radionotes podcast episodes

077 The Wolfe Brothers

by | Jul 12, 2020 | episodes | 0 comments

077 The Wolfe Brothers

The Wolfe Brothers are the result of four generations of farming and musicians based in Tasmania, Australia.

On the back of their latest Single ‘No Brakes’ about going full steam ahead, Tom Wolfe one of the brothers spoke to radionotes…

To listen, click the green ‘play’ triangle… [note: may take few seconds to load] 

IMAGE CREDIT: Alexis D. Lea Photography

The Wolfe Brothers debut ‘It’s On’ arrived in 2013, with across the years them receiving numerous Golden Guitars – including for Album of The Year, APRA AMCOS Song of The year and awards in other sort after categories. As well, they recently joined the BMG stable of music artists globally. Meaty chat this one and a joy to have some real talk with Tom as well.

SHOW NOTES: The Wolfe Brothers

Where to find the show to subscribe/follow:

  • PlayPodcast – this link directs you, to the Podcast app on your device (subscribe to not miss an episode)

….or you may prefer to Search “radionotes Podcast” in your favourite podcatcher.

The socials…  Instagram  –  Facebook  –  Twitter

Feature Guest: The Wolfe Brothers’ Tom Wolfe

Next Episode: Fionn

…if you have not already subscribed or following the radionotes – we can be found on Spotify, Apple and Google Podcast, Overcast, Stitcher, PocketCasts and more…

[Radio Production – notes: ]

CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

You can make direct contact with the podcast – on the Contact Page

TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member Winston K – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Tom Wolfe, welcome to radionotes.

Tom Wolfe:
Mate, it’s great to be on. Thanks so much for having me.

John Murch:
In 2019, you did have song of the year, Ain’t Seen It Yet, and such a glorious… a literal song as well.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, you’re right. It is very literal song and it’s probably not something we normally do. And often country music and songwriting, the song titles has almost a double meaning, phrase, might have another double meaning, that kind of thing. With Ain’t Seen It Yet, it came really simple, we were sitting in Nashville, we were on songwriting trip and it’s so beautiful over there and I love it there, but I’m very lucky to have grown up on a beautiful family farm and I’m very proud to be from Tassie and very proud of my history and my family. And we’re sitting in this car in Nashville and we’re like, “Jeez, this is so beautiful over here.” We’re saying how great it is. And then when saying that we were like… I think I was in the back seat and I might have said, “Yeah, but it’s not as good as home. Is there anything better? I ain’t seen it yet.”

Tom Wolfe:
And then we were just like, “Oh, Oh, that’s what we’re writing. We’re writing that song.” Yeah. We literally wrote that song within that afternoon. It probably took about 40 minutes and I was literally… I can listen to it. It’s listening things. It’s not the most complicated song we ever written. I mean, the opening line is, “Round here we get high on cascade blue.” It’s not exactly the White Album by the Beatles or something. I think it was really interesting, it just came really naturally. And that line, “Round here we get high on cascade blue.” It’s the first one line you hear on the Country Heart album. It was the first single we released, it’s a real change of pace. And I think it was a really, really smart move.

Tom Wolfe:
I think we nearly changed… I was so scared to change that line. I wanted to change the line, “Around here we get high on cascade blue,” to something else. And I remember playing on it for weeks thinking what else could it be? Because I was so worried people wouldn’t understand that Cascade’s the brewery down here in Southern Tasmania. But anyway, at the end of the day, we couldn’t find anything better. So we stuck with it and I’m glad we do because it’s kind of like it’s this bizarre thing, the song almost hinges off it. And we go play in Townsville, the other side of Australia, and people are yelling out, “Around here we get high on cascade blue.” I mean, you can’t even get Cascade Blue in the North of Tasmania, let alone there. It was interesting, man, I’m very proud of that song. I love that song and I still love playing it live.

John Murch:
Keeping in mind that the Beatles also wrote, “Googie goo goo goo goo,” from memory as well.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, yeah, no. They threw it out there, they threw it all at there.

John Murch:
We’re going to get back to Tasmania a lot throughout this conversation. That album, by the way, is called Country Heart. Another cut which I particularly liked off the album was called Storm Rollin In. And yet again, you really have that picturesque kind of idea of exactly where you are, your kind of country, not just Australian country, but that of Tasmania as well through that song Storm Rollin in. Is that an Australian song or is that Nashville again?

