Ear Punchers

With a belief in the birds of a feather mentality that keeps niche scenes alive, James Grim has curated the inaugural tri-state Drunken Moon Festival to celebrate the modern, sweaty, boisterous number on bygone musical eras that bands such as his own Brothers Grim And The Blue Murders enjoy dishing out. 

“It all kind of started when this promoter asked me… about the bands that we play with in this scene that people are talking about, and he goes, 'Well, what is it?' and I was like, 'That's a good question',” laughs Grim. “And then I was thinking about it, and I thought, 'Fuck, we're all just the bastards of our parent's music – the one commonality we have is that we're all inspired by old time music of some kind, whether it's country or blues or early rock or hybridisations of all'. It's just celebrating this weird hybridised blues movement that has been kind of bubbling under the surface for a while now.”

As is often the case with a style of music that evolves outside of the usual genre tags, Grim says his band turned to like minds for support.

“When we first started, we didn't fit into anything – we were playing metal gigs or country gigs because they knew we played blues but we kind of play it with such a driving force they just didn't quite know where to put us. Then what happened was we all would come across another band of a similar kind of ilk, like you know we discovered The Snowdroppers years ago and then we played together a lot, then Graveyard Train and so on and so on. And as soon as you'd meet a band that was kind of in this same kind of space, you just started lookin' out for each other. And this is the extension of that – some of the old guard and then a lot of the new bands that are coming up through the ranks, so it's really just a celebration and also a showcase…” he says.

Varying the line-up between the states in an effort to showcase both local and interstate talent, Grim is particularly excited about the inclusion of a legendary local headliner for the Brisbane chapter. 

“I think SixFtHick really sum up what Drunken Moon is all about – if you want a band in Australia that epitomises hard work for no other reason than pure rock fury, that's the band. They are exceptional live performers, fantastic musicians and they're not gonna care whether there's two people in the room or 2000 people in the room – whether they're opening the night or whether they're closing the night it makes no difference to them because they just feed off an audience wherever it is. That basically sums up what we're all about. And then you've got a band like Jackson Firebird which are a fantastic duo, and they just do things with anything that's in front of them that you probably wouldn't have seen before – they're just insane. And that's the band incidentally that the Melbourne venue Cherry Bar turned down Lady Gaga for. Venues look after their own here, it's really good,” says Grim, who also considered the practical elements required for a great night of music.

“The whole evening has basically been put together so that you just start, walk in, the first band will blow your mind and then you've got about ten minutes to quickly get yourself another drink and then the next band will blow your mind – and so on and so on! It's basically about punchin' you in the ears with some good shit.”