“It was incredible.”
For The Slow Country, their Truck Festival performance on the Market Stage was a reminder of exactly why live music means so much to them.
Speaking backstage afterwards, lead vocalist Gina Edwards admitted she had been surprised by the size of the crowd that had gathered for their set. “Pretty amazing,” she said. “I was shocked at how many people came.”
James Darley, who handles other instrumentation for the band, had an equally memorable view of the performance, particularly when a circle pit broke out in the crowd. “We had a big circle pit going at one point,” he recalled. “It was incredible.”
The energy didn’t stop when the band left the stage, either. For James, one of the sweetest moments of the day came when two young fans approached the band afterwards.
“I’d say probably there were a couple little girls who came afterwards asking us to sign their shirts, and it was like the most cute thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. “They were lovely, and then their Dad said how much they loved us too.”
It was another memorable chapter in a festival journey that already includes a particularly chaotic Truck experience from their previous visit. “I think the last time that we played Truck here,” Gina recalled. “We played the main stage on the Sunday but we were camping before that, and we had a big circle of us and a couple of our friends came, and it was just absolute chaos.”
That sense of fun is also central to The Slow Country’s live set, with Fundamentally Fucked becoming one of Gina’s favourite songs to perform. “I love to play Fundamentally Fucked, which is a song we’ve recently recorded and James sings,” she explained. “It’s a bit of a hoedown vibe, it feels like the point in the set when it’s a fun turning point.”
“Everyone’s eased in by then and it’s a bit honky-tonk, and it’s just a lot of fun.”
The track also provided the soundtrack to the day’s infamous circle pit, or, as the band affectionately dubbed it, the “circle of death”. James’ inspiration came from an unlikely source. “I’ve been watching a lot of System of a Down videos recently, and they do this big circle pit thing for their show, and I thought, yeah, I’ll try and get that going for our show.”
The only problem? Fundamentally Fucked doesn’t exactly lend itself to a traditional mosh pit. “That song doesn’t really have much of a drop at all, so everyone sort of just had a little dance instead,” James laughed. “It was beautiful.”
That unpredictability is perhaps the best way to describe The Slow Country’s music. The band have never been particularly interested in sticking to one genre, and their sound has evolved considerably since their early days. “In a lot of ways, to be honest,” James says when reflecting on how their music has developed. “We’ve always been quite eclectic, but we started off quite heavy and very fast, and we’ve sort of matured now.”
The band’s first single took a long time to arrive, but the patience has allowed them to gradually hone a sound that retains its diversity. “We’ve sort of honed the sound relatively, but we’ve still kept that eclectic vibe, so all the different songs in our set feel quite distinct from one another, which I suppose is a good thing.”
“There’s a bit of everything for everybody. That kind of reflects the sort of people we are and the music taste we have.”
That eclecticism also opens up plenty of possibilities when it comes to potential collaborations. Asked which artist at Truck they’d most like to work with, Gina doesn’t hesitate. “Divorce, who are playing on the Truck Stage right now.” Both immediately break into song as Divorce’s performance continues nearby, perhaps the most enthusiastic possible endorsement of the fellow festival act.
Away from the music itself, Gina’s biggest piece of advice for the band is about appreciating the journey while it is happening. “Mine is just like, try and just be present,” she says. “It’s really easy to just get carried away with what’s going on, and it is hard to take everything in, but yeah, just soak it all in and enjoy things and chat to everyone.”
And there is plenty for The Slow Country to enjoy over the coming months. “We have very exciting things happening,” Gina teases. James reveals that the band are embracing a new chapter on the road, with Truck marking the beginning of a particularly exciting development. “In the immediate future we’ve got a couple of festivals,” he says. “This is the first time we’ve ever had a tour van and it’s all very exciting.”
Beyond the festivals, there is also new music on the horizon, with the band preparing to release an EP that they believe represents some of their strongest work yet. “In terms of the longer future, we’ve got an EP coming out which we’re really excited about,” James says. “Our best songs we’ve ever done, four different singers, five songs.”
For now, though, their Truck Festival performance has left them with another memory to add to their increasingly colourful live history, complete with a circle pit and a couple of very excited young fans.
