All My Friends Are in Bar Bands

Whether you know every word to every song or you're still trying to figure out if it's double G or double S at the end, Skegss have been more or less inescapable in the last 18 months and change. Their cult fanbase has poured over into the mainstream, filling out venues across the country and scoring high rotation on triple j. Not bad for three country kids, two of which that grew up not far from...

Melbourne band Pagan aren't concerned with round holes and square pegs – they're too busy trying to kick the door down and rip down the foundations. The genre-defiant quartet dropped their debut album, Black Wash, earlier in the year to much fanfare – although they've had quite the run-up to its release, and it's far from their first rodeo. Vocalist Nikki Brumen and bassist Dan Bonnici share a lot...

It's the last weekend of September, the sun is out and the Gong is alive with the sound of music – you already know what time it is! For the third year running, Bar Bands is kicking back with some of the best acts that Yours & Owls Festival has to offer. We're finding out about first gigs, worst gigs and best gigs with a whole bevvy of legends. This year, we've got Alice Ivy, Mallrat, Middle K...

When we first met Tim Commandeur, he was better known as Timmy. The baby-faced drummer was still in high school when he joined Operator Please, and by the time they'd graduated they'd become one of the biggest names in Australian indie. Those days are long gone, but Tim is able to look back on them fondly while still forging ahead as one of the country's most active drummers. Pounding the skins fo...

Tiny Moving Parts have been keeping it all in the family since well before they formed - they're made up of two brothers and a cousin, after all. Coming out of a sleepy town in Minnesota, the band has always dared to be different, mixing their love of emo and pop-punk with a dizzying, mathy approach to instrumentation. It's seen them quickly outgrow the basements they once thrived in, eventually a...

What can you say about this week's guest that hasn't already been said? Andrew W.K. is more than just a hard partyer - he's a prodigious multi-instrumentalist, motivational speaker and world record holder. He is a phenomena that has overcome every obstacle and lived to tell the tale - and for 15 glorious minutes, we held court with the great man before his show at the Manning Bar in Sydney. It's n...

They call her MC. She's a singer, guitarist, kickass mum and the leader of Sydney's resident garage-rock sweetheart gang Bloods. The band was born out of a desire to do new things, as three mates all switched instruments to see what would happen. It was far from MC's first rodeo, though - across nearly 20 years in the game she's toured all over Australia and played with some of her teenage idols a...

Bonus episode this week in which David answers YOUR questions about everything from podcasting to Waluigi. Support David on Patreon: http://patreon.com/davidjamesyoung See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Press Club played their first show at the start of 2017. 18 months later, they'd opened for everyone from The Smith Street Band to Kingswood and sold out their first-ever headlining tour. Sure enough, this kind of thing just didn't happen overnight. The members of Press Club have been at it for years now - in fact, bassist Ian MacRae and drummer Frank Lees have been playing in bands together since...

Gotta catch 'em all! Following on from Jules' appearance in episode 9 and Anty and Craig's appearance in episode 35, we're now completing the set with the two remaining members of The Bennies that have yet to do the show: Founding member David "Bowie" Beaumont on drums and new guy Nick Williams on the bass. Settled in next to the heater on a Sunday night at Wollongong Uni Bar, the rhythm section p...

There ain't no party like a RAAVE TAPES party. The Newcastle dance punks have been on a steady ascent for the last couple of years on the back of some dazzling live shows and killer singles. Now, with single 'Suds' out in the world, their positive partying is reaching a bigger audience than ever before. Take this night, for instance, where Raavies sold out Wollongong's Rad Bar and promptly dominat...

Fifteen years ago, Australia was introduced to a cheeky Melbourne-born singer with a true-blue nickname and dimples out the wazoo. Rob Mills - or Millsy, as he's better known - was a breakout star of Australian Idol in its first season, arriving at it after years of slugging it out in pubs and singing to anyone who would listen. In 2018, Mills still keeps as busy as he ever has. Though he's gotten...

In space, no-one can hear you scream. In Musswellbrook, they can hear you sing - they just don't care. From a small town in the Upper Hunter region of New South Wales, Eat Your Heart Out didn't set out with any lofty ambitions. They were just five friends inspired by an assortment of experiences that lead them to create music together. Soon enough, they were touring nationally and inking internati...

