Eating baked beans for dinner in the back of the tour van is a desirable future prospect for the front man of Latrobe Valley pop punk outfit The Spitting Swallows.
“If we could make a very, very humble living off playing I would hand in my resignation,” Chris Johnston said.
A “resonating” issue which always seems to “ebb its way” into most of Johnston’s lyrics is the balancing act between the working week and contributing to a four-piece trying to establish a name for itself in a scene a two-hours’ drive away.
“It’s mostly just frustration with how you pretty much just pay for everything with time and then how much your time is actually worth is determined by someone else,” he said.
He spends the day pushing “heaps of buttons” to “make black stuff” in asphalt work, then music eats into the night.
“We come home really quickly, pack the van and go to the city until three and get up at six. Or just not go to bed and go to work,” Johnston said.
The band, which Johnston said had been telling people it was five years old “for at least three years”, has a new album on its way with a heavier direction.
They also have their eyes on breaking into the Melbourne scene after feeling settled in the Latrobe Valley’s live music arena.
“We’re just that other band now that kind of gets tacked on just to fill a gap,” Johnston said.
Kingswood at Spirit Bar and Bluejuice at Churchill’s university have been some of their local highlights while a support slot for American metal band P.O.D. at 170 Russell in the city was their “first absolute cracker”.
“I think just in the short-term we want to get our way into supporting those bigger acts in Melbourne,” Johnston said.
The band has found its own system where cover gigs in the Valley can pay for their expenses, such as video clips and recording.
He said the cover gigs were a “means to an end”, yet they find convenience in those kinds of slots because there is not the kind of preparation involved in booking a gig for original music.
“If you put your own gig on you’ve got to put a lot of work into it. We’ve organised our own couple of tours and it took months,” he said.
The Spitting Swallows will play a free show at Flanagan’s Irish Bar, Traralgon on Saturday at 8.30pm.
