ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON FEB. 16, 2011
By Steve Newton
Transcontinental phone connections being what they are, it’s not always easy hooking up with someone halfway around the world, but when the person you’re trying to get a hold of still has his butt in bed, it’s particularly tricky.
After numerous attempts to reach Kim Churchill in Torquay, in the Australian state of Victoria, I had to call in a bigwig—in this case Churchill’s Vancouver-based management rep, Frank Weipert—to rouse him from his slumber.
Turns out Churchill wasn’t recovering from an overdose of Victoria Bitter the night before, as might be expected from any other 20-year-old Aussie surfer-musician. He was just exhausted after having to pull off a three-hour drive from a gig on the Mornington Peninsula to a crash pad outside of Melbourne.
“As soon as I finished high school I bought myself a camper van and left,” explains the slightly groggy Churchill over the phone, ”and I haven’t slowed down enough to find a place to live since then. It’s been almost three years.”