This weekend is a big one for a couple of bands close to me, with the recent release of their fourth album Rebuild Repeat, Hockey Dad play their biggest headline shows to date in Melbourne and Sydney, while the legendary Radio Birdman celebrate their 50th anniversary and play their final ever shows in Sydney across the weekend. Exactly ten years ago I was touring around Europe with The New Christs (the band of Radio Birdman frontman Rob Younger that also features a couple of other Radio Birdman) while at the same time back here in Australia, we launched the Farmer & The Owl label with the first ever release from Hockey Dad titled Dreamin.
Since that time a decade ago Hockey Dad has now built themselves a career that includes four studio albums, a live album, countless tours and festival spots across the world. It has been great working with them across the whole journey and will be amazing to see them play the Hordern Pavillion stage on Saturday. If you haven’t got yourself across the latest album Rebuild Repeat yet, make sure you give it a listen and there are still some tickets left for the shows on the weekend if you want to get along to see it live.
In the case of Hockey Dad, it has been a case of watching a band develop, while with Radio Birdman, they were a band I loved as a fan in my teenage years, that would then become friends later on when I started working within the music industry. I did a few full tours across Europe with the band, the last one was the aforementioned one a decade back and have seen Radio Birdman regularly since the late nineties. Touring around Europe with Rob, it is amazing to see the impact and influence this Australian band has had, and the success of the Five-O tour just solidifies this. I look forward to cfatching their final show on Sunday and also reading the forthcoming book about the band from the legendary Sydney writer Murray Engleheart.