Tom Wolfe:
We write in Nashville, and the reason we probably go over there and write is because, it’s the type of town you can go to and work… We work with co-writers. So me and Nick might go in and write with one other person. And we do that just to keep it fresh between us. Being brothers we can really easily just argue and fight it out. But also, we write two or three songs a day and we’ll go for three, four weeks and come home with like 50 songs. Then we’ll go through them all again and just start chipping them away. So it’s a good work ethic over there. Yes, Storm Rollin in, thinking about writing that, we’re drawing off this beautiful state that I live in. I love it. I love camping at the High Country in Tasmania and all that sort of stuff. So even though it wasn’t written in Australia, or in Tassie, when I’m writing that stuff, I always have to put myself in a place, and it’s always either home or it’s in Tassie somewhere. It just seems to come out in the songs.

John Murch:
To actually be away from home, to be away from something you care so much about, when you miss it or when you have a sense of longing, you actually can connect even deeper to it.

Tom Wolfe:
Absolutely. I think a great example of that is Peter Allen, I Still Call Australia Home, since he spent most of his life living abroad. But I mean, I think I Still Call Australia Home is one of the most beautiful songs written. Exactly that, I think he was living in America when he wrote it. So there is something about missing your home and missing where you’re from and missing the place that you know as well. I’m very comfortable at home, I know my neighbors, I know all my mates and it’s still like a small town. I can go to the local shop and they know me and I know them, and that sort of connection stuff with people is really nice. When you get away from that, you don’t know anybody, that really makes miss that, really makes you miss home even more.

John Murch:
What is the experience like for those that co-write with the Wolfe Brothers?

Tom Wolfe:
Well, hopefully they have, at a bare minimum, a fun time. It’s been really fun. We’ve done it enough now that we have a few people we go back and work with, it is about four or five guys that we continuously work with now. Because I think we get them and I get us. I mean, it doesn’t always work, sometimes you write some with people and you just don’t connect and you’re not on the same wavelength. We wrote with… It has to be the last trip we did, last song writing trip, we tried a lot of new writers. And there’s a lot of these guys, great people, but they were like pop writers, or there was one guy, he’s like a Christian artists and we just weren’t on the same wavelength when it came to how we want our songs to be. So that didn’t work.

Tom Wolfe:
But I think people get out of it, I think they get a fun time out of it. I think they get a sense of us out of it. I am especially, wear my heart on my sleeves type of guy. Writing a song, I need to be thinking about that situation or where I’ve been in my life when I can relate to that. I find that’s how I write the best songs, if I put myself in that time and place in my life. Then there I can write that. I’m a Beatles fanatic and I listened to some of their writing and the way they can tell stories that aren’t real, I really find that hard to write songs like that. I keep trying, but I just can’t. I can’t do. Which is good. Because I think the way we write it, it comes from our heart and I think people see that, and I think they connect with that. I think that’s why we’re doing okay. I think people can see it’s coming from the right place.

John Murch:
Because you clearly stated, your own brother, you kind of know each other a little bit too well. But to have someone there who can crack the code and put a few letters between those gaps, I just find that-

Tom Wolfe:
Absolutely.

John Murch:
Yeah, it’s so amazing.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, yeah. It is. It’s absolutely. Me and Nick are brutally honest. In awkward situations in life you can be nice to people and kind of grit your way through it. Well, me and Nick, that filter’s gone. We’re just like straight into each other. We’re not like Noel and Liam Gallagher, but we’re brutally honest. We’ve got people over there now who get where I’m coming from and get when Nick comes from it, and there you are. It’s really great. The way I write songs is it’s everything. I’m a pretty outward guy, everything’s out. I love people and I love talking to people, love connecting with people. So all my ideas tend to come out, whether I like them or not. So it works. Whatever’s happening is working.

John Murch:
Let’s talk about one other collaboration before we move on to some matters of the heart and home and those other key issues that we like to cover on this show. Damn Good Mates is a song you did with a guy called Lee Kernaghan, are you mates?

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. We are. He’s one of our best mates. He’s just amazing. He saw us many, many moons ago when we entered the reality TV world and went on Australia’s Got Talent. He was in a place in his career when I think he was looking for some new people to work with. He was looking for a new band. And he saw us on the TV show and went, “Wow, who are these guys? I want to meet these guys.” And I got a phone call one day and I was like, “Hey, this is Lee.” We went up to Sydney and we actually did an audition to be in his band. And we learned a bunch of Lee songs. We walked in the studio, we were all set up, we played one song. And then he was like, “Yeah, that’s it, Fellas. You’ve got the job.”

