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| New White Sneakers
 The last few years have been transitional for New White Sneakers, once one of the staples of Adelaide's small, though dedicated, funk scene - but after a number of line-up changes, they've emerged as strong as ever and are ready to make this town take notice once more.
After gigging around Adelaide sporadically this year, they've managed to snare a night for themselves and some supports at the Gov and are going to make sure that it's a memorable night.
"We're hoping to release a single at the gig," keyboard player Jon Knoblauch announces excitedly as soon as we've begun talking, "a new track we're working on at the moment."
While the 'Sneakers' last EP was released in 2004 with acclaimed producer Doug Brady, recording is currently taking place locally in Norwood and the low-key nature of the process certainly works well for Knoblauch.
Whereas the first EP saw them forced to record solidly for several days at a time and work with deadlines constantly, "This time it's a lot different because we're just recording at night time once or twice a week - or as much as we can - and we haven't got as many limits so we can take our time and get things right. We'll go back and listen to it, then change things so it'll be a much longer process this time compared to last time."
That hasn't stopped the group from jumping in head-first, though, and there are no plans to stop at releasing just one track. "We're concentrating on one song at the moment but we've got four or five ready that we'll be concentrating on afterwards and then we'll see how we go," Knoblauch explains.
"I don't know what we'll do with all of that, whether we'll do more single releases in the next six months or whether we'll just do an EP or an album, but whatever we do, they'll be downloadable on the website."
The site he's referring to is the group's new myspace page, which has been up since the end of June and the Gov gig will give the 'Sneakers the perfect chance to let fans know about it. As well as offering their tracks for download, the page lists their upcoming gigs and anyone looking there soon may well see a few interstate dates listed.
"We're organising Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne at the moment and we're trying to get one of them, hopefully Brisbane, sorted out by the end of the year," Knoblauch informs me, excited as ever at the coming prospects for the band, "then Melbourne and Sydney in a month or so after that to start the whole thing rolling. I want to do an interstate gig once a month," he continues excitedly, "or an interstate weekend. With eight people in the band, it's an expensive process."
In fact, though the line-up is "Very stable" once again, having eight people involved makes it hard for everyone in the band to agree all the time, according to Knoblauch. Although he is taking things quite seriously, he admits that "Everybody has different opinions of what they think the band is and what they want to get out of it and stuff like that. It's all definitely fun, but I think we're a lot more driven now that we've started recording and we've got a lot more momentum now - we're all driven to get somewhere again."
While the Adelaide funk scene isn't huge, there has been a pretty regular turnover of bands since New White Sneakers debuted, but despite numerous line-up changes (most notably of vocalists, though also of bass players and drummers), the group has managed to survive and it's almost back to the original line-up once again.
"I think we've just stuck around because we just love what we're doing," is how Knoblauch accounts for it, "but it's pretty phenomenal now that I think about it, that we've been together for so long with eight people in the band, but we've always just done it for the love of it."
And that's exactly why they'll be at the Gov this week come rain, hail or shine, to do what they've been doing for the last five years - playing some funk.
Alexis Buxton-Collins
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New White Sneakers play at the Governor Hindmarsh on Sat 23 Sept. 'New White Sneakers' is out now independently. |
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