The Tea Party set to tourAustralia in February

Tue 20th Sep, 2011 in Local News

The Tea Party’s frontman Jeff Martin will play another solo tour of Australia in October, but an article published on Business Week (of all places) has revealed that the band will return to Australia early next year for their first time since reforming in April.

After fifteen years and twelve Australian tours, the band split in 2005 and although they reunited for an eleven city Canadian tour this year the Business Week article focuses on the political and financial issues raised for the band by the rise of the Tea Party movement in the States.

Stuart Chatwood, The Tea Party’s bassist, explains that “‘Tea Party’ was a euphemism the Beat poets used for getting high and writing poetry and vibing with each other [but now] so much damage has been done to our name by the political movement that we’re considering selling [the teaparty.com domain name]”. The site currently features the disclaimer “No politics, just rock and roll.”

One idea Chatwood raises is “that the band could lend the name to Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart to have them dispel some of the stuff that the Tea Party says” however when the potential pay off could be a million dollars it’s hard to ignore the deal. “We’ve got families,” Chatwood says.

Then the article also casually drops the news that the band will also be certain to make a few extra dollars “in February [when they] kick off another run in Australia”.

Should we be adding The Tea Party to the Soundwave rumours list ?