Tom Wolfe:
Then we pretty much spent best part of eight years recording, writing, touring. He’s been one of our biggest supporters since day one. I mean, he took us on the road. He put us out at his opening act every night. He has in our corner since day one, and amazing guy. And when we came to do that album, we’d had big list of duets of things we could do together. And he was dead set that we had to do Damn Good Mates together. That was really special. Been through a lot together, and he really is our damn good mate and I love him very much. And he’s just incredible work ethic, and learned so much from him over the years, I’ll be forever grateful.

John Murch:
We’re currently in conversation with Tom Wolfe of the Wolfe brothers. We said, we’d go back to family. We’re going to go way back. What was it like growing up with mum Leigh and father Malcolm?

Tom Wolfe:
It was great. Honestly, it was so good. We had such a great life. The summers and the farm were just the best. We played cricket until it was dark. We’d be in backyard cricket matches till 10 o’clock some night. We got the farm here, so there’d always be backpackers staying on the farm, picking, these backpackers has become friends, people from all over the world. We’d have people from France and Germany and England. It was incredible. And Dad worked really hard. Dad was the bread winner. He had the farm, he had a full time job and he did gigs as well. He was a worker. If Dad was sitting down during the day, there was something wrong.

Tom Wolfe:
If you went inside during the day and Dad was sitting down it’s like, “Whoa, what’s going on here?” Incredible. And Mum was just so beautiful. Mom was amazing. She played so much music in the house, which was such a great thing. There’s always music on and Dad was in a band, but Mum just… Growing up, I remember from my really early years, she went out and bought me all the Beatles movies when I was a kid. Now, they’re not really the greatest movies ever made, but that music got into me and I still love it now. So growing up, I really had the best life. And as I’ve got older, hindsight’s like that, I guess, you realise how lucky you were and how good you had it. I often think with the world and all the stresses of life, I think, “God, it’d be good to just go back.”

John Murch:
What was one of those first Beatles movies that you thought there was something in the future in that?

Tom Wolfe:
I love Help! I still love the Beatle’s movie Help! I love that album. That to me, is just, I guess, one of their best. People often rave about… And I do too, don’t get me wrong, about Rubber Soul and about Sgt. Pepper. But I don’t know, that Help! album, you can hear in the songwriting there was just a level of maturity started to show. I mean, you’ve got things like Yesterday. I mean, Help!, Help! is John Lennon is making a cry for help basically. Them albums and then songs that just got it me. Then they’re just so catchy. Ticket To Ride, I mean, how good is Ticket To Ride? That is just such a great melody. I wish I;d written just one of them.

John Murch:
It’s always bad to choose favorites, like choosing children I guess, but of the four, which one?

Tom Wolfe:
I’m all about Paul. I mean, that’s why I played bass. Watching Paul play bass, I was like, “Man, that’s cool.” That really got me interested wanting to be a bass player was seeing him do that. And I think because I’m quite a… if you can’t tell, I love a chat, I’m quite an outgoing guy and watch that and watching scenes… Because often bass player are just out the back and just hiding away. That is not me. That is not me at all, basically. All that, Paul.

John Murch:
How do you feel Paul is in his career now? He really hasn’t lost it.

Tom Wolfe:
Oh, Mate. I mean, he’s still showing the world that he’s one of the best songwriters. I think his best work was probably definitely done in the later career of the Beatles and going into… His Wings stuff was probably when he writing his best songs. But I mean, me and my wife went and saw him live in Melbourne, I think it was three years ago? Two years ago? Was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen in my life. Me and my wife, Allie, we laugh about it because I didn’t cry the day I got married, but when I sold Paul McCartney play Blackbird, I cried.

John Murch:
Oh.

Tom Wolfe:
She was like, “Are you serious? You didn’t even cry when we got married.” “But what if I was happy?” Now the world knows that.

John Murch:
Just to give you a little bit of cred, when you’ve been together as long with Allie as you have with Paul McCartney’s music, then you’ll also cry.

Tom Wolfe:
Absolutely. You know what it was when I think about it? I think it was like, it took me back to them early years. I’ve lost my dad about six months before that. And I think about my dad playing these old songs and the old vinyl, he had the vinyls. And he’d say things like, “This is the best music you’ll ever hear.” And I think about Mum playing it. It just transports me to a really happy, simple time in my life when I hear that music. I think that’s what music does. So I think, I got very caught up in the moment. Which is what life is, it’s about. I was completely lost in the moment watching that happen, and no regrets at all. It’s what music does to us.

John Murch:
I did say your father’s name was Malcolm.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. Dad’s Malcolm. Because he’s a drummer, his nickname was Mildoo Wolfe, believe it or not.

John Murch:
I had Milfred down.

