In a far corner of Western Australia, Cal Kramer once played a birthday party in a sheep-shearing shed. “You get there, there’s the smell and everything,” he says laughing. “You’re going: ‘Is this what I really wanted out of being in a band?!”
Now fronting The Southern River Band, Kramer’s horizons have expanded. The band have just released their new album, D.I.Y, after ripping through a buzzy headline tour of Europe. By turns shitkicking and super-sweet, it plays like a classic rock lover’s dream, with flashes of Status Quo and Van Halen, the tenderness of Thin Lizzy, and various nods to Bon-era AC/DC.
Growing up in a “twenty-five minutes from fucking nowhere” suburb of Perth, Kramer was a misfit kid who loved AC/DC, GN’R and Iron Maiden. “Plus I looked like a twelve-year-old girl until I was about eighteen,” he recalls, “so I had to develop a bit of a personality.”
Raised in a musical household with Eastern European roots, he was drumming along with touring blues musicians by the time he was eight, at jam nights hosted by his parents in their living room. “A lot of drinking and smoking and people having a good time, a lot of bluesy rock’n’roll…”
From there Kramer formed The South Side Cobras with a guy from one of those jams. When that group ended he joined Blue Shaddy, with whom he’d previously jammed, as a pre-teen, in a local seafood restaurant. Gigs involved marathon drives to clubs, pubs and the aforementioned shearing sheds. Punters were invariably hard drinkers. “You sort of get used to it. If you fully commit to what you’re doing, and you’re like: ‘Hey, motherfuckers, we’re here to play,’ you can win them over. If you go out there passively, they’ll walk all over you.”
By 2014 he’d started writing his own songs. Encouraged by his older bandmates, he picked up a guitar, started singing, and founded The Southern River Band. An initial bi-weekly slot at a local boozer led to an eclectic mix of rock shows, corporate gigs and recordings. He drew from explosive showmen including Bon Scott, Dave Lee Roth and the wrestler Shawn Michaels.
More recently they toured Australia with The Darkness, who’ve become massive supporters. “It’s pretty surreal in the best possible way, one of your fucking heroes, and then to become friends with them all. They’ve just done so much for us.”
Financial comfort may still be a way off (most of them work day jobs, and Kramer handles all their publicity, social media etc), but like so many other grassroots rockers they’re making it work.
“We wouldn’t be doing it like this unless we smelt some sort of opportunity,” Kramer adds. “And the thing is, we’re gonna leave it all on stage for you every night and hope that you’re better off at the end.”
The Southern River Band's European tour begins in Glasgow on November 20. D.I.Y is out now via Cooking Vinyl.
