Ball Park Music head to Townsville as part of massive regional tour

With yet another hugely successful album under their belt, Ball Park Music have packed their bags are hitting the back roads of Australia for their latest tour, including an appearance in Townsville.

With yet another hugely successful album under their belt, Ball Park Music have packed their bags and are hitting the back roads of Australia for their latest tour, including an appearance in Townsville.

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The five-piece kicked off their massive month-long Good Good Mood Australian tour last weekend in Byron Bay, and will cover Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria and more of New South Wales before working the Queensland coast from Cairns to Toowoomba.

Frontman Sam Cromack said the group were undoubtedly excited for the massive run of dates, but a certain type of apprehensiveness kicked in for the band as the preparations ramped up that can only come with touring to smaller towns.

“We’re always excited to go on tour, but regional touring definitely is a different beast,” he said.

“We’ve done nearly exclusive metro touring or festival runs for the past three years, and the moment we embark on the tour nearly everything is sold out or almost sold out. Regional towns are just way more chill, people just rock up on the night, probably say at work that week ‘oh, what are you doing on the weekend?’ sort of thing, so it’s easy to get a bit more nervous when you’re like, shit, I hope people rock up.

“We even looked through old reports and said OK, it’s all good, this is how regional touring is but we just forgot. We’ve done so many regional tours in the past where you rock up thinking holy shit, I hope people are here, but everyone in the town is there.

“There’s just not that pressure that there is if you’re going to see a show at the Tivoli or the Enmore Theatre or something like that.”

Originally from Brisbane, Ball Park Music’s fifth album Good Mood became their fourth consecutive ARIA Top 10 debut and was voted the #1 album by triple j listeners in the station’s 2018 Album Poll.

Ball Park Music. Picture: Jess Gleeson

The group have been teasing new music on their social media platforms for weeks, but Cromack said they weren’t quite ready to be released to the world just yet.

“There’s some new songs kicking around but none of them are fully finished yet, we’re always pretty nervous and shy around premiering new stuff in a live format,” he said.

“It will be tempting, from our perspective it’s certainly fun to play fresh material, but I reckon we’ll probably stick to the golden oldies and if anything maybe do some more tracks off Good Mood that we haven’t played live.

“There’s lots of stuff written and we’re getting together and playing through songs, experimenting, trying lots of different things, just having a bit of fun. I’d say somewhere in the coming months we’ll more formally start another record.

“I’m so pumped, I’m really enjoying all the stuff that we’re working on and just having my usual anxiety about whether anyone actually gives a shit about our band, but I’ve just gotta convince myself that people actually want a new album.” (We do, Sam, we promise)

Ball Park Music have visited Townsville a number of times, most recently closing the show with an electric set at Groovin the Moo in 2018, but have not headlined since the days of The Venue in Flinders Street.

This time around the group will play The Dalrymple Hotel, and said reverting back to classic pubs and clubs as venues would be like rewinding the clock.

“It’s weird, in the past year we’ve been doing some of the biggest capital city venues we’ve ever done and some of our best festival slots we’ve ever done, and we’ve had to really up-scale the production to match those venues, that’s been a whole new world, getting lighting and all the bells and whistles for those shows,” Cromack said.

“It’s going to be funny for this tour going back to all the smaller rooms. In saying that, we’ve been talking about it and saying that the music is going to have to do the talking again at this show. We’re looking forward to that.”

Catch Ball Park Music at the Dalrymple Hotel on June 22 — grab your tickets from Oztix.

Originally published as Ball Park Music head to Townsville as part of massive regional tour