Steve Poltz On Getting The Most Out Of Crowd-Surfing

This scribe was lucky enough to catch Steve Poltz at Queenscliff Music Festival recently and wandered into the tent while he was performing to a backing track of what sounded like chattering teeth before an enthralled audience of all ages. "That's a song called Sewing Machine and that was the sound of a sewing machine," Poltz enlightens, "and it's about a guy who lives underground, underneath this tree, and lures all these kids in and sews 'em all together side by side up to a wall, and keeps them captured. And there's this one kid in town and his sister is missing - and he's a kid that everybody makes fun of 'cause he lost an arm in an accident on his farm and so he has a hook for an arm. And he welds scissors to his hook and then he goes down and cuts all the kids free and saves 'em," he laughs. So does this story freak out kids in the crowd? "Yeah, they get scared, but it kinda makes 'em smile, too."

"The key to crowd-surfing: is you gotta keep your body really stiff and then be facing up so you're facing the stars."

Poltz may as well move over here since this is his 19th visit to our shores. Palais Theatre in St Kilda is "the first place [he] played when [he] came to Australia" as Jewel's opening act. "It was so fun," he recalls.   

He's incredibly prolific, so we're keen to find out whether Poltz has ever had writer's block. "Not very often," Poltz confesses, "and usually all I need to do is just give myself a deadline and a then song will come out of it and, even if it's not a good song, it'll lead to another song that can be pretty good so I just know that it's a matter of just doing it and keeping up with it otherwise you forget how to do it." Poltz also extends this practice makes perfect theory to performing. "I feel like it gets better the more I do it," he shares, adding that constant gigging gives him the confidence "to take more risks [because] you're not scared. The worst thing you can do is get inside your own head, but as long as you're not inside your own head and you're just playing and having fun it makes the shows better."

His shows typically conclude with a bout of crowd-surfing, which Poltz has perfected over the years. "The key to crowd-surfing: is you gotta keep your body really stiff and then be facing up so you're facing the stars," he recommends. When asked whether this is because punters might accidentally on purpose grab for certain body parts, Poltz reveals, "Well somebody will always grab your ass and squeeze it, which is always funny." Has he ever caught a cheeky culprit in the act? "Yeah, they'll just laugh, they'll tell you that they're doing it. It's so funny," he chuckles. "And then people pass you all the way to the back and then pass you up front. The hardest part is dismounting, where they lead you back to the stage and flip you over. It's always a little weird; it's, like, trying to land on the ground again on your feet. And then you've gotta hop back up on stage and start playing again. But I love crowd-surfing."