The Superjesus are well and truly back! Their latest full-length album, released back in March, has had fans drooling and shows sometimes things really are worth the wait. Spawning a heap of catchy singles already, the remaining tracks are as equally impressive, with members of our Rockpit team hailing this as a strong contender for the Australian Release of 2025.
The band are now chomping at the bit to hit the road, with a nationwide tour that kicks off next week in Sydney at Crowbar. Its a tour that sees The Superjesus get to run through the album start to finish, as well as throw a variety of classics in from their successful back catalogue.
We got to have an in-depth chat with the charismatic & wonderful Sarah McLeod before the release, so it was only right to corner Stuart ‘Ruddy’ Rudd for a catch up now that we have well and truly burnt a hole in our record player (yes we grabbed a copy on vinyl). And there was plenty to discuss, mainly about where this renewed vigour and creativity has come from… well, read on and find out!
Sean: Ruddy, thank you so so much for chatting to The Rockpit mate. What a fantastic few months you guys have had. The album has been incredibly received, and surely above and beyond your expectations. From the tracks we got to hear before the album came out we were expecting something special and we certainly got that. What a great record from front to back!
Ruddy: Aw, thanks very much Seany. Look we’ve quietly been sitting on it for a bit now and you know we were quietly confident, obviously we like the stuff, but it was nice to sort of get some good feedback by finally putting the album out and just hearing everything. The feedback that’s coming back to us has been pretty good. But it’s always one of those things you never quite know. When you’re sitting on it for long enough, you start to have a bit of reverse psychology. Sometimes you go, “should we have done this better” or “done that better?” But we’re pretty happy overall with it.
Sean: One of the things I love about it is that the singles that came off it were all very different but all received so well, and played live even better. But for me some of the undiscovered gems lie withing the album, the ones that haven’t been released, ‘Starlight’, ‘Romance’, two of the tracks that are just incredible songs. When I interviewed Sarah a few weeks before the album was released she said that you’d kind of gone for it in a bit of a different way this time. You kind of went for the angle of writing a bunch of singles rather than creating an album, nearly everything could be released if need be and it’s come out an absolute blockbuster.
Ruddy: Yeah, well you know Sarah really has a pop sort of sensibility to her approach to music and I was always trying to, I was kind of always here nor there with it, you know. I was always trying to keep a bit darker and stuff like that so I think between the two of us we’ve really managed to hit a good position to be in writing wise, so we knew going into writing this album that it was going to be tough and we understood that things were going to be tough but our idea was to make every decision the right one so everything went under a microscope as far as the albums went. So yeah, some of those songs, like you say ‘Starlight’, as epic as it was we just felt was right for the album and it just fits with the rest of the songs so well.
Sean: Delving into the album the track that surprised everyone, and one that just blew me away was the wonderful ‘Diamonds’…
Ruddy: …yeah, great isn’t it!
Sean: It’s an incredibly beautiful song but the production you guys put on it to take it up that extra level again was just… well I mean when I listen to that through earphones… those strings and there’s that bit in the chorus… it just resonates and gives me goosebumps every time.
Ruddy: I don’t know if many people know this but the way we do it is that Sarah and I will get into a hotel room with our demos and sort of try and explain through each song and bring to the table what we’ve got and what we may have been working on. And ‘Diamonds’ was something that Sarah had been working on for herself. And she played it, you know, thinking, “Ruddy won’t go for this”. But I did. And I thought it was fantastic. I could hear it straight away. So the idea was to sort of go and make it epic, you know, and make it sort of old school, like some of the writing is old school, but at the same time sort of really push the boundary with where that song could go and make it epic. So yeah, it felt good you know, it was great. It was one of those undeniable songs that once you hear the demo and you sort of go “okay we can work on this” it was exciting to see where it could go. It was definitely something a bit different for us. I think it was Duke Ellington who said, “There is good music and bad music and that is all there is to it” so we just pushed along with that song and it came up a treat.
Sean: Well, I’ve been one of the lucky ones to get my vinyl copy…
Ruddy: …hey, nice one, mate…
Sean: …but there has been a fantastic response from all your supporters and the fans for the album. The vinyl sold out pretty quickly and I believe there’s talk of maybe running another run of the vinyl. Certainly CDs I’ve seen have been talked about on your socials too. It’s been received so well that physical copies are just going to be blasting out the merch store and at the shows. Nothing beats holding that copy in your hand.
