Night of the Barracks kicks off next month. In preparation we interviewed the Boy & Bear frontman, Dave Hosking, and guitarist and vocalist, Killian Gavin, who will be playing at the North Head venue on September 11.
All of the members from the group hail from different parts of Sydney, including the Northern Beaches. They reached both national and international charts, best known for their hits Feeding Line, Southern Sun and their cover of Crowded Houses’ Fall at your Feet.
To take it all the way back to your origins, the band was formed when you met at university over a decade ago in 2009. What drew you together?
Killian: I actually met Dave at orientation day; he was playing guitar and singing and doing a solo project, and I felt pity for him and offered to help him out. Then Tim got involved, and Tim’s brother Jon joined, and it just sort of naturally felt like it had morphed into becoming a band.
Well, on the surface it seems like you have some great chemistry. Is this why you’re still going strong over two decades on?
Dave: I also feel like we had these little interventions in our first five years of wanting to iron out any kind of interpersonal issues…
Killian: The gloves came off a few times…
Dave: Metaphorically! But no, in all seriousness, we saw so many great bands capitulate because of their relationships, and so we really focused on that. Obviously, as well as the music, I’m really proud of that process. And these days, we just really care about each other, and we’re good mates.
Dave, you’re from the North Shore, then moved to Northern Beaches and Killian, you grew up in the Northern Beaches. Did your band get any influence from the LGA?
Killian: Not really… I felt growing up here, everyone was surfing and skating, and I’d surfed and skated as well, and I enjoyed that. But I probably spent most of my time just in my bedroom playing instruments and writing songs. But, I also grew up in a place called Warriewood, and it was pretty rural back then, you had a lot of space to roam and just to be in your own thoughts. So maybe in some ways it did, but, I probably hadn’t thought of it till just then.
Did you ever play around the Northern Beaches?
Killian: I played here a lot. I was in my previous band, which I was the singer of, and another guy, Dan, was the singer of, and we did lots of shows like the Old Manly Boat Shed, and probably every RSL along the beaches were probably played at some point. Some I’d like to forget, but that’s just part of it.
How do you feel about the Old Manly Boatshed having its due date?
Killian: I didn’t even know, and so you’ve got me in real time. That’s a sad thing. That was an institution.
You guys owe a lot of your initial success to radio. Now, streaming seems to be taking priority. How would you feel your band would fare if you started today?
Dave: I think the goalposts have completely changed. I still think radio is important if you can get it. But I don’t want to sound jaded.
Jade Away.
Dave: You sort of have to play the game on some level, like, you know, socials are so important, and you gotta know how to tackle the streaming services. They’re a beast, and it’s tricky. It’s really hard. So if I were starting out now, I have no really good ideas to share.
Killian: The goalposts have moved, but no one really knows where they’ve moved to. So everyone’s just trying to find where they are; there are no clear avenues anymore.
It’s also kind of exciting, right? Because as you said, there are so many different avenues that you can take, but it’s also kind of scary because it could just take you off a cliff.
Killan: And there are easier avenues. Like social media, but you’re competing in an absolutely flooded market. And starting with social media being the forefront of how you present yourself means it’s not putting the music at the forefront, and it’s kind of hard to build up long-term fans that want to see you live when your main thoroughfare for getting out there is, you know, 22 second clips.
Dave: I feel like we’re not giving a lot of hope… I think great songs, great records still find their way through the noise. So I guess when I get asked by people, “Oh, what do I do? Do I try and find management or a label?” I’m just like, “Just keep writing songs.”
Sydney hasn’t been the best place for live music, but there have been initiatives put in place for its resurgence. Do you think this has been successful?
Killian: I’m probably gonna have a negative stance. Like when we were starting off, it was such a different time. It’s such a different journey. Now, there’s a lot more talk about the arts, talk about venues, and I think that’s only a good thing. But there’s probably a long way to go, and people probably don’t realise there’s a long way to go, which is often the case with our industry. But it’s at least a conversation that everyone’s across.
To take it to a more positive note, your cover of Crowded Houses’ Fall At Your Feet is, in my opinion, one of the rare circumstances where the cover matches or even surpasses the original. It’s played in my family home a lot, my mum loves you guys.
Killian: You’ve made it when someone’s mum loves you.
How do you approach covering an already iconic song?
Killian: I feel like this one thing we’ve always held onto is our own idiosyncratic belief system about what feels like it’s working. We’re flowing and arriving in a spot that the song is, just letting it sort of take its course.
Dave: And interestingly, with that song, it all came together pretty quickly. We got asked to be part of a record, ‘He Will Have His Way’, which was the cover of Neil Finn, Crowded House. So we were just like, oh, this will be fun. And I think we did the arrangement in a day. We worked with Wayne Connolly, and the whole thing started picking up traction. So, yeah, a little bit of luck involved. But yeah, just being playful and trying to enjoy rearranging something is probably the only angle we know.
What can fans and also newcomers expect for your show at Night at the Barracks coming up on September 11?
Dave: We’ve got a broad kind of repertoire to play around with, so we’ll be diving into some older tracks as well as stuff which only came out six months ago. So there’ll be a bit of a mixed bag. We love weaving the songs together a lot, so it’s not stop-start stop-start. Hopefully, if we get it right, it feels like the set is building in momentum as it goes along, and people just get lost in that experience.
You can buy tickets to Boy & Bear as well as other Night at the Barracks performances here.
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