TUMBLEWEED are back together. Frontman RICHIE LEWIS openly admits to SIMON TOPPER that this reformation is a rock & roll miracle.

Tumbleweed’s blistering stoner sludge rock was a soundtrack to many teenagers who grew up in the early ‘90s, as the five-piece from Wollongong were one of the earliest Australian groups to break through in the wake of the grunge/alternative tsunami.

Success was sustained for a few albums, but rough international tours, involuntary line-up changes and infamous tension got the better of the band, and by the end of the decade, Tumbleweed was pretty much no more, and with little hope of ever rising from the grave.

But ten years on, we’re talking to a very frank and candid newly-reinstated frontman Richie Lewis about the unlikely second coming of Tumbleweed. “It’s very exciting. It’s something I never thought would happen, what with the way we disbanded, and the way in its declining years it kinda fizzled. In the end it was just a test of endurance until it was done and dusted. But now a lot of the friendships that were involved have been mended, and it’s been a really wonderful time.”

So why now, after all this time, are the lions suddenly lying with the antelopes, and all five original Tumbleweeds have blown back together? What needed to happen?

“We all still live in Wollongong, and we’d joke about (getting back together), but we’d never really considered it until we found out Homebake wanted to twist our arm to get us back together for their 15^th year.

“I ran into Paul Hausmeister, our guitarist, in town one night. We were having dinner – most of the restaurants in town were overflowing, and there was one seat left in this restaurant, and it just happened to be right next to me. So we hadn’t really spoken much – we’d say Hello or whatever but it’s always been tense – and by the end of the night, I’d said to him ‘Hey I’m not the one holding out’, cos everyone thought I was. And I guess I was in a little way.

“He said ‘Well if you’re not the one holding out, let’s have a practice, see what happens’ and I suppose the moment we all turned up in the practice room, plugged in and played our first notes, it felt so right and sounded so good. We love those songs, we love that sound, so we just wanted to do it again.

What do you play when you’re all set up, but it’s been over a decade since all five of you called yourselves a band? “Everybody was nervous, everybody had knots of apprehension in their stomach, not only because of not knowing what to expect, but there were a lot of years of buried pain I suppose. There was also a lot of pride standing in the way of honesty, and everybody had issues with each other. But we didn’t want to bring them up. As soon as we were all set up in the room, we stopped and looked at each other and said ‘Well now what?’ and I said ‘Let’s just play Sundial, see how that sounds’. It sounded better than the record, and better than we remembered it. And every song in that practice put smiles on our face.”

Tumbleweed are playing together again, so I don’t want to push too hard, but is there a next step planned at all? Is new material likely to emerge? “When we first decided to do this, it was all about just getting good enough so that we wouldn’t be this embarrassing old fart band playing off our past glories really badly, so the main focus was on re-learning our songs. We practiced every Sunday, and we didn’t want to get beyond that because we didn’t want to ruin the fun and the magic. Now we’ve had some time to get back into it, we’ve been offered some time to record so we might as well take them up on that, but I’m not sure how that’s going to come out – whether it will be a record or maybe a song you can download once a month ... But we’re definitely going to start writing.” Hallelujah!

TUMBLEWEED will play Byron Bay’s Great Northern on Saturday Mar 6 and have just announced a show at The Zoo on Sunday Mar 7 (supported by Giants of Science and Ox). www.myspace.com/tumbleweedoz

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