All My Friends Are in Bar Bands

Just wanted to say goodbye properly. I can't do this anymore. I tried and I failed. I couldn't finish this story. Sorry if you were waiting on me to do so. I was too. I gave podcasting a go for nearly 10 years but I'm done. Thanks if you listened. Support David on Patreon: http://patreon.com/davidjamesyoung See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Almost 20 years ago, Luke Steele emerged as one of the great modern eccentrics of Australian music. An ebullient personality (one was a spider, one was a bird), he started the decade as a scrappy underdog and ended it as one of the biggest pop stars in the world. Who else could get to that kind of A to B, from Jebediah to Jay-Z? With a new solo album looming, Luke spoke openly about his one-of-a-k...

Few could have predicted that the scrawny Jewish kid with the guitar in Sydney's eastern suburbs would go on to conquer the world. Hell, even fewer could have predicted his second-ever gig would be opening for Sonic Youth. Still, that's just how Ben Lee's career has unfolded - just when you think you have all the answers, he changes the questions. An ARIA winner, a two-time Hottest 100 runner-up a...

When then-triple j breakfast hosts Alex Dyson and Matt Okine decided to surprise Melbourne singer-songwriter Gretta Ray with news she'd won a competition through the station’s Unearthed initiative, they did not head to her place of work. Nor did they go to her place of residence. Instead, they ended up at Princes Hill Secondary College, where Ray was a student. A prodigious singer and buddin...

Lonely and dreaming on the west coast, Jono Mata and Sam Blitvitch both aspired to be the guitar heroes they saw on their screens at an impressionable age. With Sly Withers - both men's first in-earnest band - they were able to achieve something far greater. With their open, honest every-man take on pub rock and pop-punk, the band quickly carved a niche that soon became bigger than either could ha...

Much like the inner rings of a cut-open tree, there are a surprising degree of layers to Sydney trio STUMPS. Although they boast a confident, extroverted frontman in Kyle Fisher, he had never actually even so much as sang a note on stage prior to the band's formation in the late 2010s. Their rhythm section, meanwhile - bassist Merrick Powell & drummer Jonathan Dolan - had never played indie-ro...

Charlene Bailey has lived a life of reintroductions. A promising country upstart in the heart of Tamworth, the singer-songwriter got her start as a child prodigy in a family band. She later emerged as a prospective indie-pop darling in the big smoke of Sydney and Los Angeles, helming Tigertown for some prosperous but simultaneously tumultuous years. These days, folks know her as Charlie Collins -...

Growing up outside of Cologne, Anika Ostendorf had lofty but headstrong ambitions to get into the world of music. She ended up there, but not in the way her younger self may have initially expected. As Hachiku, Ostendorf has forged a career in the indie pop world that has seen her charming, kitschy indie-pop win over audiences on both a local and international scale - as well as tours alongside th...

There are few intergenerational figures in a music scene that sees bands come and go on a weekly basis. Chief among those that are, however, are Al Grigg and Tom Wallace. Best friends since college, the pair first played together as part of 2000s indie wunderkinds Red Riders, before transferring their guitar-loving and hook-wielding expertise over to the garage-rock world with Palms circa 2011. He...

It's an increasingly-common modern story. A project born out of a bedroom, a dorm room, a laptop, a loose collection of ideas, shifts from the micro to the macro. Few of these stories, however, have carved out such an intense niche as Dylan Baldi's noise-rock vehicle Cloud Nothings. Initially serving up indie pop with a sunny disposition, the band nosedived into Steve Albini-approved dissonance on...

Huck Hastings is a relatively new name on the Australian music scene, although the Sydney-based singer-songwriter has had his eyes on the stage well before his current solo iteration. Born into a pub-rock heritage, Hastings eventually found a niche within the indie-rock spectrum and has carved that into a heartfelt and endearing debut album,  Cheers to Progress . Ahead of its release, he spok...

Good Evans, it's a crossover! A week on from David featuring on Kevin Mitchell's  Good Evans, It's A Bobcast! , the Jebediah frontman and solo singer-songwriter under the Bob Evans moniker had the tables turned on him. We traverse decades in just under an hour, ranging from high-school dances to the Big Day Out and a myriad of unexpected places in-between. After 25 years in the game, Kev isn'...

