The Gooch Palms have had a busy time of late, jet-setting over to the USA to play legendary garage punk festival Gonerfest in Memphis, preceded by a 17-date tour.
Much to their surprise, their shows were "really well received" and gained them scores of new fans across America including an unlikely new fan in Andre 3000 of Outkast. We asked them to choose their top five best moments.
1. Playing Gonerfest. It's been a dream of ours to play Gonerfest in Memphis since we started the band, we even went over as punters in 2011. It was every bit as amazing as we'd hoped! So many great bands and a bunch of legends from Australia all in the one place! It was great to meet Bruce Saltmarsh in person; he's been distributing our stuff over there for a few years. We played to a packed room, and even though Kat had completely lost her voice she belted her way through the set in true Kat Friend style! We let off some crazy fireworks in the carpark after we played that we'd been carrying around with us through several States, and that night I jumped up and sang with The Gizmos during ‘Human Garbage Disposal’.
2. Hearing wolves howling and not dying at Yellowstone National Park. When we rocked up to the campsite just outside Yellowstone National Park, we quickly realised we were the only people camping in a tent. There had apparently been a grizzly bear in the campsite the night before, so they warned us not to sleep with food in our tent! Everyone at the campsite was staring at us like we were aliens from Mars as we had all our clothing we had brought with us on and were sitting around our campfire drinking beers, talking in our loud, Newy accents. We didn't sleep a wink that night and at about midnight a pack of wolves started howling at the moon, which was a huge, full, super moon that had lit the campsite up like it was day time. There was a baby wolf with a little squeaky howl. It was equal parts terrifying and the best thing we'd ever experienced.
3. Andre 3000 and Dan from The Gories in Detroit. I'm a massive Detroit Pistons fan, so I was already super stoked to go to Detroit. The city was awesome and it was great to meet Eric from Urinal Cake who will be putting out Da Goochies next 7". The venue we played was cool and Dan from The Gories was DJing, which was awesome because the Gories are not only one of our fav bands, but a big influence on us as a band. Just before we went to set-up, Eric told me that Andre 3000 had just rocked up and told us to come meet him. He was super nice and watched the whole set and we talked about surfing. It was pretty surreal, but super normal at the same time.
4. Driving. The first time we went to America, back in 2008 for a holiday, we hired a car, drove it out of the car hire place and got t-boned all within ten minutes of getting off the plane. We returned the car instantly and Greyhound bussed our way around that first time. We were terrified of trying again this time, but didn't really have a choice. Our car was upgraded from a very average budget Chevy Impala from the early 2000s that kept getting a flat tyre to a 2015 model, which had only clocked up three miles and was from the future. We returned it with 7,500 miles (12,000km) after driving through 24 states and handled driving across the whole country like a couple of bad-ass bosses!!!
5. Playing to people. Playing to people was great! I mean, we play to people here in Australia, but we really weren't sure if ANYONE was going to show up to any of our shows, or stick around to see us play in America, but we were pleasantly surprised! We've made some amazing new fans/ friends and cannot wait to get back over there next year and do it all over again!
The Gooch Palms will hit the ground running back in Australia as they headline the Gallery Bar stage for Oxford Art Factory's 7th Birthday on 17th October. Free entry.
