Hindley Street Country Club On Becoming "One Big Time Machine"

They broke the internet with their sumptuous covers of 70s, 80s, and 90s pop and rock hits, and now, Adelaide outfit Hindley Street Country Club (HSCC) are taking their stellar tribute act out on the road for their first-ever national headline tour of Australia across this September and October.

Though they’ve done gigs around the country here and there – and sold out venues everywhere they’ve gone – traipsing through Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, and Brisbane marks what HSCC arranger, bassist, and co-founder Constantine Delo calls the band’s “first high-end countrywide tour”. Since revered rock band manager Dennis Dunstan stumbled across HSCC and recognised their potential, the outfit has fast been dubbed ‘the greatest cover band in the world’.

That title is apt when considering HSCC’s inimitable interpretations of some of the greatest anthems and ballads realised in three decades. The Doobie Brothers, Chaka Khan, Phil Collins, Chic, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Fleetwood Mac, Heart, Boston, and more, have all had their songs remade into a HSCC classic.

Naming themselves after Adelaide’s infamous strip, HSCC had humble beginnings as a band of local musicians and mates coming together for a weekly jam. Of course, Constantine never envisioned him and the band embarking on a countrywide venture such as their forthcoming tour, especially considering their humble beginnings. “No,” Constantine says, interrupting the question because he both knows what’s about to be asked and still harbours something resembling disbelief. “Never in a million years!” He continues, “I never, ever thought it would be anything more than a bunch of guys playing music from my genre – the late 70s and 80s. Back then, music was, as far as I’m concerned, really well written, really well produced and arranged."

On how HSCC cultivated their popularity, Constantine says, “I just kept putting a tune out every Friday. At about the 70-song mark, it just exploded! It just went mad! And it’s continuing to draw in crazy numbers every month.”

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Now, with around 800,000 YouTube subscribers and a cool one billion streams across their collective social media platforms, HSCC are ready to play with the big guns. Playing music from the era in which they grew up brings a massive dose of nostalgia for not just HSCC but the crowd who come to check them out. “It’s fifty per cent music, fifty per cent nostalgia,” Constantine says. “The time when this stuff was coming out in its original form when we were all in our late teens and 20s, you had your whole life ahead of you – there was no marriage, no house, no mortgage – it was a great time to be alive because everything was ahead of you.

“Music has that ability to take you somewhere.”

In some ways, HSCC also offers lessons in music history for the younger generations; people who may never have come across these artists had this outfit made it their mission to deliver such great covers. And having that kind of influence on the younger members of their audience is a responsibility and privilege that Constantine says the band don’t take for granted. “I’m finding a lot of [young] people are listening to our stuff,” he says, “a lot of the parents are showing us that the kids that [who] are listening to us, they’ve never heard the original versions of these songs. It’s now a situation where the kids are getting into it.”

And as for what to expect for those going out to one of the HSCC shows on the upcoming tour, Constantine can only describe their live performances as “one big time machine." “It’s the soundtrack of our youth,” he adds.

"Being on the stage, looking out at people of all ages," Constantine says, sparing no emphasis on the sentiment of how “so utterly refreshing” it is to receive the reception HSCC do. “To watch people smile their arses off, from ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe they’re playing this song!’ all the way through to tears. Good ones, sad ones, you don’t know sweet without knowing sour. A good love song is always tinted with hurt.”

You can catch Hindley Street Country Club on their upcoming Aus tour. Ticket info here.