You all know the story by now. Formed in 1997, megastars by 2000, whatever-happened-tos by 2004, has-beens by 2006, comeback kids by 2016 - and, finally, comeback kids  again  in 2020. Of course, those are just the touchstones - in truth, there's way more to The Avalanches' story than you might expect. It starts in a fruit shop, it heads up to country Victoria, through to the suburban sh...

It's rare to be simultaneously a decade-plus performance veteran and also still under the age of 30, and yet Imogen Clark happily exists within that Venn diagram. This ain't no child-star operation, either - really, this Blue Mountains native is just getting started. Having toured internationally, supported Shania Twain and even navigated a global pandemic to get her unique blend of country, rock...

They're one of the most distinctive figures in the history of Australian rock music - not least of all because their frontman is nearly seven foot tall. They're a platinum-selling Hottest 100 runner-up with decades of sold-out theatres to their name, but they're also one of the more vulnerable and emotively-striking bands this country has produced. There's never been a band quite like Something fo...

After a super-fun first round, the late crowd shuffled in for a second round of  Bar Bands  banter. This time around, it was a celebration of some of David's formative years in front of the stage and listening in his bedroom. This included Hurstville's own Patrick Matthews - founding member of The Vines and bassist of Youth Group - as well as Children Collide frontman Johnny Mackay and A...

On the eve of  Bar Bands ' fifth birthday* (*not really) and David's 30th* (*also not really), a diverse but elite crew of Australian musicians descended upon The Vanguard in Sydney for a night of storytelling, song-sharing and top-tier banter. This is the first of two episodes recorded that night, which sees the inimitable Alex the Astronaut, L-FRESH the LION and Dear Seattle's Brae Fisher c...

Are you all ready? Are you ready? Get set, let's go. We're heading on a journey through the career of one of Australia's most unique and powerful voices - the kind that can elicit tears as quickly as it can shatter glass. Although physically locked down (at the time) in Melbourne, her stories span across the globe - from bikie bars in Tasmania to behind a golden mask on television. Kate Miller-Hei...

Imagine an island within an island. Pretty isolated, right? That was life for a young Maddy Jane, whose connection to music was her ticket to the world. Now a resident on the mainland - Wollongong, specifically - Maddy's brand of heartfelt jangly indie-rock has afforded her a myriad of unbelievable opportunities. From arena openers, to national tours, to her very own prom night, Maddy has taken it...

Don't let the electric guitar and the sultry singer-songwriter stuff fool you - Lisa Caruso didn't always dream of glamourous indie rock & roll. As a child she was an aspirational pop star, which in turn gave her the confidence needed to pick up the guitar and see where it took her. Where it's taken her is all the way to her debut album,  In Feelings , which has been several years in the...

Phil Stack has hauled his trusty double bass into just about every RSL, pub, club, theatre and arena you can think of. Abby Dobson has sung all the way from tiny restaurants in Europe to the open air of The Domain in Sydney. They've both managed to notch songs of theirs into the Australian psyche – Phil with “In the Summertime” as part of Thirsty Merc, Abby with “Even When...

Fanny Lumsden is a household name - provided, of course, that your house is located at least 50kms or so from the nearest city. She's at the helm of the Country Halls tour, which has seen her perform from coast to coast and plenty of spots in-between alongside her husband Dan and their trusty caravan. Of course, that was until this year - Lumsden's plans for her third album  Fallow were put o...

Coupla questions, but more importantly  WE'RE DOING A LIVE SHOW! Sorry, I did I say live  show ? I meant live  shows ! All My Friends Are in Bar Bands'  5th Birthday (and David's 30th) Sunday October 25 The Vanguard, Sydney Early show (6:30pm) and late show (9:30pm) Tickets $15 - $1 from every ticket going to Support Act On sale now from www.thevanguard.com.au https://moshtix.c...

Knocked Loose are just what the Colonel ordered: A fresh batch of Kentucky-fried, scorched-earth, brutal-beatdown hardcore to throw bodies off stages to. The band's menacing and unrepentant approach to the genre has cemented them as heavyweights despite only being two albums and a handful of years in. Hell, even Corey Taylor has championed them as the future of heavy music. How did these southern...

Growing up in the concrete slabs of the Gold Coast, you can't always get what you want. It wasn't until Kate Cooper moved up north to Brisbane that she was truly able to get some degree of satisfaction. A mid-2000s stint at the helm of Iron On turned her into one of the country's cult indie darlings, which blossomed to a global scale with her next band, An Horse. Things were very very good for awh...