Tom Wolfe:
No. That’s fun. They called him Mildoo Wolfe. This nickname for Dad came from an old… It must’ve been a cartoon years and years ago called Mildoo Wolf or something. Mildew the Werewolf or something. In any way, the local paper down here in Tassie, when Dad was a bit of a man around town, he had the number one band for a while. They did this big cartoon of my dad drawn up as a werewolf, the name Mildoo just stuck with him forever.

John Murch:
You did get a chance to play as a Wolfe Family Orchestra. This sounds like it was before then?

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. So with our family, there’s four generations of music, and there’s four generations of farming. So dad had a band called Midnight Revival. He played in that for 45 years of his life. Me and Nick used to play in Dad’s band from time to time. We’d do some gigs with Dad. And then my father, Malcolm and his brother Tony, and his mom and dad had the Wolfe Family Orchestra. So they would do Town Hall dances. And they’d be sort of doing waltzy stuff. And this would be early 60s. They’d be doing waltzy songs and my grandfather was a bit of a… I never got to meet him, unfortunately, but he was a bit of an entrepreneurial. He used to do the bus run for the school as well as had the farm.

Tom Wolfe:
What he’d do is, he’d pick people up on the bus, he’d charge them to get on the bus. He’d charge people to go to the town hall. He’d then do the gig. He’d charge them to get home. And when they’re all going home, he’d sell them illegal moonshine he’d made, on the bus. He was a bit of an entrepreneur, my grand dad. He loved his music. Loved his music. And it’s just always been a part of the family. There’s always been instruments around. It’s just always been, you play music in some capacity. That was always the thought. Whether it be, what we’re doing now as the Wolfe brothers doing it as a full-time thing, or whether it be you’re playing weekend gigs or whatever. It was always just normal in our household, you would be doing music in some way. I started playing in the pubs when I was 13, 14.

John Murch:
What was that connection did you see growing up between Malcolm and Leigh?

Tom Wolfe:
When you’re young, you don’t quite see it. But as I got older, I saw this connection and the way Dad… He was a bit of an older school type of guy. He wasn’t the most… I don’t want to say he wasn’t loving, because that’s not fair.

John Murch:
Is the word affectionate that you’re looking for? Maybe not as affectionate?

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. It’s was affectionate I’m looking for. Yeah. And he wasn’t quite like that. But the way he… It was really amazing, I can remember moments when I was young, the way he showed his love, as I now know in hindsight, he worked. He worked just to give us everything we needed. And I can remember Mum had this old Mitsubishi Magna for 15 years, and it had come to the end of its life and it was blowing smoke and it was dead. I remember he worked really hard and he got Mom a new car, and he was just like so proud of that. Because he was able to provide to get her a new car. And it was really great. There was this beautiful bond between them. I miss him very much, but I still got my Mum so that’s good. She’ll outlive us all, I reckon.

John Murch:
You grew up on a small berry farm. That’s the same farm we’re speaking about is that’s been around since 1899, mind you?

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. Yeah. My great grandfather, George Wolfe, bought the property in 1899. I think he bought it for something like 15 pound or something. Something really like nothing, which would’ve been a lot back then. And this has been in our family for that long. We’ve still got the farm, we’ve still got a shop on the farm where we sell our fruit during the fruit season. Being in this COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, I’ve been spending my last few weeks just working on the farm, doing jobs, doing all them gunner jobs that I should be doing. It’s been amazing.

Tom Wolfe:
It’s been the best place to grow up. We used old pickers huts as our rehearsal space. We had 40 acres of berries, of bush, of creeks, of dams to just do what we wanted to do. So it is the most amazing, amazing place to grow up. I’d come home from school in the afternoon and I’d often just got down the bush, and a light a fire. I mean, keep in mind I’m 10 years old. And about teatime, Mum would be yelling out the window, “Tom, time for tea!” Very, very lucky. And we still got it and we’re still running the farm. I’m trying to bring the farm into the next generation and make it something that people can all get to experience a little bit more. So we’re working on it hard.

John Murch:
For you to take it into the next generation will be a conversation you need to have with Allie. How’s that going? Where are you at?

Tom Wolfe:
Oh, no, we’re going well. Allie loves it. When we lived down here on the farm and she loves it. I’m the type, I can’t sit still, so I got to be doing stuff. So she knows what I’m like. I’ll often have these ideas at 10 o’clock at night. “Oh, I should do this.” And I’ll start writing out things. She just shakes her head. But no, she loves it. She loves it down here. She’s been down here on the farm with me for five years and it’s our home now. Which is really great, we’re excited that the next generations, when we have kids, that they’ll get to grow up here and experience the way we did, which is really exciting.

