Interview: The Chats Talk Pies, Beer and 'Smoko'

Unless you've spent the past year sealed in a cave, there's a solid chance you would have laid your eyes and ears on the DIY clip for The Chats’ viral hit ‘Smoko’ in your internet travels, a hilariously kick-ass three-minute celebration of the tea-break lifestyle viewed by 5.6 million people and counting. The Sunshine Coast "shed-rock" trio have a bunch more great songs where that came from, including their insta-classic 2017 collection Get This In Ya, and are finally storming our shores (and reserves of beer) this month for a extensive tour of Aotearoa, kicking off next Tuesday with an already sold out show at Auckland's Whammy Bar (don't panic, they've announced an extra Whammy gig). In anticipation of the band's impending onslaught, singer / bassist Eamon Sandwith got on the pre-game yarns with Fluffy for a wide-ranging conversation covering such stellar topics as pies, durries, and of course, a cheeky wee tipple or two...

I'm gonna start off, as always, with the big questions. I noticed that your Bandcamp handle is “The Chats Love Beer,” I was curious, what's the best drop that the Sunshine Coast has to offer?

Phew! Well, the beers that we get here aren't any different to the rest of Australia. My personal favourite is Victoria Bitter, Pricey loves Tooheys New and Matt likes Furphy’s for some reason, so we try and bully him as much as we can about that.

Can you tell us a little about your recent tour with your buddies Pist Idiots?

It was great, we just jumped in the van with them in Toowoomba, which is Central Queensland and we just drove down to Melbourne. I think it was like 17 or 18 days total just sitting in the van with them just hanging out, it was a great time. We’ve got two more shows with them but we’re flying to WA for those ones.

Yeah, that’d be a long bus ride aye?

Yeah, definitely wouldn't do that.

You guys have been on a few cool tours recently by the looks of things, with the bloody Cosmic Psychos?

Yeah, we did the Psychos tour last year and we did Queens of the Stone Age.

That’s rad man! How was that?

It was awesome aye, it was pretty surreal to be in rooms that big, we kinda felt out of place for a lot of the time.

I imagine people got on your wavelength soon enough?

People seemed to like it, which is great.

How is the Sunshine Coast for budding young rock bands? Is it a fertile ground, or do you find you have to play around a lot to get through to people?

There’s not many bands here and even less venues so we just played parties for a while and then eventually did a few pretty shitty shows... I think we started moving more down to Brisbane and the Gold Coast and then eventually that video ['Smoko'] went pretty big and we’ve just been touring.

It must be pretty surreal to have one of your tunes go viral?

Yeah, it’s crazy man.

Do you even get recognised in the street and hear no end of it?

Yeah yeah, sometimes.

Have you had any weird super stalker fan stories?

Ahh nah, I don’t have any stalkers, yet.

Its all a matter of time aye?

Hopefully.

Do you guys feel an immense pressure to outdo yourselves with the next batch of songs that your write?

Nah, not really, we don't really care if people like it or not. We’re cool either way.

That’s a good way to be. Speaking of which, have you got any new songs in the pipeline?

We do, we just did another music video the other day and we’ll probably put that out in a month or so.

Yeah, hopefully it’ll be out in time.

I noticed in the video to ‘Smoko’ you’re rocking a surf lifesaving top, do you do a bit of that?

Some of the other things mentioned in 'Smoko' is eating a pie during smoko. Have you got any good spots for pies in Queensland?

It’s funny you mention that, on the Pist Idiots tour we had this pie eating competition and pretty much whoever ate the most pies was crowned the winner. I think my favourite pie shop of the whole tour would be Hayden’s Pies in Ulladulla and Yatala Pies, near the Goldie. Those are my top two but on the Sunny Coast, there’s Beefie’s but that sucks.

What do you think about this vaguely new sensation of butter chicken pies? That’s a bit of a variation within the classic theme.

Yeah, yeah, I’ve done a couple of them. I don't mind em but I don't vibe em. You can't beat mince I reckon or chunky steak.

I saw an interview with you guys recently by The Artist Republic, where it was sort of like Pitchfork’s Over/Under, but at one point the interviewer handed you guys a snake. Is that a common occurrence?

That was our old shed that we used to practice in, our mate Tristan owned it and he had like 20 pet snakes or something. He was a full snake catcher, he just went around and caught snakes and he’d take em home and feed em and shit.

Did they ever eat each other?

Well, he had ducks, coz it was kind of a farm area and he had a few ducks. One day one of them went missing and he couldn't find it for like a week and one day one of his snakes rocks up and with a huge duck in the middle of it.

Never.

I’m still dirty about that.

To round off, what can we expect from your “non-craft beer destroying tour of New Zealand”?

We’ve got some good bands playing with us, we’ve lined up some great support acts and we’re just gonna come over and have a ripper time and see what the country has to offer.

Who are you playing with over here?

So far we’ve got Miss June and Shaun’s Birthday, both bands that I like a lot.