Brisbane's Open Season is back for its fifth year seeing six venues host over thirty electrifying events. It's a city-wide celebration of the hottest artists to warm up winter.
At the heart of the programme is Skegss bringing their Top Heavy national tour to The Tivoli (for two shows, one of which has already sold out) with 2024 album 'Pacific Highway Music'. Vocalist and guitarist Benny Reed is sitting on the beach in the south of France for this interview, in between surfing. They're just about to start their European tour and Benny's on unintentional vocal rest.
"It's so funny, when you wake up in the morning and everyone's just speaking and they all think I'm French and they're just speaking French to me so I can't even talk to anyone.
"I just go and get a baguette and a coffee and it's just the funniest thing I reckon. . . It's the least I've ever spoken in my life."
Although Skegss released their latest album 'Pacific Highway Music' at the end of 2024, they're already releasing new music. In March they released the single 'So Excited', and this week they dropped 'State Of Hawai'i', with a new EP on the horizon.
This time they were able to record the EP 22 minutes down the road in comparison to recording 'Pacific Highway Music' a plane ride away in LA. "We made an EP in February and just kind of winged it and got six songs out of it. We just did it real opposite to the way we did the album and pretty much all played at once.
"Kelton who plays in the band now – who plays bass – he was in the session this time and then Chris who we recorded with, some songs he even played bass while we played guitars and jammed as like a whole band just having a crack at it.
"So it felt like we were trying to do everything at once, like real live. Rather than when we made ['Pacific Highway Music'], me and Jonny just did it."
'Pacific Highway Music' was pretty mellow and Benny thought this EP would be a great contrast with more raw and faster songs, especially for the live shows. "I kind of wanted to combat this album kind of quickly with some more energetic kind of music, I think because I got all those songs out of my system.
"Since Toby left the band and 'cause of COVID and everything it had been a while [since recording] and I'm just sort of sitting on a few songs and then I feel like once we recorded them, I was a bit like 'f... I'm keen to now have some real fresh stuff'.
"In my head it just felt like a long time to be able to have gotten that album out. That kind of got to me in the end because it was just such a long time.
"I'm pretty pumped and I'm like 'let's get this thing out real quickly' because it took so long for ['Pacific Highway Music']. . . It's fun when you don't really plan something or anticipate something. . . It's nice to sort of do something real impulsive and because no one's expecting it or did expect it and you can just put it out and see what happens."
Skegss play The Tivoli (Brisbane) 27-28 June as part of Open Season. The 28 June show has sold out. Their 'Top Heavy' EP drops 27 June; pre-order it.
Skegss 2025 Tour Dates
Sat 7 Jun - Vivid Sydney @ CarriageworksThu 12 Jun - Dunsborough Tavern* sold out
Fri 13 Jun - Froth Craft Bunbrewery (Bunbury)* sold out
Sat 14 Jun - Astor Theatre (Perth)
Thu 19 Jun - Hindley Street Music Hall (Adelaide)
Fri 20 Jun - Forum Melbourne
Fri 27 Jun - Open Season @ The Tivoli (Brisbane)
Sat 28 Jun - Open Season @ The Tivoli (Brisbane)* sold out
Thu 10 Jul - The Recky (Mid North Coast)
Fri 11 Jul - Jetty Beach House (Coffs Harbour)
Sat 12 Jul - Kingscliff Beach Hotel (Northern Rivers)
Sun 13 Jul - Finnians Tavern (Port Macquarie)