Ruddy: Absolutely. Yeah, I think I’ve got mine around here somewhere. But, yeah, we did a festival up in Jamestown, South Australia, up north, and we put a box of them down in the merch tent. And a mate of mine had actually said, “oh grab us one will you?” I said, “yeah no drama!” so I went back about an hour later and I went “no, they’re all gone!” Couldn’t believe it. We are doing another run I think and CDs to because we understand people are sort of saying “hey what about us” and you know that’s cool too so we’ll do it.
Sean: Another track that really sat out for me was ‘Loneliness Is The New Black’, which is another striking song and again, something very different.
Ruddy: You know it was a demo I had with the full band, we played it as a full band and that song took a lot of work and eventually we sat down and played it with just an acoustic guitar and I think it is a song that highlights Sarah’s vocals a lot. It just managed to pull across the line as an acoustic track, and we had worked on that song for six months but it just felt right to put it on the album as an acoustic track. Really has that organic feel. So there really is a bit of everything on the album
Sean: And of course you can’t celebrate the release of an album without supporting it with a tour and you are heading out in June with a nationwide run of shows and we get to catch up when you hit WA in July… so kind of you coming in on my birthday too. So thoughtful of you all. [laughs]
Ruddy: Yeah, well we knew that so thought we’d look after you mate. [laughs] We made sure it happened.
Sean: Thanks mate! What has been such a great idea is the way you have selected the supports for each of the states you are scheduled to play. Its been fascinating to watch and the response has been incredible.
Ruddy: Its been great Sean. It was an idea Sarah and I had between us. In the past we had gotten young bands in as first act on and we thought it was such a good vibe to do that and to see the excitement from giving people a go and so we thought we could do it nationwide and give everyone a go and it just took off. We had well over 200 demos sent it so it was a bit of a job getting through them all but it was great to listen to and there is so much young talent out there. It sounds good…the future looks and sounds so good. So we whittled it down to a head to head playoff and let the people decide who they wanted to see support us. So its a great opportunity for them to get on stage and play as well as play in front of an audience and experience it.
Sean: Great to see you are venturing to most corners of the country but also you are going to playing the album start to finish. I’ve loved the singles that you dropped so far when I’ve caught you live but it’s the others I’m excited to hear and see performed on stage.
Ruddy: Yeah, so we are going to play the whole album in its entirety and we’ll chuck in some old songs too, perhaps a couple of deeper trackers that we haven’t played for a while too. We are really looking forward to it Sean. The singles have been coming out for over a year and a half maybe? ‘Money’, ‘Lights Out’ and the rest…it’s been over twelve months so people are pretty familiar with almost half of the album already and now you are going to hear the songs that we haven’t performed yet so we are really looking forward to it. We have already done ‘Diamonds’ live when we played up at the festival and it sounded really good. We were very, very happy with it so we are really happy to get out there and play and just to be amongst it.
Sean: Its hard to believe its taken twenty years for a new Superjesus album to come out and there has obviously been fresh bloody injected in the form of Cam (Blokland) and Murray (Sheridan) as well. Have they been a big factor to helping to revamp and revitalise the band? Its almost like watching a bunch of teenagers back up there where I’ve seen you live the last few times.
Ruddy: Definitely, you are spot on Sean. It starts with McLeod & myself because we’ve been a round a bit now… [laughs] pushing the applecart and its nice to have everyone pushing the applecart with us too. These guys are just fantastic players, great musicians but also they care about music and that goes a long way in to the song writing and some of the stuff they did was absolutely amazing on the album. Its been so much part of the push to get an album out and I really don’t know if we could have done it if we had done it on our own so its been awesome to have those guys involved.
Sean: Well, lets hope its not too long before you get back in to writing mode if this is the rich vein you have found yourselves in [laughs]
Ruddy: Do you know, I think I have between thirty or forty songs that were put aside for this album so they are just sitting there still in the computer and I know Sarah has a fair few as well. So lets hope its not another twenty years [laughs]. We’ll get this one out the way and see how we feel.
Sean: I know you said it was quite a lengthy process but were there times that you’d kind of thought you’d got the songs done and then you maybe thought, “oh, we might leave this one out and this one may have earnt its place” kind of thing?
Ruddy: Absolutely. Like I said ‘Loneliness Is The New Black’ – that went from a full band production down to an acoustic guitar and we were grinding gears with that song the whole way. It didn’t let up so we had to put it on the shelf for about a month and just get it out of your head and come back to it again with fresh ears, so some of the songs did take different turns like that and some of them like ‘Starlight’ was pretty much demoed as it is on the album. It was pretty much demoed exactly like that and was pretty much untouched. It’s a pretty special song and we felt it was right from the start. I may have even played something years ago about with it and to McLeod and then I sat home and fleshed it out and sent it up to Sarah and she put her magic on top of it.
Sean: It’s always a gamble picking that opening track isn’t it because with a track like the opener ‘Starlight’ you must be thinking do we want that to be one of the pinnacles in the middle of the album to lift it or do you just want to kick people in the teeth straight from the off.
Ruddy: You’re right and we did we had it sitting in the middle at one point. Even down to the song order, we went back and forward for months for the song order, months and then going “hey, you home? Have a listen to this!” “Driving in the car? Have a listen to this order.” “Have a listen to that” and ‘Starlight’ was one of those ones and and yeah just at the end, at the ninth innings we went, “how about have it as an intro?” and then we thought “oh yeah very good” because it sets it up because it’s got that sort of long intro in the song and I don’t think anywhere else would work quite as good, other than the front end of an album so yeah it earned its spot very well.
Sean: You had a wonderful summer last year, which was great to see these festival shows you did. We saw you with Live and Incubus down at Whitfords Nodes in Perth – such a great line up that day. We saw you on the Cold Chisel 50th Anniversary tour too. And it just opened the band up to a whole new age group of fans, watching these kids in the mosh pit just loving the music.
Ruddy: Yeah, it was great. We had a really good time last year playing with those bands and obviously doing the Cold Chisel run and yeah it was a fantastic time for the band just to to get out there and showcase some of these songs and we always enjoy touring but those sorts of tours are just easy, they’re just nice and you know they’re on point. From the minute you roll up in your van, they’re on point and to play to that many people, we were so lucky. I think with the Cold Chisel shows like Ballarat I think there was like 35,000 people out there and all age groups, like you say. It wasn’t just our usual demographic, it was older people, younger people and we’re certainly getting emails from all sorts of people at the minute saying they saw the show or enjoyed it so that’s really good.
Sean: The hardest part is just making sure your instruments turn up in the same city you are… [laughs] I remember Sarah having to borrow one of Cam’s guitars as her one ended up elsewhere is Australia, she ran out on stage all excited and clocked the edge of his prized possession on an amp and chipped the bodywork [laughs]. Cam was mortified.
Ruddy: I remember that [laughs] Yeah, look, I mean, isn’t that rock and roll? I think it happened with Sarah on that one, and then we went somewhere else, and my stuff ended up in Brisbane, and then we did the final one with Cold Chisel, and that didn’t even leave South Australia. So, yeah, thanks to all those bands and Birds Tokyo for helping out.
Sean: It’s so Spinal Tap [laughs]
Ruddy: Oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. [laughs] You know I hate doing it but we had to ring through to a music store because my basses went somewhere else and I hate being THAT guy but I’ll ring up and say, “Hey, this is Stu from The Superjesus. I was just wondering…” I don’t do that sort of thing but anyway I had to pull it out and they were great, the music stores. They said, “Absolutely, come in man” and then Phil Small from Cold Chisel heard about it. And the crew rang me and said, “Hey, Phil was on the phone. And he said, use his stuff.” And I’m like, “Phil, who’s Phil?” [laughs] Because you wouldn’t think, you know, Cold Chisel, you wouldn’t think. And they said, no, no, no, Phil Small has heard about it. He wants to give you his bass for the night. So I’m like, oh, my goodness. So, you know, it all worked out. But, yeah, that’s just rock and roll isn’t it mate.
Sean: [laughs] Wow, that’s an great insight to finish with Ruddy. It’s always great to catch up and I just want to say thank you for your time as always mate, and can’t wait to see you all back out there on the road doing what you love doing.
Ruddy: We can’t wait mate and we haven’t been over to WA for a while, only on those bigger shows so its going to be great to get back for our own shows.
Sean: We’ll make sure we catch up for a cold one when you get over here.
Ruddy: Absolutely Sean. And thanks mate, we really do appreciate all your support and thanks to all your readers too.
Sean: Cheers Ruddy.
