The Jungle Giants have officially wrapped up their biggest Australian tour to date, but not without making one final stop along the way. This Thursday, 10th September, the band are taking over the Manly Fast Ferry, turning the average commute home into a live gig across Sydney Harbour. To celebrate the launch of Lipton’s new Sparking Ice Tea range, fans can catch them for the price of their usual ferry ticket.
Ahead of the gig, we got the chance to chat to bassist Andrew Dooris, on all things from unconventional live shows, upcoming festival gigs and what’s been a massive year for the band.
“I love infrastructure personally, it’s a strange take.. it’s kinda nice to be apart of helping people connect with one another and be apart of peoples commute” Andrew said when chatting about the opportunity to perform live on the Manly Fast Ferry. “We always love a scenic gig, this is definitely going to be one of them.”
On interrupting people’s everyday commute, Andrew laughed “There’s definitely going to be a lot of loading faces..but hopefully we brighten people’s day a little bit.”
While performing on a ferry isn’t your typical live show Andrew reflected on some other unconventional gigs the band have done. “We’ve done a couple of DJ sets on boats, so it’s not the first naval vehicle we’ve performed on” he chuckled. He mentioned the time that the band got flown out to the South of France for a wedding set. When arriving at the 5-star hotel they’d been booked to play at, they learnt from the receptionist of some of the other acts that would be joining them in the wedding lineup. “She said we’ve got Earth, Wind and Fire coming later .. and then we’ve got Mark Ronson DJing the after party.” It’s safe to say The Jungle Giants have landed in good company.
While they’ve been busy on their Australian tour, the band still made time to pop into Triple J’s Like a Version studio to record a cover of Underworld’s ‘Born Slippy’. When chatting about the process of choosing what song to cover, Andrew admitted “I was the naysayer, because I just love the song too much…I was like this is too close to home, this is too scary”. But eventually the rest of the band convinced him of the vision. “Sam and one of our collaborators Michael worked really hard on getting the arrangement right. We only had about 3 or 4 days.. but we managed to get it together.” “We will be almost definitely playing it at the Lipton Ice Tea session, which will be a bit of a rude shock to people’s commute I think” he laughed.
Commuters can expect an incredibly put together set, as the band come off the back of their Aus tour, they’re as “gig fit as they could possibly be.” “We’re going to try to make it as special as we can for the people on the boat..we have the element of surprise on our hands.”
Looking back on the massive year they’ve had, Andrew spoke on the band’s most recent album release Experiencing Feelings of Joy, and what it was like to take the record on tour. “It’s a very personal record, so it brought these really intimate experiences at the gig.” With this tour, the band spent 12 weeks travelling around the country, making a conscious effort to travel to some of the places that artists don’t typically get to. “Getting out to those original places isn’t something you can really do off your own back.. now that we’re at this stage where we can go out and meet our fans all across the country, it’s really special”. “To go deeper into our own country..we’re really proud of the fact that we’re going out to more regional places, it’s such a cool thing.”
The tour was supported by Australian acts The Tullamarines and Tear Drive. Andrew reminisced on how amazing it was “seeing them go from doing local band gigs to fully fledged rockstar vibes.” He mentioned Tear Drive’s Isaac Clark “He was a keyboard player who was getting thrown into play bass, by the end of the tour he’s like jumping off stuff..when you connect with your peers you learn so much from seeing these younger artists expressing themselves, it’s really good to be connected with these other musicians”
While the band are about to set off on their US tour, they’ll be making their way back to Australia to prepare for festival gigs at Beyond The Valley and Lost Paradise. “My favourite new years plan is playing a show. There’s nothing better than BTV on new years eve.” With such an iconic lineup, Andrew said “try and stop me seeing Black Eyed Peas”.
Sparkling Sessions takes over the Manly Fast Ferry on Thursday 10 September. Fans will need to keep an eye on @liptoniceteaanz on Instagram for clues revealing which ferry to catch.
