The Beths are learning to sit in the chaos – and it’s paying off
Fresh off their most vulnerable record yet, Straight Line Was A Lie, The Beths are stepping back onto Australian stages with bigger rooms and sharper perspective.
We caught up with Liz Stokes to talk growth, touring life, and why embracing the awkward might be the band’s real secret weapon.
HAPPY: You’re about to head back on the road – what’s the mood in the band right now?
THE BETHS: We just finished our NZ tour. It felt good bringing the new album home after touring it round the northern hemisphere last year.
HAPPY: What’s feeling different this time around compared to the last run?
THE BETHS: The last time we were in Australia we did a few smaller shows trying out some songs from the new album.
The album wasn’t finished, and it was really good to get a sense of how the songs felt live. We ended up tweaking a few things.
HAPPY: Touring’s a big part of The Beths story – does it still feel exciting, or more like part of the job at this point?
THE BETHS: It’s both! We have a lot dialled in, but the job is constantly changing.
It’s daily problem solving and decision making, while on the move. It has been really exciting playing the new album.
This set of songs is challenging in a different way, and the shape of the set has changed. In combination with songs from our previous three albums, every night feels more like a journey.
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HAPPY: You’ve been doing this long enough now – has your relationship with performing changed?
I do feel more confident in my musicianship. We’ve grown slowly as a band, and I think it’s given us time to grow and improve our live show as our audience has grown.
When we started, none of us could properly sing. I was a very rudimentary guitar player. Jonathan was teaching himself recording and mixing. It was, and still is, a ‘learn by doing’ band.
But we do all genuinely love to learn, and I’m grateful for the energy that creates. And I feel like we are a ‘Good Band’ now.
HAPPY: Do you still get stage nerves?
THE BETHS: Rarely these days. I used to beat myself up after every performance.
It was really hard not to spiral out over mistakes or pitchy singing, little things.
I’ve been working on trying to stay in the present while playing and give myself grace, knowing that any mistake is such a small blip in the context of someone’s experience of the entire show.
Doesn’t always work but I’m trying! Also being well practised helps.
HAPPY: Is there a track that’s taken on a different life once you started playing it live?
THE BETHS: ‘Little Death’ is a song from our first album. It wasn’t a single, and it’s over 5 minutes long, yet it has kind of taken on a life of its own.
It’s kind of impossible to play a set without including it now. It’s always been fun to play, and the way it builds is still cathartic every time we play it.
HAPPY: How do you keep perspective when things start scaling up – bigger rooms, bigger audiences?
THE BETHS: We talk a lot as a band about the show.
You can lose intimacy when you start aiming for a level or production and slickness that a bigger room demands.
We try to fight that a little bit.
We want to raise the level of production and musicianship, but we give ourselves space in the set to be human and chat and sit in the awkwardness, and treat that as a feature not a bug.
HAPPY: Touring can blur together a bit – what’s been keeping it fun lately?
THE BETHS: On the road we’ve been watching live music a bit. We keep coming back to The Doobie Brothers 1982 concert in Santa Barbara, a true classic.
We will sometimes play a round of TimeGuessr together, which is an online game where you are shown a photograph and you have to guess where and when it was taken.
HAPPY: What’s the less glamorous reality of touring that people don’t really see?
THE BETHS: Whenever we meet other touring bands, we ask them how many days of undies and socks they pack for a long tour. Fascinating.
HAPPY: When this run wraps, are you already thinking about the next record, or trying not to rush it?
THE BETHS: I miss writing, I’m looking for opportunities to be doing it.
Thinking about the next record is a couple steps away, but step one is to write a bunch of songs, which I’m looking forward to having enough time to do.
HAPPY: What makes you happy?
THE BETHS: My sister’s dog Cole. He is a retired greyhound and he is the long-snouted, black, noble, skinny apple of my eye.
I’d love to have a dog but our lifestyle makes it pretty difficult.
So I just spend my downtime flicking through the thousands of photos of him I have on my phone.
They hit Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne from April 17–25, before taking the new record across North America from June into August, including a run of headline shows and festival dates kicking off at Governors Ball in New York.
Head here for full tour dates.