John Murch:
Four or five years ago was that proposition not on the table?

Tom Wolfe:
Four or five year? Yeah, yes and no. I was really scared of the idea of having a family because I’ve been so band focused for so many years. I needed to do the band, I needed to do this. I think now I’ve got a bit older, I’m really comfortable with the idea of wanting to be a dad. I think I’d be a pretty good dad. Something I definitely want to do. Even just talking about all this stuff today, talking about the upbringing I had down here, I think they’re going to get a beautiful place to grow up, which is going to be really special.

John Murch:
How’s the dog family going?

Tom Wolfe:
Good. So I’ve got three dogs down here. I’ve actually got Nick, a old farm dog. Nick worked in the sheep and cattle station for a little while. And he had a actual, proper working dog. Now he’s 16. He’s completely deaf. He’s named Tippy. I’ve got an old German Shepherd that was Allie’s when we first met. So when I met Allie, I got Allie and the dog. She is nearly 12 years old and she’s all gray. She’s going blind. So those two dogs are very old and were slowing up.

Tom Wolfe:
So we thought, “Well, let’s get a little pop to try and breathe a little bit of life back into them.” So we found from mate’s farm up in the Mid-lands of Tasmania, had a kelpie/hound dog and he’s just over one years old. And true to my love of the Beatles, I’ve called him Ringo. He is a bloody menace of a dog, let me tell you. But he’s beautiful. We love him. Wherever I go on the farm, the three of them just fall up. I’ll walk over one side of the paddock, they all come. So it’s great. It’s like having a audience all day long.

John Murch:
What kind of conversations do you have with those three?

Tom Wolfe:
Normally, it’s trying to stop Ringo tormenting the older two dogs. But I talk to them all day. I tell them what I’m doing and I love dogs. And there’s no lying in a dog. They either like you or they don’t. Let you know when someone’s around. And I love that. I love that and they’re so affectionate and they just want to be loved. I’ve always grown up with dogs and cats. I’ve got cows here, I got sheep here. I love animals. I really love animals. I nearly bought some emus recently, but I backed down just easier to the last minute.

John Murch:
If I bought an emu, I’d feel like I need to buy a kangaroo just to have the whole coat of arms series.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, that’s right. I got plenty of kangaroos. I got kangaroos for endless days here and I got a few wombats. You even see a few Tassie devils get on the farm every now and then. I’m actually getting old because I love all that stuff now. I appreciate it a lot more than when I was younger. A lot of beauty in the bush, I recon. I just love it. The more I travel, the more gigs I do, the more I want come back to it. Does that make sense? Sorry, I really miss it. I feel very comfortable in it. It’s beautiful. It’s truly beautiful. I think the Australian wildlife and bush is just some of the most beautiful stuff you’ll ever see in your life.

John Murch:
A little birdie tells me you like hunting as well, which would be the opposite admiring wildlife.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. Well I do. I do. I like hunting. But I’m a big believer that if you’re going hunt, then you need to respect the animal. I would kill anything for the sake of killing something. I think it’s ridiculous. If I kill a kangaroo here, I’ll actually make a pelt out of it and I’ll actually eat it, or I’ll feed it to the dogs. Same with deer. So I eat meat and I’m a believer that if you’re going to eat meat, you got to respect the process. I have sheep here, which we will eat it, we’ll grow around lamb here. And again, I respect that process. If you’re going to eat meat, I’ll look after the sheep, I feed them and I make sure they’re well fed, and they got a great life. And when we do a slaughter them, I make sure it’s very peaceful and they don’t even know it happened. I’m a big believer in that sort of stuff. I don’t like animal cruelty.

John Murch:
Tom, I’d really like, if you don’t mind, to talk us through a little bit more about that process, because obviously it’s not the joy of hunting.

Tom Wolfe:
I’ve been blasted before by people, “Ah, how can you hunt? How can you do this?” As they’re saying that, they’re eating a chicken burger. And I’m like, “Well, hang on.” For me, it’s about respecting that process and it’s about… Even with all this COVID-19 stuff, I’ve been doing a little bit more hunting. But again, I’ve been cooking the kangaroo, I’ve been making mince out of it and doing all that sort of stuff. And really come back to trying to provide a much more for ourselves. And it’s the same, obviously I grow berries, I grow a lot of potatoes. When my dad died and I took the reins of the farm, a big goal for me was, I want to sit down at Christmas lunch and I want everything on my plate to be, I’ve grown it or made it. Carrots, the potatoes, the roast lamb. And I’ve done that.

