Well, my time with the Shout Brothers was 20 years ago, when Roaring Jack was de rigeur at the Sando every Thursday, and it might mean a hangover on Friday. The Shouties also played there on Sunday afternoons, always covers, always raucous and enjoyable.
The Shouties were back for New Year's Eve, and the only thing in common seemed to be me and Bernie Hayes (and brother Justin?). The pub was different (it was the Botny View, down the St Peters end of Newtown), the punters were younger, the covers were different, and of course brother Stevie was no longer there.
Before they played, there was a bloke wandering around with a T Shirt of the Byrds' country album Sweethearts Of The Rodeo. As a tenuous coincidence the Shouties later played a cover of Cowgirl In The Sand, a song the Byrds covered in country style (quite creditably, albeit rather different to Neil Young's original). Anyway, the Shouties' version was lengthy and blistering: Bernie just wasn't doing that sort of lead guitar 20 years ago.
Just before midnight, they played Only For Sheep*. Just after the new year, they played Freda Payne's Band Of Gold, a song about a marriage that failed on the wedding night. One had to wonder if there was a message in either of those choices.
Nice to see them again. Almost like reliving...
*An obscure song by The Bureau, a Dexys Midnight Runners offshoot. I thought I was clever to recognise it, but it had actually been a hit in Australia.
4 comments:
Yeah, I used to see the Shout Bros at the Sando on Sunday nights back in '89 during my year abroad from the UK. Fond memories of VB and the Shouties. Where are they now? Is there any connection between them and Roaring Jack?
Neil
Bernie Hayes plays around town, from time to time, sometimes solo and sometimes with a band. He put out a couple of albums (of originals) in the past few years, soft, reflective and quite good.
Stevie died some time back.
I haven't heard much of the the rest of the Hayes brothers - I think there were about five of them, from Canberra.
No connection with Roaring Jack, apart from them being regular as clockwork at the Sando.
Roaring Jack's Alistair Hewlett put out a solo album some time ago, but I never heard more than that. Last I saw Steph from Roaring Jack, he was helping their manager Andrew in the furniture moving trade.
Like a lot of pubs, the Sando put in a bunch of poker machines, and with all the profit went quite upmarket. No more grunge.
There's another post on the Sando, somewhere in my archives...
That's all I know; any more would need to be sought online. As the man said, thanks for the memories.
Man The Shout Brothers!! The best gig all year in Canberra used to be on Christmas Eve at one of the smallest clubs in Canberra. It was The Shout Brothers @ The Hungarian Soccer Club. Only those in the know ever attended, which kept the crowd relatively sane. The boys would blow us away with some fantastic music and those gigs are still some of my best memories of living in Canberra. Sorry to see the boys are not all still with us but I am awaiting the day the rest decide to get back together for a reunion because it would just be simply awesome.
So that's where they got to, that time of year. :)
I suspect we haven't seen the last of them, in one incarnation or another.
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