Since Their Last BIGSOUND, Born Lion Have Secured A Label, Booking Agent & Manager

Born Lion

John Bowker rocks as well as anyone when he's on stage. He and his band, Sydney up-and-coming punk rockers Born Lion, are already midway through their biggest tour to date, a national run of shows in support of their debut LP, Final Words. And as he spends his weekends doing his thing in front of fans the country over, his day job — as unlikely as it may seem — shares the occasional similarity. 

Bowker works for Uniting Care as a community worker, working with people with a disability on the south coast of NSW. "It's weird," he begins, from his home in Shellharbour just south of Wollongong. "I do a lot of presentations to different organisations [about how they can get involved with Uniting Care] and I find it incredibly nerve-racking. Colleagues always say, 'But you go on stage every week and play in front of heaps of people and act like a crazy man!' But it's a different beast."  

"We just want to go and play a show and [have] it not be about any sort of industry gain."

Luckily for Bowker, and Born Lion fans, his employer is pretty cool with him travelling all over the country. As a result, the band have scheduled their shows primarily over Friday and Saturday nights. "I'm able to take leave on the Thursday, the Friday and sometimes on the Monday. For BIGSOUND [playing four shows over five days], we'll be in Brisbane for the entire week. It won't be their first time at the event, either. "Last time, when we played in 2013, it was a lot more about networking and wanting people to see us. This time, though, we just want to go and play a show and [have] it not be about any sort of industry gain.

"If something cool happens, that'd be great but, since 2013, we've signed to a label, we've got a booking agent and we've got a manager so all those boxes are ticked. Obviously we're fucking nowhere in terms of the music industry, but we're happy; we're content."

Listening to Final Words, it's clear the members of Born Lion are in a good head space. It's confident without being overly ambitious and Bowker says he's enjoying playing the songs live. "It feels like we can give a more accomplished performance. Before the album was released all of the songs were half-written, or in an incomplete state. The ideas were there, the bodies of the songs were there and the lyrics were there, but we were just waiting on them to be produced and arranged in the way they'd finally end up. Now that's happened and we've fleshed out all the songs, it's a really good feeling. Now, all the songs that we play are complete." 

As a result, Born Lion are playing longer sets than ever and racking up plenty of miles as they trek across the country. Teaming up with local bands — "occasionally we'll fly, but our guitarist, Red, bought a Volvo Caddy van recently and we put a seat in the back, so we're driving most of the time" — they're patently enjoying the next step in their musical career. 

But as far as they travel around the country — and, inevitably, overseas — there's a sense Born Lion will always be true to themselves and the Sydney scene from whence they came.