Tom Wolfe:
I think that’s a really cool feeling. And almost like, that’s what we’ve done for thousands of years. There’s obviously people out there that ruin it for everybody. But if you respect the process and respect the animal, I think it’s a good thing to do. Someone said to me once, they said, “How do you write a good song?” I said, “Well, grow a patch of spuds.” They were like, “What?” I was like, “Well, growning a patch of spuds, you’re creating something.” You work the dirt, you look after it, you care for it, you grow it, you feed it what it needs to be fed, then you harvest it.

Tom Wolfe:
I think there’s something really… I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. It’s like really animalistic, that providing thing, that I really love. I love doing that. I love growing things. I’ve been planting all different fruit. I’ve been planting lots of different Palm trees and stuff like that, because I love that. I think if you’re going to plant a tree, you should plant a tree that you can harvest some fruit off of it. I love that process of not wasting and using what you got to survive. I think it’s really cool. Something more recent the last few years, but growing my own food, hunting my own food. I think I’m trying not to waste anything, basically.

John Murch:
What’s your biggest tip in terms of gardening? I hear a lot about the four plots, turn them around all that kind of… But from you Tom?

Tom Wolfe:
Well, look, I’ve still got a lot to learn. Don’t get me wrong. Biggest gardening tip would be, one thing we’ve spent weeks, upon weeks, upon months doing down here is putting in good watering. Growing raspberries, for example, they love water over the summer. So I’ve been putting in big irrigation system. And also, the other big thing we’ve had to do down here is wallaby wire. We’ve got plagues of wallabies. Every part of our farm is nearly completely wallaby proof now, which is really good. Just planned out a new patch of raspberries, and we try not to use chemicals, so using natural blood and bone fertilizer on all of our stuff. I’m looking out the window at them right now as I’m talking to you, and they seem to be going really well.

John Murch:
Last person we spoke to in Tasmania was the wonderful Claire Anne Taylor, you may know of her music, and she started gardening as well. So obviously those lush soils that you guys are lucky to have down there. Let’s move on back to music briefly, and what artists in Tasmania should we be keeping an eye out for?

Tom Wolfe:
One guy, if you’re not aware, a guy called Christopher Coleman. He’s incredible talent, incredible songwriter. I’m lucky to be his friend. I actually started doing, as a bit of a side project, again, to bring it back to the Beatles, we started doing the odd Beatles tribute show where a bunch of Tasmanian musicians just get together and pick a Beatles album and learn all the parts and play it live. And Chris is one of the guys I’ve been doing that with and Chris is so talented. Such a great song writer, very much underrated. Another one is a guy called Scott Target some people think I’d not like, who has like a dance pop act called Roboticus, which is fantastic. Another great one is Ted Pickett who’s a fantastic singer-songwriter. There’s a lot of talent down here and like everything in life, it doesn’t probably get the exposure that it probably should from time to time.

Tom Wolfe:
You don’t have to look too far to find many talented acts down here. Clinton Hutton is another fantastic artist who’s up northwest of the state. We try and actually get, if possible, get these guys when we play in Tassie to open our shows and get them involved. And that’s important to us. That’s really important to us. I’m very open to what I’m listening to. I think the whole genre thing, I think that is getting less and less. There’s good songs and then there’s bad songs. A normal day to me, I can listen to something like Roboticus and then I can listen to Willie Nelson, and then I could listen to Stones, and then I could listen to a top 40 playlist or something. I think it’s good as a songwriter, try and keep a very open minded to what’s happening and what I’m listening to.

John Murch:
In terms of the Wolfe Brothers music, you’ve recently signed to, I believe, BMG. Do they give you a sense that you need to be a particular kind of genre or does that recording deal allow you to be the Wolfe Brothers, however that may come out?

Tom Wolfe:
So they’ve been really supportive of what we’re doing. They definitely say, “Look, this is what we think will work best.” But there’s no rules. I’ll get scared with record companies getting involved and saying, “Oh, you need to do is. You need to say this. You need to look like this.” Where they really haven’t been like that. Look, we’ve written a bunch of stuff for this next album and there’s some of the most country stuff I’ve ever written, and then there’s some of the most non-country stuff I’ve ever written. They’ve just been really supportive about the whole process, but they’re all about putting the artists first and putting the art first. And if they do that and look the artists first then hopefully everything else will follow how it should. It feels great to be a part of the team. It’s really great to be part of the team and it’s good to have No Brakes out. It’s different to what we’ve done, but it’s fun and I think it’s positive and so on. I think, kind of what the world needs right now.

