Good Things 2024 really was a blast from the past for Violent Femmes.
Sitting down with Rolling Stone AU/NZ at the Melbourne leg of the touring festival, the alternative rock band’s bassist Brian Ritchie reflected on their relationship with other acts on the lineup.
“I’ve been watching the festival for the last few years,” he said. “I was a little pleased to be invited to play on this year’s lineup. It’s interesting because there are bands that we have played with in the past, now back on here as well. Some of them, like Korn… we played with them probably 30 years ago! And L7, we actually toured Australia with them in 1995.”
Ritchie also discussed his strong relationship with Australia – having moved to Tasmania in 2008, he holds dual US and Australian citizenship.
So it was a treat to tour the country with Violent Femmes again, something they were thwarted doing during the pandemic. This tour was also a chance to celebrate the landmark anniversary of the band’s second album, Hallowed Ground.
“It’s 40 years of Hallowed Ground, as well as the 40-plus year anniversary of the first album. When we came to Australia, we just decided to keep going with the idea because it’s also the 40th anniversary of our first tour of Australia,” he explained.
“We had to cancel our tour in 2020 because of COVID; the other guys were set to come over here and I think two days before, the lockdowns occurred. Everything was cancelled right before they got on the plane. This has been a bit of a full circle moment.”
To say that Hallowed Ground was divisive would be putting it lightly.
“People hated it,” Ritchie said about the album in a 2019 interview with the Houston Chronicle. “They hated it because there were a few Christian songs on there. Gordon’s father was a minister. So that was something he was into. Vic and I weren’t religious, but we thought it was funny to play those songs for a punk crowd and rub them the wrong way. To me, it’s more punk to defy your audience than to play what they want to hear. But we lost our audience that way.”
