“The guru for our band made it up,” Sean explains, not a hint of pisstake in his voice. “It means when you’re hanging out with your friends and having a good time, giving each other high fives and stuff, maybe you’re eating some pizza, jamming some brews, doing whatever you want that makes you love life, that's what hammjamming is.” A small invasion army dedicated to pizza, beer and reggae. Excellent.

Sean admits the band started as nothing more than an ambitious jam session. “I asked everybody I knew if they wanted to be in my reggae band, and to my surprise at the first practice there were 15 people there, so that's how we ended up with 15 people. We started playing and nobody thought it would go anywhere; it would just be something funny, but it turned out to be so good that we are going to Australia. That's pretty crazy.”

The San Franciscans have just cut their debut album, 'Never Gonna Touch The Ground', and with a lineup that could fill a rugby team, it's a feat not to be scoffed at.“We have members that live all over the US so it took a lot of logistical prowess to get everybody in the same place. There are so many people and they all want to have their voice heard, but I really didn't want to have a big shitstorm going on. I tried to get people saying, for example, ‘hey how bout we don't have horns on this song’ and the horn players reluctantly say, ‘I guess so’ but then the sax player would sneak in a sax track when I’d go to the bathroom!”

The band has strong ties with Australia, having borrowed almost all of the members of Architecture in Helsinki at one stage or another, and are eager to play in Oz again.“I love Australian audiences. You guys are a thousand times better (than the Yanks). I love it over there. That last tour we did there is probably our favourite tour we've ever done. We had people taking boogie boards we had with us and diving head first down the stairs.”

On their last visit to our shores they were treated to some good old fashion crowd hospitality. “We have this part of a song where we all take a knee together for the breakdown of the song, we didn't say anything about this and everyone in the room automatically took a knee right when we did, it was a weird psychic link. The Australians, they know how to party, they know how to jam.”

The Still Flyin’ live show packs the stage with bodies and instruments, a scene that is never far from descending into complete chaos.“People are already excited because they didn't think that many people could fit on the stage. That's entertainment in itself. Inevitably by the end of the show some audience members think it’s time for them to get onstage too coz there's already so many people onstage what difference will that make if there's one more person, so then there's like 50 people onstage and people are spilling off and some band members are out in the crowd. So it's a big mess but it's a joyous mess and everyone is having fun.”

Still Flyin's flavour of happy, beach reggae-pop still has a tinge of joke band to it, and Sean talks wryly about the band’s love of onstage high fives. “The high five is what we are all about y’know, positivity, wildness, congratulating each other. It's a display of celebration. We also have something called the ‘hammfive’; you turn your hand backwards and give a high five that way with the back of your hand. It kinda hurts unless you get it right. I'm an expert so it doesn't hurt me.”
Dan Cole

Still Flyin are playing The Laneway Festival January 31. For a full lineup visit lanewayfestival.com.au You can also catch Still Flyin’ at The Troubadour January 30. 'Never Gonna Touch the Ground' is out now through Lost and Lonesome Records.