Things were going pretty well for Hilltop Hoods before COVID.
The Adelaide trio did a national tour supporting Eminem, released their eighth studio album 'The Great Expanse', embarked on their "biggest tour ever" with 50 shows in 14 countries and scored 7 ARIA Award nominations, winning Best Australian Live Act for The Great Expanse World Tour.When the pandemic hit in early 2020, the band – like many others – came off the road, and hadn't performed any live shows until last month's Groovin The Moo tour.
Daniel 'MC Pressure' Smith remembers the group's feelings when they ceased touring. "[We] decided we didn't want to go back until, I guess, we could do our show the way we wanted to do it," he explains, "which took that long [until 2022]."
After two and a half years off the stage, Smith says there was a lot of "dusting off cobwebs".
"The first rehearsal I think I was probably the most concerned after, more than the actual show, because me and Suffa got together to dust the cobwebs off and we sat there and couldn't remember half of our lyrics.
"We were sitting there looking our lyrics up on the Internet," he laughs.
"It's not like we sat around listening to our music in our down time for the last two years, so we'd just forgotten the lyrics. So there was a bit of re-learning involved there, but we realised how rusty we were then we worked our arses off to get the show polished."
Daniel says he was "definitely nervous" at the first Groovin show in Maitland, but it "felt like riding a bike", and things got back to normal relatively quickly.
Coming off the road indefinitely not only affected Smith and bandmates Matt Lambert (MC Suffa) and Barry Francis (DJ Debris) – they were hyper-aware of how their crew were going to be affected.
They put together the pandemic-inspired track 'I'm Good?', which has now raised over $300,000 for Support Act's Roadies Fund.
"It came from the idea of looking after our crew, and it expanded into a song given to Support Act, by which the song would raise revenue through digital streaming platforms," Smith says.
"There's no unions in the music industry, especially at that level, and a lot of these guys work week to week, month to month with no prospect of permanent, long-term employment and were doing it tough."
Pressure describes the band's crew as a "bunch of the greatest people you have ever met" – some of whom have been working with the Hoods for 15 years.
"We've met each one of them along the way and gone out of our way to keep them in our team – not just because I think they're the best, or one of the best, at what they do, but just because they're good people," Smith says.
"We've made a career surrounding ourselves with good people, and I think that's one of the reasons we're still doing it."
'Still doing it' is one of the central themes in Hilltop Hoods’ latest single, 'Show Business', which features a film clip with the guys dressed as clowns.
"The video was something that Nash Edgerton ['Mr Inbetween'] came up with," Daniel says.
"We played him the song and went through some ideas before the song had come out, and he was really resonating with the idea of having us dressed as clowns as a bit of an ode to the content of the song – that show business itself is not as glamorous as it's sometimes made out to be and there's massive highs and massive lows, and sometimes we do feel like clowns or servants to an industry we have no control of. Especially in the last two years."
Smith says he had "never looked as terrifying" than when he was dressed for the video, but he trusted director Edgerton's process.
"I was pretty apprehensive on the first day of the shoot; I was like, 'Oh man, I hope this comes out funny, because if it doesn't we could have just buried ourselves'," he laughs.
"The film clip came out amazing, it was so bad that it was funny; it had a bit of a dark edge to it but it did everything it needed to."
Pressure says the trio are looking forward to heading out on their 'Show Business' tour – their first since 2019 – with the Groovin The Moo shows in the bank.
"It was a bit daunting putting [tickets] on sale because of the landscape due to the pandemic; and just being three years as well, it's changed so much for us," he says.
"But we were lucky enough to get in front of some big audiences at the Groovin The Moo tour that's just been, and it was a very beautiful thing to see that there were still very lively, enthusiastic music fans that are just dying for live music to come back.
"That was really good for us to see, and it was a bit of a confidence boost in some ways – you go away for so long and culturally trends can change in that amount of time, so it's good to see live music is still very much part of youth culture."
Smith says the Hoods are hoping to add to the horn section they toured with in 2019. "I guess one of the problems – and I say 'problems' in parentheses, it's a great problem to have – is that when you've already done arenas you've got to find a way to level it up, so we're currently doing that with designing a bigger, better, louder show," he explains.
"More things certainly on stage, more guests."
When it comes to touring the show regionally, though, things will have to scale back down again.
"That's just one of the things, you know, if you're playing 20,000-capacity venues you've got the room to throw more things on the stage, and when you scale it to a regional circuit where you're playing to two or five thousand you do.
"But as a bonus you get to get a bit more up close and personal with everyone," Smith says. "So, you know, there's pros and cons to the bigger and smaller shows."
Hilltop Hoods experienced a similar situation in 2019, when they went from playing stadium shows supporting Eminem to small rooms overseas. Daniel describes touring with Eminem – one of his favourite rappers – as "humbling".
"To be able to play stadiums to his crowd was such an amazing experience," he says. "We thought we were playing big shows at festivals with 20,000 or 30,000, but he had 85,000. It's a whole other level to anything we'd ever experienced, and we were so lucky to get invited along on that tour and do it."
For Smith, though, the smaller rooms overseas are just as good as the stadiums here in Australia. "I still love playing 500 to 1,000 size rooms, which we only do overseas now – it's kind of gone past those in Australia," he laughs.
"It's humbling and it's fun; there's no pressure, there's less going on."
It reminds Pressure of the early days in the band. "It takes me back to the days when we were on the come up still, and it's great to see fresh faces who are just discovering your music in different countries – it hasn't been ingrained into them because they haven't grown up in Australia, so there's so many new people there," he says.
"It's a really amazing energy that we get to recreate."
Hilltop Hoods plan now is to continue releasing singles towards the release of their next album, "hopefully" early in the new year, or "whenever it's ready" admits Smith.
The post-pandemic laissez-faire attitude towards new music is one Smith is enjoying, he says. "I like the current mode of the music industry in some ways – not many people make records and put albums out any more, as a cohesive bunch of songs deliberately written to sit together in an albums.
"It's nice being able to put songs out until the album is ready, because there's no rush on us; we're just going to make it until it's ready. It's actually a much nicer environment to work in, rather than having this looming due date of having to put out 12 cohesive songs."
The Hoods are also planning their next 'Restrung' album, which they’ve been working on quietly behind the scenes for over two years.
"We knew after the second one that we wanted to do a third, and stretch it over the next record and the past one; the last one being 'The Great Expanse'," Smith says.
"So we've sort of been collecting all of our favourite songs off the past record and the ones that we're making at the moment, which we've got so many songs that we're waiting to put out; and thinking how we can recreate them with an orchestra."
Hilltop Hoods 2022 Tour Dates
Sat 20 Aug - MyState Bank Arena (Hobart)Sat 27 Aug - Brisbane Entertainment Centre* sold out
Sat 3 Sep - Qudos Bank Arena (Sydney)
Sat 10 Sep - Rod Laver Arena (Melbourne)* sold out
Sat 17 Sep - RAC Arena, Perth
Sat 24 Sep - Adelaide Entertainment Centre* sold out