John Murch:
Well, let’s briefly talk about No Brakes the film clip, and particularly I guess, a link into the Daytona line, which is in that particular song. When did you first play Daytona?

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, well, there was a Daytona machine in our Fern Tree Pub up the road, but the true story behind that is, “Yeah I’ve seen Daytona and them Talladega nights,” that actually… this is so embarrassing, we watched Talladega Nights with Will Ferrell the night before we wrote No Brakes. There’s no bad ideas when it comes to songwriting, and officially coming out of an album, Country Heart, where we wrote such an emphasis on our family, on our Dad and on our farm, we were really in a place of just writing whatever. Being as fun and positive as we can. So songs can come from everywhere and that’s definitely where No Brakes has come from. We wanted to just loosely to have a real like Daytona, cruise in the USA vibe. We play that when we were kids and we wanted it to have sort of neon vibe to it. So it’s fun. It’s really cool.

John Murch:
Dash of Guitar Hero thrown in for good measure as well.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah.

John Murch:
Yes. When you’re at the Fern Tree Hotel, what was your highest Daytona score or do we need to go to the other game for that?

Tom Wolfe:
I can’t remember what my high score was. I was only telling someone the other day how much the world has changed. I can remember the Daytona machine sat in the bar. This is going back to when you could smoke inside the pub. I can remember my Dad, this is so bad, giving me a $10 note and going, “Go up to the bar and say you want to packet of Winfield Blue cigarettes and bring them over here to me.” I would have been six or something and I walked over and like, “Excuse me, can I have that.” And they’re like, “Are they for your dad, are they, Mate? Are they for your dad?” I’m like, “Yeah, yeah.” They go, “Here you go. Take them over to your dad. Here’s the change.” I though, “Wow.” Man, we’ve come a long way as a society, haven’t we?

John Murch:
Back in the day, they would have looked over to your father and he would have given them a wink or a nudge or a, “Yeah. It’s all right.”

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, absolutely. Just to go back to them Daytona machine, they’re still out there. I’ve been often on the road, I’ll be walking around many different towns and you might see an arcade and you walk past an arcade, there’s always a Daytona machine in there. And they’re in pubs and little milk bars. I was in… I can’t remember where we were. Maybe it was in… Oh, it was in WA in Bunbury. We were just going to sound check and we gone to walk and get some tea. And I think we walk into like a kebab house, and there was a Daytona machine and an Indiana Jones pinball machine. They’re still out there. And they’re 20 years old… Whoever made them, invented them and owns the rights to them would be a trillionaire by now, I recon.

John Murch:
What other games did you enjoy playing?

Tom Wolfe:
We had the Super Nintendo, and we were all about Donkey Kong Country 2. Oh my God, we played that so much when we were kids. To the point of Nick has one of the songs of Donkey Kong Country 2, he has that as his ringtone now, to this day, isn’t that amazing? Still got the Super Nintendo, we never threw them out. Still got an Atari, as well, somewhere at home. Yeah, loved Donkey Kong, just loved that typed of game that’s like a bit adventurous, but not too real. I don’t game or anything now, I find I just can’t. Maybe I don’t have the patience or something for it, but it’s not my thing now.

John Murch:
Maybe you’ve got something more productive to do, like a farm?

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah. Well, that’s probably true. Every now and then, I will play a little bit of Mario Kart. I’ve always said, when… I’m not saying, if we, I’m saying when we get successful enough to have our own bus and we’re touring Canada and the States in a bus, I want to have Mario Kart on the bus. I think that would be really cool. I lik the idea of finishing a gig, getting on the bus, having a couple of wind downs, and then just play Mario Kart. I think that could be pretty cool.

John Murch:
What has been one of your favorite moments on the road?

Tom Wolfe:
We’ve got a song called Hey Brother which we wrote after meeting a lot of veterans. There’s been some incredible moments through that song, which have attracted a lot of veterans and service men and women to come to shows and meet us. Coming the moment to meeting some of them men and women and hearing what that song has meant to them, that’s been really special. Even on Anzac day, I had a few of these men and women ringing me, their day and they’ve been getting drunk and I had a few ringing me about eight o’clock at night, and they’ve been pretty drunk. And they’re like, “Hey, Mate. We’re listening to Hey Brother. We’re listening to…” Stuff like that’s been really cool.

