Interview by Kris Peters
What better way to celebrate your 13th birthday than to return to your spiritual home; the place where it all began?
Which is exactly what Wallapalooza are doing this year when the festival returns to its birthplace at The Wallaby Hotel on November 4 for a music extravaganza unlike any seen on the local circuit for some time.
Spearheaded by COG, Wallapalooza 2023 also features 28 Days, Butterfingers, Anty!, F.U.C, Dreamkillers, Azreal, PistonFist, Kaosphere, Snake Mountain and plenty more in what promises to be an Australian festival for music lovers of all tastes.
After slaying last year's event, 28 Days return to up their game even more this year, with bass player Damo joining HEAVY to discuss more.
"We haven't played with COG for probably fifteen years I reckon," he began, "so it will be good to catch up with those guys again. We always used to play freezer gigs with them - like all ages things back in the day - so, yeah, it will be awesome."
Last year's event was held at the nearby Mudgeeraba Showgrounds, which gave the show an outdoors feel and was a huge success, so we hit Damo up to see how he feels about returning to more of a pub feel for 2023.
"Last year was cool, it was huge," he smiled, "and it probably would have been too much of a task to pull it off every year. We actually stayed at The Wallaby Hotel last year (laughs) and they kind of walked us through the layout of when it was always there, so it will be cool. It will be ace to get there and play. We like those kind of 'little' festivals. The 2000 type people ones. They just seem more intimate, but still with enough of a crowd to make it really hyper."
In the full interview, Damo talks more about the benefits of having 100% Australian band festivals, what we can expect from 28 Days, the early days of the band and the musical climate that created them, hitting commercial success with Upstyledown and why he thinks people connected with that album, the possibility of new music from 28 Days and more.