Seaforth: ‘We Knew We’d Get Sued If We Didn’t Do It By The Book’

As far as international Zoom calls go, the general expectation is a band member in a cafe struggling to hear you down the line. So it’s almost a bit offputting when Tom Jordan and Mitch Thompson - aka Seaforth - give me a “hey man, how are things” with a decent internet connection as if they were in the room next door. Speaking to Aussie artists overseas is also a bit of a wig-out, but moving to Nashville to make it big on the country scene was always part of the plan for the guys, who are set to return to Australia later this year for their first-ever headline tour on home turf.

Before we get to that, we dive into some shows they’ve just played recently in the UK and US, after a couple of years heavily interrupted by COVID cancellations. “Yeah, dude, it's been incredible,” they say. “For a while we slowed down on shows. And last year, especially, we really focused on this new EP that we've just put out, working really hard on music.

“Over the past few months though, our touring schedule has really picked up and we've announced a lot of things. We just went to the UK and had an amazing time over there, and now we're in LA. And obviously, we’ve got the Australian tour coming up. So it's amazing, the end result for why we do this is to play our music live and hopefully have people there to enjoy it, so this is all very exciting and super rewarding for us right now.”

The recent shows have been a real eye-opener for Jordan and Thompson, who moved to Nashville, Tennessee in late 2018 to really embed themselves in the country music scene. The recent Good Beer tour across the states has been a case of rocking up to each venue and wondering “shit, is anyone going to be there?”

Their first Aussie headline shows were supposed to take place in 2020 before the world shut down, so at the time Seaforth took stock of themselves and after a relaxing break from music, decided to work start writing and recording. That culminated in the EP they released earlier this year - an eight-track project titled What I Get For Loving You. “For a while, it was pretty disheartening, and we had to kind of figure out what we were doing,” they explain.

“But we took a second away from music, away from just like waking up and really like feeling the pressure. We just took some time for ourselves, and then came back to it when it felt right. At the end of 2020 and through 2021 was when we wrote majority of this new EP that we've just put out, and that gave us a fresh perspective on what we were trying to do and how we wanted to sound.”

The result is an incredibly diverse record, which Jordan and Thompson say was by design, and off the back of a desire to “show off all sides of what we do and who we are.” The record rises and falls, with break-up ballads and upbeat toe-tappers. Oddly enough it also features Sean Kingston of 2007’s Beautiful Girls, on the first track Queen Of Daytona Beach.

“The day we wrote it we were referencing Beautiful Girls in bursts, and we planned to change the lyrics and melody so it wasn’t a direct reference, but at some stage, we thought, ‘This is actually kind of cool, it feels like a throwback,’ and we wanted to keep it, but we knew we were gonna get sued if we didn’t figure out how to do it by the book. Then we were like, 'Why don't we just get Sean to feature on the song!'

“Randomly we just knew some people that knew his camp, and then got in touch with him sent in the song. He loved it and so he wrote his bit and sent us the vocal. It was crazy, he killed it straight away. But we still had to clear a lot with the lawyers because Beautiful Girls originally sampled Stand By Me so we had to clear both of them. In the end though, the fact that he's on it made that whole process worthwhile.”

Seaforth are part of an incredibly strong class of rising Aussie country stars at the moment. “Country has just become so widely accessible with things like streaming services. It's just become more and more popular and wider-reaching, and Aussies who see others have success overseas and seeing people like us making a leap, is inspiring others to want and go and experience and learn all about country music and where it's from. Because of that accessibility, it's just growing and growing.”

Perhaps surprisingly, Jordan and Thompson remain apprehensive about their forthcoming Australian tour. Outwardly that might sound odd, given how well their music has been received in live settings internationally, but the guys have a surprising revelation that’s come about as a result of pandemic interruptions. “This will be the first time that most of our family and friends have seen us play as Seaforth, which is pretty wild, considering it's been five years!

“So it’s essentially the first thing we’ve ever done in Aus, and we could not be more excited. We have this whole run of shows which is going to be amazing, every city is always exciting to us because there's something new, but a big thing for us will be our hometown show in Sydney. Since we were little kids, before we even formed Seaforth or anything, all we ever wanted to do is play our music live to people that hopefully want to hear it.”

SEAFORTH
AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2022

LION ARTS FACTORY, ADELAIDE
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 1

THE ESPY, MELBOURNE
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 2

TORQUAY HOTEL, TORQUAY
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 3

ANU KAMBRI, CANBERRA
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 5

CAMBRIDGE HOTEL, NEWCASTLE
MONDAY NOVEMBER 7

FACTORY THEATRE, SYDNEY
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 8

Ticket and more info here