Iconic Melbourne rock band Kingswood are coming to Geelong’s Barwon Club Hotel Saturday, February 18 as part of a massive 60-show national tour.
Kingswood are touring to promote their forthcoming album, Home, which will be released on February 24, and travel from Castlemaine to Cairns and Mullumbimby to Margaret River in an attempt to cover the length and breadth of Australia.
Coming hot on the heels of their 2022 tour of Europe, this national tour will see Kingswood rack up 93 shows between September 2022 and June 2023.
With the Barwon Club the band’s 18th stop on their nationwide trek, Kingswood’s guitarist and main songwriter Alex Laska said the expansive 2023 tour was the band’s first opportunity in a long time to reconnect with its regional fans.
“Part of the philosophy behind this tour is that we’ve been away from all these towns that really solidified and fortified Kingswood’s development as a band over the years, and now that we’ve got the opportunity we’re absolutely making up for lost time,” he said.
“When things develop for a band you get on these necessary paths and people require things from you. And then we had plans for a big regional tour, but then COVID happened.
“So now we’re touring our hearts out, as far and wide as we can possibly go.”
While Kingswood began with a strong identity as a rock and roll band and has always retained that element of its sound, the group has maintained a pattern of incorporating new sounds with each release.
Often, a new album has displayed heavy influences from a specific genre, such as the soul-inspired tracks from 2017’s After Hours, Close to Dawn and their 2020 Christmas album.
The singles released so far for Home are no different; Burning Holes, released late in 2022, is an alt-country ballad, while 2023’s Good Whiskey and One Too Many Times are unapologetic examples of Americana and southern rock, respectively.
Laska said though Kingswood’s current live shows were leaning heavily on their new country-inspired material, the band were playing a mix of tunes from all of their albums.
“The beauty of having six studio albums is you’re in that dream position where you can pull the greatest hits from the oldies but really showcase new stuff as well,” he said.
“And we’ve released these singles to make it feel like Home is more alt-country/Americana, but really, there’s a whole lot of rock and roll on this record.”