Raised on a diet of Queen and Nirvana in a small northern English town, the Jarman brothers - Ryan, Gary and Ross - knew they'd end up making music. What they could have never anticipated, however, is how far it would take them. From sleeping in vans to playing the main stages of the biggest festivals in the world, The Cribs have rolled with the punches for well over a decade - and they're not don...

If two's company and three's a crowd, what the hell are West Thebarton? The Adelaide-based septet have been getting the party started over the last few years, taking them across Australia and back again on the back of their raucous live shows. Today, they release their debut album – but back in December, the band were warming up the stage for Polish Club on a national tour. Frontman Ray Dalfsen, p...

In January 2015, Ben David - erstwhile troubadour, frontman of The Hard Aches and feeler of feels - sat in front of a microphone and got interviewed for the first-ever episode of All My Friends Are in Bar Bands. Almost exactly three years later, Ben sat in front of that very same microphone for episode 101. A lot has changed in the intervening years - and we get to a lot of it. Among the topics ar...

It finally happened. Bar Bands hit triple digits, and we threw together a live episode at the Red Rattler Theatre in Marrickville to celebrate. Three musicians from very different backgrounds - singer-songwriter Thelma Plum, Frenzal Rhomb frontman Jay Whalley and The Wiggles' own Murray Cook - came together to share stories from their first love of music, their time on the road and what drives the...

One of Australia's most celebrated contemporary writers - medium regardless - Gareth Liddiard has told stories to divided but uniformly attentive audiences for over 20 years at this point. He penned a song voted by his peers to be the greatest Australian song of all time. He has a bevvy of acclaimed, modern-classic LPs under his belt through both The Drones and his time as a solo artist. And the m...

Born Sophie Payten, Gordi was a wide-eyed kid falling in love with music out in country New South Wales on her family farm. After being particularly inspired by a Missy Higgins show in her teens, she focused her attention on songwriting - first a folksy dreamer, then a maximalist indie-pop maestro. Her debut LP, Reservoir, was released to critical acclaim in 2017 and lead to huge tours both nation...

Born in Perth, raised in Singapore before moving to London and then back to Australia, Stefan Niedermeyer - AKA Evan Klar - has seen more of the world in his formative years than most will see in their lifetime. Before coming to the realm of solo performance, Niedermeyer was a session musician. It lead to cushy gigs and tours, but something greater was inevitably on the horizon. For a Bar Bands fi...

It's a long road from Computer Town Australia to an Airbnb in Los Angeles, but in just under six years Hockey Dad have blazed the trail there and back again. Billy Fleming and Zach Stephenson have known one another since they were kids, growing up on the same street in the southern suburbs of Wollongong. They formed Hockey Dad on a whim in 2012, and the years since have seen them steadily build up...

We have lost a giant of the Australian punk scene in every conceivable sense. Support David on Patreon: http://patreon.com/davidjamesyoung See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You voted, we compiled and now we have the top five episodes of All My Friends Are in Bar Bands for 2017! Thanks for casting your votes. 5. Alex Lahey 4. Sarah Thompson (Camp Cope) 3. Lincoln Le Fevre 2. Amy Shark 1. David Liebe Hart The 2018 season of All My Friends Are in Bar Bands kicks off February 2. All My Friends Are in Bar Band's 100th episode will be LIVE at the Red Rattler in Sydney on M...

They started out as Andrew Jackson Jihad in 2004 - two friends in Arizona, taking on the weird and wonderful world of folk-punk. In the ensuing years, vocalist/guitarist Sean Bonnette and bassist Ben Gallaty have created some cult-classic LPs, toured the world and found themselves in a variety of peculiar situations. While in Australia on a headlining tour, the duo warmed up for their Newcastle da...

Growing up as an awkward music nerd in New Jersey, Lauren Denitzio never saw themselves fronting a band or playing punk rock. In 2017, they've done it twice - first as part of the crucially-underrated outfit The Measure [SA], whose album Notes was twice as good as most punk albums released in the 2010s and got half the recognition. In their second act, Worriers, Denitzio has further explored the s...