A New Lease of Life: Hockey Dad on 'Rebuild Repeat', Support Slots and Creative Gambles
Wednesday, 07 August 2024
Written by Jack McGill
“We’re on, g’day mate,” Billy Fleming opens with a smile on his face. Hockey Dad’s vocalist and guitarist has not long returned home from rugby training, but there’s much to discuss before he can wind down for the night.
The surf-rock duo, completed by guitarist, and Fleming’s childhood friend from Windang, New South Wales, Zach Stephenson, recently returned after a few years off with ‘Rebuild Repeat’, a record that is more refined than ever before, offering mature tastes and intriguing reflections on their songwriting.
Their previously carefree, almost adolescent, take on surfy indie-rock takes a back seat at times, making way for their smartest work to date. Songs such as Wreck & Ruin are as infectious as anything they’ve put out, but elsewhere there are glimmering jangle-pop moments in Safety Pin and Unhinged.
Crucially, they’ve lost nothing of what makes them such a fun and relatable duo while still reaping all the rewards offered by a new approach. The concept behind ‘Rebuild Repeat’ is exactly that: the life of a recording artist who records an album, promotes it and tours it to death. After a good few swings in the batting cages, the rebuild portion is something that has been taken to heart.
“We’ve put ourselves in this uncomfortable position of songwriting where everything is flipped on its head,” Fleming observes. “Everything that our producer, Alex [Burnett] told us to do, we were just like, ‘Alright, this isn't us, but we're just going to give it a go.’”
They continued to push themselves once the record was in the can. As artists whose self portrait is still in progress, they’re more than willing to learn from others’ work. Fleming, for example, credits Turnstile and Quentin Tarantino for inspiring the three act structure of their Still Have Room, Base Camp and Safety Pin music videos, while immediately post-release they hit the road without much of a safety net beneath the new songs.
“It's such a stressful anticipation leading up to the release, especially this time around,” Fleming says. “We put the record out and then, the following week, we started a tour. That was a pretty crazy gamble on our behalf. But we were bidding on everyone getting tickets last minute, that's kind of how it is at the moment.”
Indeed, that sums up another razor’s edge many bands are currently walking along. — people are buying tickets later, or not at all. Remembering that mega tours selling out, such as Taylor Swift’s Eras run, are the exception and not the rule is helpful. At the end of August, though, Hockey Dad face the reassuring prospect of a European support run with their old pals and fellow Aussies in Ocean Alley.
“We did a festival in Tasmania, that was where we first met,” Fleming says. “they were just loose cannons, they still kind of are, but they're having kids, getting married now, so they're a little bit more tame. They were riding around the festival on a quad bike that they’d pinched. Someone had just left it running and I think they must’ve thought ‘Well, we best do a quick lap.’ We’ve been mates ever since.”
The tour, which includes stops in Germany, the Netherlands and France alongside its UK and Ireland leg, features one sold out night at the Roundhouse in London, with a second added for good measure. “As soon as we saw that [Roundhouse sellout] happen, we were like ‘Oh shit, we're in for a fun tour’,” Fleming says with an ear-to-ear grin. “It’s gonna be crazy, being in a big room in the UK is going to be different. Going to those bigger venues, especially the one in London, is a whole new level compared to the club shows that we usually do.”
Hockey Dad aren’t small fry — at this point they’re surf-rock darlings, loved for their take on the sound and the laid back atmospheres that permeate their act — but opening the show sometimes has its benefits. “We really enjoy the support slot runs where everyone’s there for the headliner,” Fleming says. “You have to put that extra 50 to 100% in sometimes to really work the crowd and sell what you’ve got. Those shows are really fun for us, especially in those bigger venues.”
Despite how laid back Fleming appears to be as a person, while talking to him you still get the idea that he and Fleming are as hungry as ever. Lots of questions are sure to arise for any band that has been knocking about for almost a decade — “Is this something I still want to do?”, “Am I getting too old for this shit?” — but they’re not afraid of them.
“We started touring when I was 18, so that was fresh into hitting the pub,” Fleming recalls. “But we had that youthful energy, and we could just grind and grind. If we were doing that now, we wouldn’t be able to do it. Now, we’ve got fiances and wives, no kids yet, but, still, the ability is so different now. I think that was such a good way to do it and hit the ground running.”
“Full time touring is hectic,” he continues. “We’re kind of the old dogs now at home, which is weird. I haven't even hit 30 yet. It's pretty wild. But that’s the beauty of it. This is always going to come and go, but we’re lucky to have held on for this long. This record, it’s given us a new lease on life. We’re still having a blast, it’s still a great job to have. The longer we can do it, the better, I reckon. We definitely have a few more records in us.”
Correction: This article was updated on August 9, 2024. An earlier version incorrectly identified Zach Stephenson as the interviewee.
Ocean Alley & Hockey Dad’s Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Fri August 30 2024 - DUBLIN Vicar Street
Sun September 01 2024 - EXETER Great Hall
Mon September 02 2024 - BRIGHTON Brighton Dome
Wed September 04 2024 - BOURNEMOUTH O2 Academy
Sat September 14 2024 - MARGATE Hall by the Sea - Dreamland
Sun September 15 2024 - BRISTOL Bristol Beacon
Tue September 17 2024 - BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute
Wed September 18 2024 - GLASGOW SWG3
Fri September 20 2024 - MANCHESTER O2 Victoria Warehouse
Sat September 21 2024 - LONDON Roundhouse
Sun September 22 2024 - LONDON Roundhouse
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