Tom Wolfe:
I really, really enjoyed the last tour we did, which was the No Sad Song tour, I felt the band was just playing the best it’s ever played. We were just really in sync with each other. Some nights we’d just jam out on certain songs for five minutes. And it was… Oh, it was some of the most fun I’ve had on stage. There are a few that definitely come to mind. But I’ve been in so many amazing moments that I just sometimes have to sit back and go, “Wow, I’m doing this right now. This is…”

Tom Wolfe:
In Tamworth recently, we played at Joy McKean’s, who was Slim Dusty wife, it was her 90th birthday. We were one of the special guests that played there, and we played with Lee Kernaghan straight after Paul Kelly and Don Walker, and I’m standing side of stage and Paul Kelly and Don Walker come down and they’re standing there shaking our hands, having a chat. And I’m like, “Wow, standing here with Lee Kernaghan, Paul Kelly and Don Walker from Cold Chisel. This Is a pretty cool moment.” Moments like that, I just sort of go, “How did I get here?” I have written some of it down, but I wish I’d written more of it down because there’s a little bit and pieces I forgot over the years and I wish I’d kept onto it more.

John Murch:
It sounds very much like a farm, sort of a changing of the guard that will happen in the next five, 10, 20 years between those gentlemen and yourself.

Tom Wolfe:
Yeah, I hope so. But I mean, even just be considered of that is an incredible scene. Their music is some of the stuff that’s shaped our lives, shaped our band. Incredible songwriters, great people, and I’m really honored.

John Murch:
When you get a chance to go camping, what does camping mean to you?

Tom Wolfe:
There’s a couple of little spots we go that we really love, in Tassie. One is a spot down in Burnie, Cloudy Bay Beach. Now to get to this camping spot, you’ve got to travel. Bernie Island is a little Island off Tasmania, for those people who don’t know. To get to this camping spot, you have to have four-wheel drive. You’ve got to travel along the beach for about two or three kilometers. And then it’s a little bit of a four-wheel drive track and it gets you up on top of the hill. It’s just a most amazing spot to camp there. Camping for us is really simple, to us. We don’t even take a tent, we just take a swag. We just have a big double swag that we have. I’ll take the chainsaw and just some really basic stuff. Some people, they go camping and you see their camping set up and they’ve got… When we did a couple of nights camping up at Lake… There’s a big lake here where they do the rowing practice called Lake Barrington.

Tom Wolfe:
We stayed up there for a couple of nights. People up there were camping, they had a satellite dish with them. And I was like, “You’ve completely missed the point of what’s going on here.” We just go out in a bush, we just light a fire, maybe put some music on, and the fire’s like you bush TV. If you’ve ever got a fire going, you can sit around and watch the fire burn for hours. Really simple cooking stuff. We love it. We love it. We love getting away. If we can take the dogs, it’s even better. I love getting away to these places. And there’s so many little secluded places in Tasmania that people don’t even know about.

Tom Wolfe:
We often go up to the Highland country in Tassie. I love the Highland country that often gets snowed in up there. You can wake up and open your swag up and you’re covered in snow. Yeah, that’s fun. I love that. It’s a good bit of adventure for us. We love traveling and we love finding new places. So when we go camping, sometimes we won’t even have a destination of where we going, in mind. We’ll just go, “Let’s just go find a spot.” Drive up the West Coast or drive up the East Coast to find a beach, find a camp spot and shed up for the night.

John Murch:
That beauty that is staying awake till the embers of the fire start appearing at about 2:00 in the morning. You just doze off and you wake up in the morning and the warmth is still coming off that fire, it’s just amazing when you can do that.

Tom Wolfe:
Oh, it’s amazing. It’s so beautiful. And last time we went camping, it was a really warm night at Cloudy Bay, and we’ve got a big double swag. It’s kind of like a tent, but it’s all canvas. But it was such a nice warm night, I actually opened the swag right up and just laid there and we just looked at the fire burn. We woke up at sunrise, and it was just a couple of really little embers going. I love that. And you just get it going again and cook your breakfast on it, and away you go to the next spot. There’s something very beautiful about that.

John Murch:
It’s like a retuning of the body clock as well. That’s what I find anyway.

Tom Wolfe:
Oh, absolutely. And I love that. Because being a musician, I have such late… often not finishing a gig till midnight and by the time you wind down and have a shower, it’s often 3:00 in the morning before I go to sleep. So I get myself in a really late night cycle. So it’s good to go away and do that. You can’t help but you’re up at 6:00 because the sun’s up at 6:00. Yeah. That’s really good.

John Murch:
It’s been an absolute pleasure to speak with you, Tom Wolfe. Thanks for joining radionotes.

Tom Wolfe:
All right, thank you so much for having me. And man, we went places I’ve never talked about. So thanks for letting me do it. I appreciate it, man.

 

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *