Originally classmates at school from Sydney in Australia, Mitch Thompson and Tom Jordan both found their way to call Nashville a permanent home in 2017 and as Seaforth the duo earned a recording contract in music city with Sony Nashville. Taking the band name from the Northern suburb of New South Wales’s state capital where the duo grew up and first met, they are ready to embark on the next global adventure and head to the UK where they will appear in both London and Glasgow at this year’s C2C Country to Country Festival. Jamie hung out with the guys over Zoom and here is (a slightly filtered version) of that conversation which just epitomises why they are one of our must-see acts at this year’s festival.
After all the pleasantries and me describing my trauma of being stuck in an elevator earlier in the day. I solved this by a trip to Taco Bell and fittingly picking up some “Good Beer” we began by discussing the merits of Coors Light or just plain Coors as it is here in the UK. “In Australia, light beer is low alcohol beer but in America it’s low calorie, so I was always getting confused thinking that everyone liked drinking this low alcohol beer here. In our rider here we were having Bud Light or whatever and we did a show at home and our tour manager sent the same rider, so we got Cascade Light which is 0.6 of a standard drink.”
Starting off on the beer front is great because we will get into talking about the single, but I was tempted to go down the ironic banter route to be sat here talking to you with some Fosters. “We’re going to walk out on stage with some Fosters merch on.”
It’s almost like you guys don’t punish us enough in sport that you wanted a way to screw the Brits over more by saying just take this! “I think I’ve had it one and it comes in the biggest fat cans here, but we get it a lot. Fosters? Hey, Fosters? Nah, you’re all right but we do have some great beer though and that’s not one of them.” – Mitch
My best friend is down in Perth where you have Little Creatures which is an amazing brewery, but Fosters isn’t your greatest export. “I think they brew it here in America and slap a kangaroo on it so now it’s Australian.” -Tom “I had a beer in Australia last month, I had a Guinness at a British pub and I’m fascinated by the whole Irish culture of Guinness, but the bartender said this stuff is brewed in Adelaide rather than importing it, so there you go.”
I take it that has been the first time that you’ve been able to get back home for a while. “It’s been 2 years bro. We were meant to go back right after C2C in 2020 to play CMC and obviously couldn’t go so just had 2 years here.” “We both got Covid, and I remember I called my parents, and they were worried.” “Honestly, Australia only started opening up in the three months that we came back to visit so everyone was buzzing because they were out again, and everyone got it again whilst we were there, but it was definitely great to be back after 2 years. That was the longest I’ve done for sure and then come back here, rejuvenated and ready to go.” It was 2017 when you moved over to Nashville full time but when did you first head over there? “It was 2014 or 2015 when we made our first trip out and then it was every year. We were playing weddings back in Australia and saving up as much money as we could then coming over here, spending it all and going back broke, so going back and forth until we got our foot in the door and signed a record deal and moved out here full time.”
This beer driven banter and the fact that we are on the same page is wild and can’t wait to have a proper Good Beer in person next weekend. “That’s why we are so excited, I feel like our banter and stuff is upper Australian who are best mates since childhood which translates over her for sure and people get it but I feel that people will really get it in the UK.”
When do you actually get into town? “I think it’s the eighth and we are in London for a night then head to Dublin then to Scotland”
Nice! I saw you had the shows in London and Glasgow, but Dublin will be fun too. “We’re going to have some Guinness and not the Adelaide Guinness!”
I’m down in London so I will see you guys on Sunday. It’s the After-party to end the festival, Spotlight stage and one of the daytime stages if that sounds about right? “Yep. I think we are bartending as well and maybe being roped in as cleaners too.”
Have either of you been here before? When C2C got cancelled in 2020, were you in Berlin and Amsterdam or were you just due to come here? “We were in Berlin and we had 2 days there then we flew to London. Mitch had been to London once when he was younger, but I’ve never been regardless and I love the culture, the music and all that so we land at like 7pm and I’m like so stoked to be there and we both are. Then we get to the hotel at 8 and get told we are getting on the first flight out in the morning because they are shutting down everything. We went to Dinner at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant and didn’t even see him.”
So, what is on the bucket list then for next week? “Tom wants to go to London Eye, Big Ben and all that stuff.” “I want to treat my time there like I am from there rather than I’m visiting there!”
If you are treating your time like you are from here, you won’t go anywhere near central London. It’s like how you guys live in Nashville and none of you that live there go anywhere near Broadway and it’s avoided at all costs, where us Londoners are the same! “We want to find a random corner pub and get the real non-touristy tour of it.” “We are looking at potentially going to a football game which will be crazy, and we are going to stick around a little after for a couple of days to just hang.”
Obviously, we can’t wait to have you and hopefully you will find a decent pint so let’s talk “Good Beer”. For me, it has one of the best lines I have heard that is the sort of line that needs to be in a fancy font and being shared by influencers on Instagram but unlike the majority of the things you see there is something that people can really feel: “I know that a good beer is a cold one, if you got green, better roll one” which is pure genius. “I remember when we were writing it, it was with 2 of our best mates here in town, one is from Nashville and one id from Australia originally. We had the good beer is a cold one and nothing else but then Rocky (Block) was straight into if you got green, better roll one and we we’re like yep that’s so good.” You are both guys from Sydney and (Jordan) Dozzi is an Aussie too from up in Brizzy, did you guys know each other from home, is there like an Australian community or did you meet whilst you were in town? “We only literally met him at the end of 2020 when we started playing soccer with him because we were trying to figure out hobbies to do over lockdown and we were playing soccer every week where we were probably the fittest that we’ve ever been. He played soccer really well for a college out here, but this was before he had his writing deal and we just became friends more than anything then started writing” “One day he hit me up and asked could he just come and chill, watch you work on tracks and stuff. I think Mitch was away and Dozzi came round, and we ended up writing a song then was like you’re really good and neither of us had any idea of how gifted he was, and we’ve written some of our favourite stuff that we’ve ever written with him, he’s gone on to sign a publishing deal and all that. With Rocky too, we’re all in this similar boat where we are in a young crew who are best mates and writing songs now and it’s really natural which is a new fresh chapter for us musically and as friends too.”
Then from one Jordan D to another, how did you get Jordan Davis in on this track? “We were on tour with him and playing that song every night when it was unreleased, and we were getting such a good reaction. It obviously sounds like a party song and a good time so it would have made sense to have a feature on it. We were out with Jordan, we think his voice would fit perfectly on it, we’ve always loved his music and just sent it to him one day asking if it was something he was interested in as we’d love to have you on it. He was like let’s go and deciding we were going to do it to putting it out was within the month. It was like in, record, like shit let’s go and film the video clip of us playing golf terribly and put it out so we got it done like that. He really crushed it too and elevated it so much.”
Beyond this single and C2C, is there much more on the way? It’s been a while since you’ve done an extended project so is that that something that we can expect this year or are you staying down the singles road? “We spent the majority of last year making this EP that has six or seven songs and we are actually going in to cut a bunch more, but we are super proud of the new music that we have which is a step forward for us sonically which feels like a new kind of era and we’re excited so hope that people don’t hate it and there will be a lot more to come this year.”
I wished the guys have safe flights over and hope they can enjoy proper Guinness in Ireland, but this chat was truly wild and so much fun which is why we cannot wait to have them here in person and share a “Good Beer” with them both when they become one of the most talked about acts at this years festival.
The current single “Good Beer” featuring Jordan Davis from Seaforth is out now and available to listen to HERE. Seaforth will make their UK debut at Country to Country where they will be performing on the Spotlight Stage in Glasgow on Friday 11th March then head down to London on Sunday 13th March where they will play The Town Square, Spotlight Stage and close out the entire festival at the Official Aftershow Party.
For more info on C2C, head HERE and to learn more about upcoming tour dates that Mitch and Tom have on the horizon you can check out their Website and you can keep up to date with them socially on TwitterFacebookTikTok & Instagram.