FEATURE: Luca Brasi – Favourite Gigs

21 May 2014 | 11:10 am | Staff Writer
Originally Appeared In

Popular Tasmanian locals Luca Brasi play a trio of shows in their home state this weekend with Endless Heights. To coincide, today we feature the band as lead singer and bassist Tyler Richardson reflects on significant and memorable gigs that have impacted him as a musician and equally as a fan. Catch the band this Friday and Saturday in Hobart and Launceston.

Popular Tasmanian locals Luca Brasi play a trio of shows in their home state this weekend with Endless Heights.

To coincide, today we feature the band as lead singer and bassist Tyler Richardson reflects on significant and memorable gigs that have impacted him as a musician and equally as a fan.

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Favourite gig you've attended?

I’d have to say Hot Water Music at The Fest in Florida a few years back. It was the year that they made a comeback and the first hometown show in a long time. I remember getting the album ‘A Flight and A Crash’ when I was still in high school and just being blown away. At the time I didn’t know how to place them in a genre, it was fairly dissimilar to anything else I’d ever heard. I was overseas when they came to Australia after their reunion and kind of thought I’d never see them. When I found out they were going to be at Fest, Tom (plays guitar in Luca) and I booked the tickets and just decided to go. I’d been building it up for years in my head and after a three week booze adventure through the states I was suitably ready for it. In all honesty though, not even that much Jamieson could get me prepared for that. They just played everything I’d ever wanted to hear and it was perfect. A week later before a Social Distortion show in Jacksonville we ran into Chuck and he bought us dinner and drinks. We’d met a couple times before and he’s a true fucken champion. Good times.

Favourite gig you've played with Luca Brasi?

This one is very hard to nail down! My memory totally sucks, too much too young I guess. From recent memory I’d have to say our album launch in Melbourne for By A Thread at The John Curtin in April. That tour was the first time we’d really been out on our own for a big run, we’d done a lot of smaller stuff and some big support tours but this was the first time we really got to see how we were doing. We also began selling tickets to shows at that time, something I never considered possible. Pre-sales had done really well and I kinda secretly hoped it’d sell out but had no actual expectations. The show was just so rad and crazy, felt like a show in Launceston! Anyway, it ended up selling out and seeing the reaction to the new stuff so soon after the record came out was just ridiculous. Aside from a couple of glass related A E incidents, including one for our mate Stevie from Clowns, everything else just fucken ruled.

Gig that made you want to join a band?

When I was 16 Against Me! Came to Hobart and played a tiny sweatbox place called The Venue, upstairs at Salamanca place. I’d been hugely into them since Reinventing Axl Rose and they were kind of what shifted me from being strictly into 90’s style US punk bands and opened up a whole new world for me. I’d played guitar for a while and had been in school bands but nothing I really took seriously. That night pretty much changed everything for me, and it’s only been recently that I considered what it meant to me and still means. Until then I’d only been to a couple of shows here and there, what Against Me! brought to that night still completely blows me away. The place was absolutely heaving, just madness, no stage and no fucken care. I’d never seen so much honesty and belief in what a band, or anyone at all for that matter, was doing on their behalf. I’ll never forget that night, even as a 16 year old kid with a home-made Against Me! shirt covered in someone’s blood I always wanted to attempt something in my life with that kind of honesty. I owe a lot to that band for that night and a lot of other times.

Luca Brasi play with Endless Heights this Friday and Saturday. Details via the official Facebook event.

‘By A Thread’ is out now via Poison City Records. Read our review here.