been too stingy to book any accommodation for the Adelaide-Perth leg, assuming that in every city a friend would pop out of the woodwork with a spare room and a soft bed and maybe a pair of slippers. I was wrong, and later that evening our inebriated new host opened the door in his tiny underpants, his eyes rolling in different directions, his huge ginger beard aflame; and repeatedly demanded to know who the hell we were.

Fremantle

Ahh, Fremantle. Forever engraved in my memory, along with the words, “Is there any particular grape variety you’d prefer in your wine rider?”

They certainly do things differently at the Norfolk Basement. We drank boutique beers with little pieces of lemon in the top, ate oysters and duck for dinner and played in a tiny bluestone cellar with fairy lights strung across the stage. Even the sound engineer was rad, having a joyful boogie behind the desk as he mixed each band.

As this was Kid Sam and Teeth & Tongue’s last night of the tour, we danced merrily to each other’s sets and toasted each other with our fancy wines, then departed reluctantly into the night.

Patto and I were especially reluctant, because we’d finally run out of favours and had booked ourselves into the Sundance Backpackers for the night. It was a broken sleep, filled with the snores of Irishmen and the smell of hiking boots. I had to provide a cash deposit just to use a coffee cup.

The next evening we flew back to Melbourne and discovered that Tiger Airways don’t call themselves a budget airline for nothing. Arriving at 2am the next day, we were turned out onto a fenced-off piece of tarmac about a kilometre from the terminal, where our bags arrived on a horse-drawn cart. Any money we saved on the fares was swiftly balanced out by the $100 parking bill we received on picking up our car, but it was a small price to pay for the promise of my own bed and the heady fragrance of Tullamarine.

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