The Road to Sunnybank

My childhood is filled with memories of drums all over the house; they would come and go in colors of black, pearly white, dark wood, light wood, or sparkly orange, because Dad not only loved playing, he was relentlessly searching for the elusive drum tone he wanted in that moment. They’d smell of wood, the tang of metal, and of the cigarette smoke brought home from the pubs and clubs that he would play at three or more nights each week. My memories are full of the sound of music and Dad practicing, and even in the silence the buzz of a loose snare, or the clatter of drum sticks rolling onto the tile floor.

Dad would march my brother Greg and I to bed with drumrolls and military beats, our legs stomping down the hall, arms swinging in time—it was a brilliantly sneaky way to get us excited to go to bed! I’ve since seen photos of my dad as a boy in military uniform with a little drum strapped across his chest. Dad’s dad, my pop, was in the military, a royal marine and later a policeman. He was also a musician, and a drummer in the police band, a jazz big band, playing swing and dance hall music. He died when I was young, but there is a photo of him sitting behind a large drum kit, looking down at the camera that is etched in my mind.

Dad was caught up on and rode the musical wave of the 60s. From what I hear he would play almost every night and often two gigs a night on weekends The scene was that alive—as dad tells it, it was all the young people wanted to do, and pretty much all they had to do as well! His gigging with bands went on long after I was born, and while the pace dropped off eventually, he stayed active in bands right into his 70s (his 70s, not the 70s!) in bands ranging from rock and country, to jazz and blues. He still plays for fun on the kits he has at his home on Sunnybank Road, he even has an electric kit now, which I think he may have frowned at in his early days.

When I was a little kid, apparently Dad taught me a few drum patterns on a tiny kit, and those are about all I know still! But when I was about 15 he bought me a guitar, a beautiful Yamaha acoustic. I loved that guitar, and committed 100% to the tried and true “play until your fingers bleed” approach to learning it. I can still remember the feeling of playing the Yamaha, the feel of its varnished neck and objectively perfect fretboard. Combined with its sound, my memory of playing it is now something like a long lost but amazing taste, or the feel of a sunny day. I accidentally stood on and snapped it’s neck many years later, and it was never quite the same, even after it was repaired, Dad tinkers around on it now. One of dad’s old band mates, Rod Stone, then a guitar teacher set me on the right path with technique and tried to teach me to read music (with limited commitment on my part) but it didn’t take long for my passion for guitar to evolve into a deep love for writing songs.

I think Dad had figured he had the drums covered, so best point me in a different direction! Later on, my brother Greg would follow in Dad’s footsteps (foot pedals?) and take up the drums. Starting in my first year out of high school, it was with Greg that I created or joined a series of original bands. Many of these were with friends, because like the 60s, the 90s was actually a really good time for bands. It was still pre-internet and very early in the video game craze, plus grunge had surfaced and so now once again, almost everyone felt they could give it a go. Most bands had their limitations, but what the best had was a genuinely original spirit. Avoiding the gravity of grunge and alternative rock was a challenge back then, when every one you started a band with wanted to sound that way. My personal tastes leaned more folk or experimental rock, but heavier denser music was the fashion and so our first bands were a mix of styles and directions, which reaped some success, and some confusion! We did a lot of gigging around Melbourne, recorded an EP with one band, Carbon, and home recordings with others, though we were in retrospect too restless and quick to change gears to build any momentum. A collection of unrecorded songs, written right before Greg and I took some opportunities and transitioned into a career in the visual arts, remains some of the best songwriting i think I’ve been involved in, and when Greg is up for it, I think we should still get those recorded.

That transition away from music to visual art and animation happened between when my daughter Kira was born and when Nick was born. I’d still play a lot of acoustic guitar around the house, and tinker with refining songs, but I wasn’t gigging or recording. I was playing a lot of music for and with the kids. I also played them the records that I loved. When Nick was a toddler he loved the early self-titled Joe Cocker! album (when asked what his favourite music was, he’d chime “Joe Cocker!” in his cute toddler’s voice). He loved Stevie Wonder, I remember when he was maybe 4 he proudly showed us how he’d drawn a new Stevie Wonder album cover on his chalk board (I took a photo by sadly can’t find it now). He also loved Michael Jackson, and we didn’t have the heart to tell him he had passed for a long time. His grandpa Frank would play Morning of the Earth, Paul Simon’s Graceland, Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, and many many classic albums on every time when we visited, which I’m sure also found their way into his heart. We had MGMT’s Oracular Spectacular playing in the car non-stop (a band I’m proud to say I actually stumbled upon on MySpace before they hit it big and thought were great). Nick started finding his own music pretty early on too, he bought 21 Pilots debut album when he was 7, and kept following them, and loved a lot of music of that ilk: Foster the People, Two Door Cinema Club, all bands he actually introduced me to! Then he went deep into the 60s, the Beatles of course, Stones, he loves the Kinks most of all. The list goes on, I’ll get him to show his album collection some day.

Anyway, that is what he was listening to, but what was he making? We didn’t teach him an instrument at a very young age, I always had this gut feeling that creativity stayed more fresh and flexible if you were able to play as a kid, and not focus too much on leaning things by rote. Imitating your heroes can come, but having a foundation that is more free and personal I think is where true ideas can really spring from. We provided instruments to play around with but no lessons until much later. At 4 he was humming his own melodies to himself in the back seat of the car. At 7 he’d turn down the sound on his favorite movies and score them with the family keyboard, and whenever he heard a song he liked, he’d find the melody and chords on the keyboard. At around 9 he’d burn CDs of songs he’d written (it would be fun to hear those now, but not sure where they are). At 11 he was gifted an electric drumkit, took some lessons and played along to is favourite music. Then as he moved into the second half of high school, Nick began to make music using Garage Band, from hip-hop influenced lo-fi tunes to orchestral pop weirdness, loops and samples opened up another way to make music quickly and he continued to experiment.

Nick’s increasing musical adventures as he neared the end of high school reignited a love of making music in me. We started to make music together every week as i gave Nick guitar tips, which he learnt along with the bass. I also encouraged Nick to explore his voice, remembering him humming in the back seat of the car, and knowing he had it in him. Nick overcame his reservations very quickly, performed in a school musical and started to record some really great demos with interesting vocal performances. I think he has a lot of potential to expand the sort of style and character even more. Nick drove the creative process through song writing and style experiments, I bounced those ideas back, lending my own experience and ideas to the mix, and the magic of a genuine creative collaboration bloomed. In 2024, Nick’s final year of high school, these casual creative adventures and the overflow of ideas and songs appearing begged to became something more organized and tangible.

I definitely didn’t want to butt in on my son’s project or his art, or pull his focus from school, but we’d always played creatively his entire life, so when it came to making music, it all felt really natural and fun. We’d bring our ideas and push back against each other, and then a breakthrough would lead to us both smiling and feeling the vibes of the music, Nick often pumping the air with his fist. Like with the best creative collaborations I’ve been involved with, what we were working on felt greater than the sum of its parts and so we kept going.

So the concept for Sunnybank is pretty simple, it is a generational band, with the youngest member leading the way with the song writing and vibes, and me leading from a process perspective, passing on the pearls I have, keeping up a good creative work ethic and helping us to do the best work we can at the time. Oh, and doing some artwork! We have no particular style in mind for the music, and if you could hear all the songs we’ve written and demos we’ve recorded beyond our debut LP, you’d know how peculiar what we actually created with Barefoot is! Sunnybank will likely evolve, we may bring in new members, I may step aside at some point, but while it lasts it will always carry with it that love of music and creativity that we share.