For Australian musician Adam Eckersley, living in his car when starting his career wasn't “hard”, it was just part of the lifestyle.
The country-rock artist has been playing guitar since the age of 12, and always knew he wanted to make a career out of it. Even while undertaking a mechanic's apprenticeship Adam would play gigs on weekends, keeping his dreams of becoming a full-time musician alive. “It depends what you look at as being hard,” Adam explains when describing the road to achieving his goals.
“I mean there's the usual things that anyone chasing making a career out of their dream... people with not much money and that sort of business. But I never looked at it as being particularly hard, I just embraced it as all part of the lifestyle. I lived in my car and went to some pretty shotty places, eating not much at times. It wasn't necessarily a hard thing, it was fun at times.”
Adam is currently playing with a group of artists he has collaborated with for about nine years now, aptly named the Adam Eckersley Band. “The group of guys I play with now are, in my opinion, the best group of musos in Australia, both personality-wise and [with] talent.
“It's the best musical experience I've ever had, which is great, it makes it easy. We don't have to work for it, which is a benefit of us being a little bit older and having played with a heap of people.”
This week the band will play the Gympie Music Muster for the second year in a row. This will be Adam's third time attending the festival, but only his second time performing. “I did go once before about 15 years ago. It was the first time I ever went and I hadn't been in between then and when I played there last year.
“It was a heaps different experience for me because we played... I had a blast. I mean, I had a blast when I went when I was 18 as well but it was different, I just partied and carried on and watched music, and this time we were there focussed on our shows. We still partied but we had a bit of work to do too.”
Adam and the band have played a variety of festivals lately, but Adam loves to play smaller gigs just as much. “I certainly love doing the festivals, they're awesome. But it's a funny thing... some of the best gigs we've done have been really small gigs, it's just a vibe thing and it feels really great and it's awesome, and then some of the other best gigs have been huge festivals... it just depends on the day and the crowd and how the band is firing.”
No matter how big or small the show has been, Adam has seen plenty of strange stuff while onstage. “There's been plenty of bizarre things [happen while performing]...” he explains. “I did a small gig once out on Mount Kaputar out near Narrabri... It was in a small tent, it was a small group of people, and about halfway through a song a kangaroo jumped into the tent and they had to grab it and take it out before it went crazy.
“[I] had another gig where we were just in a pub, set up in the corner of the room and it was jam-packed and they'd closed the pub, they weren't letting anyone else in. So one fella had had a bit too much to drink and decided he'd be sneaky and climb through the window, but he basically bounded through the window and landed on the drum-kit behind us. The drummer picked him up and threw him out the window and we picked up where we finished.”
Adam and the band recently toured with his wife Brooke McClymont's band The McClymonts. They'll be headlining their own shows next month with a regional tour. “Musically we're just hammering into what we're doing at the moment... it's too fun to be thinking about too much else. Whatever we're doing we'll be doing as a band.”
The Adam Eckersley Band play Gympie Music Muster August 28-30. They also have a string of regional dates throughout September and October.
