The Ruiins is a collaboration between Pat Sugden and Adam Dooker that has propelled the duo from their home on the New South Wales mid-north coast onto the national stage and touring circuits.
First coming together in 2015, their music began appearing last year with the singles ‘Eventually’, ‘It Is You’ and ‘Open Up Your Soul’ capturing raw, blues-inspired rock with a coastal vibe. “We only released our first lot of material last year,” Pat says.
“The first two songs caught on well; we were pretty stoked with how they turned out and the response from them. Hopefully we can carry that on with the next songs.”
As a duo, Adam plays drums and sings while Pat performs a dual role as guitarist and bassist. “I just play guitar,” Pat says, “but I run it in a certain way where you can get some good bass tones coming out of it as well as your normal guitar tones.”
When it comes to playing live and translating what they’ve done in the studio to the stage, Pat says both he and Adam feed off the thrill of not knowing what’s going to happen with just the two of them. “In the studio we can keep it as simple as possible because there are only two of us and two instruments – three if you include vocals,” he says.
“So we try to keep our recording as stripped-back as possible, then have little things that fill it up where you might not necessarily notice them or where it might not be noticeable live that they’re missing.
“It’s good to always be on your toes and always be busy. If one of us stuffs up then it’s the whole sound stuffing up, so it’s a lot more pressure and we like having that when we’re playing live because it makes it more exciting.
"People can see that in the visual aspect, they can see there’s only two of us and they feed off that a lot more too.”
The Ruiins start festival season off with a double-header this year, playing Caloundra Music Festival in September followed by Wollombi Music Festival the very next day. “The night before, we’re playing Caloundra Music Festival and then we fly back down to play Wollombi and that’s going to be the star of our next tour run as well. So two solid shows to start off, we’re super-pumped for that.”
Pat says he is keen to socialise with his contemporaries and see how they perform live. “Personally we only know Lime Cordiale [at Wollombi Music Festival], as in seen them live,” he says.
“We haven’t met any of the other crew that are playing but that’s the best thing about playing line-ups with lots of bands, you get to mingle and meet really cool people and see what other bands do live.
"It’s such a good experience and that’s why we do it. Playing with such good bands and vibing off everyone and seeing what everyone is up to, it’s cool.”
