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Third Best.
 Third Best's lead vocalist James McNaughton speaks in the laconic, ocker tones you might expect to hear from a teenager who calls Renmark home. Unlike most other Riverland youth, however, Norton and his bandmates will be enjoying the inaugural Handpicked Festival from the comfort of the stage after being (ahem) hand picked from among the region's finest for the chance to share a bill with the likes of Grinspoon and Shihad.
"It's pretty surreal, actually," he says with an incredulous laugh that suggests that it still hasn't quite sunk in. "We've been brushing it off, but then you think about it seriously... it's scary, but we're all getting a bit excited about it. Basically there was a battle of the bands competition and we won the final, and the prize was to do some recording and to get on the bill for this festival."
He corrects me when I suggest that there might not be a lot of competition in Renmark. "Nah, but there's a few towns around - the population of the Riverland's about 40,000, there were even two bands from Murray Bridge. We were probably the youngest band though."
That's hardly a surprise, since most of the band are still at high school. "Well, Harry [Tietz, guitarist]'s finished school now, but the rest of us go to Renmark [High]. It didn't start off as anything formal really, it just turned into this."
The band have done the one recording so far and are using it as a demo, "...but we'll try to knock it off for a few bucks to people," he laughs. "We're really keen to get back in the studio and record some newer stuff. Every time we write a new song we think it's better than anything we've recorded, so we just need to get some more money and get back and have another go, and just keep playing as much as we can."
To that end, the quintet are already looking to the future. "We've pretty much doubled the amount of time we practice; we're taking it pretty seriously. We've started looking intoplaces that play original bands. We're definitely looking at getting to Adelaide though. That's where it's at."
Andrew P Street
 | Third Best play at Handpicked at Loxton Oval on Sat 12 March with Grinspoon, Shihad, and lots more. |
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