SUNSHINE COAST roots quintet The Floating Bridges are aiming to bring their tropical vibe to as many sets of ears as possible with a new single and upcoming tour, says bass player and vocalist, Cale Fisher.
“Our music has a very positive vibe in our lyrics,” he says. “It’s about day-to-day living stuff; how you treat other people, what you do when you go out and setting examples for others. That vibe comes across in the music and people latch onto it. It’s a really positive, uplifting sort of vibe.”
After coming together following high school, the band got into roots music and found their sound. A line-up change earlier this year saw Fisher move from rhythm guitar to bass, and the acquisition of Johnny Curran – brother of Jeff Curran of Dallas Frasca – to play additional guitar. It’s this line-up which wrote the as-yet unreleased single.
“He came and had a jam with us and it’s going really well,” Fisher says. “He had some neat little licks and just kind of fitted in. We’re just putting the final touches to [the single]; it’s called ‘Dreamcatcher’. We’ve got a heap of songs written, and it’s basically just a matter of narrowing them down at the moment. We’ve always had a bit of a rule that if a song is written we don’t disregard anything. Even if it sort of gets shelved for a little while before we come up with something new to make it better, we’ve always had this rule not to write anything off. We go from there and work on it all as a group. We’re group writers and everyone has their input into the band.”
The band hails from Yandina, in an area which Fisher says has helped shaped the band’s sound.
“We believe that where we live is one of the most beautiful places in Australia from what we’ve seen,” he says. “So we’re pretty lucky like that. There is a really strong roots music scene up here, especially over the last three years, and definitely a lot of our influences that we draw locally come from other bands here and Brisbane bands that are similar to us. We’ve never had any issues or blues at our gigs. People just enjoy the vibe.”
Refreshingly in touch with social and racial issues, Fisher says a part of the band’s approach is to raise awareness of cultural respect and fairness.
“We’re really passionate about Indigenous culture in Australia,” he says. “We’ve got a very big connection to our local elders in our area; the Gubbi Gubbi people. We’re very well connected with those guys, and we think it’s really good as a young person these days to be culturally aware of what’s going on and what’s happened in the past. We don’t want to cause any arguments or anything like that, but we just want people to be aware of what’s happened here before and everything, so when you make your decision on cultural awareness [issues], you’re well educated, you know? A lot of people make uneducated comments about different things, but we believe it’s really important to know where you’re from and to know what happens.”
With a new single and EP in the works, the rest of the year is set to be a busy one for the group.
“We’ll get a heap of shows under our belts around the country first,” Fisher says. “Then we’ll be looking to release the single, probably some time in the next three or four months. We’ve got our single release, then an EP release later in year and we want to lock in as many festival dates as we can. Basically, we want to enjoy the journey.”
Paul McBride 