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The Tea Party.
 Canadian
rock masters The Tea Party are huge, right? Massive rock superstars?
Then why on earth does Stuart Chatwood know so much about Adelaide,
South Australia? He knows all the best wines; the nice places
to go; the radio stations, the venues and the bands... Then
again, apparently Adelaide has a disproportionately large following
of the trio, which is something that - believe me - they don't
take for granted.
"Well this is going to be our eleventh tour in Australia," Chatwood tells me, without even needing to count. "We've spent a lot of our time in Melbourne, and in the Barossa Valley, and in McLaren Vale... Well, we're big winers!"
The last time they were here was also the only time I've ever seen them, on the main stage of the Big Day Out. "Yeah, I mean I'd prefer to do our own show. Especially at the Thebby, that would be awesome. Adelaide crowds are awesome, but you know, when you're playing in the middle of the day at a cricket oval, it's hard to get into it. Everything's part and parcel of the whole process. The mood has to be set, the sound, the impact, the crowd. I mean, if I had my way we'd never support anyone again, but then if I had that attitude we wouldn't have done that show in Toronto. We played a huge show in front of 490,000 people, with the Rolling Stones and AC/DC."
It seemed to be a little strange that those two groups would choose The Tea Party as support, but apparently it wasn't just any show - it was a sort of super Big Day Out.
"Until the 'Stones came on stage later that night we'd played in front of a bigger crowd than they ever had! We had something up on the Stones there for about six hours," he laughs. "But it was awesome. It was a concert in support of the city of Toronto, I don't know whether you're familiar with the SARS virus but Toronto was heavily hit with that. I mean, it could've happened anywhere but a person happened to get off the plane in Toronto. The day was incredible!"
But the real news for Tea Party fans is that they have a new album, 'Seven Circles'. Chatwood tells me that the process for making this record has been quite different than what they have experienced in the past. "Well, there's a song on there, Oceans, which is dedicated to our manager, who passed away," he informs me, solemnly. "He was probably the biggest influence on the record. You know, it was him who was constantly dogging us to work with other producers [so] it was a decision we all made together to bring in Bob Rock and Gavin Brown, just to help us out and give us a new set of ears, really. If I played you the original demos, you'd be, 'Oh, wow, it doesn't sound that different,' but you know, it's just that little extra five percent, where all of a sudden everyone's saying, 'Wow, the Tea Party's so much more palatable now, you don't play all that weird stuff that no-one likes to hear.'
"You know, if I had my way, we'd be doing eighty percent world music-inspired rock music, because I think that's something no one has done, and I like to be an innovator. But
you know, the sad state of affairs is that if we did only that music, probably a lot of our fans could care less about the Tea Party at that point and we probably couldn't survive as a band. I mean, we're lucky that we have the different sides as we do, you know. We started off as a power trio, and the first single off the record, The Writing's On The Wall, that's just a return to who we were."
For a band who has been around now for nearly fifteen years, who have seen the death of grunge and the birth of the new rock, I ask how Chatwood feels the future will affect music, particularly his own.
"A few things I'd say about it is that it's ironic that today is obviously the most futuristic time in terms of technology, but yet we're all listening to sub-par music. We should be listening to the most pristine recordings ever on Super Audio CDs, that's what people should be downloading. Unfortunately, people are so happy with music as a source of background entertainment that mp3 is fine for them. A lot has been said about downloading illegally, but you only have to look at Madonna's concert prices [approximately $250 Canadian] to see that artists are going to get their living from elsewhere. Most artists in the past would be happy to tour at a slight loss because they know they'd be selling albums on the tour, but everyone realises now that you don't really sell records anymore, the only place that you're going to make out a living is live."
Ben Revi
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'Seven Circles' is out now through EMI. A national tour announcement is expected shortly.
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