Johnny Hunter and live performance: breaking out when the city itself is an obstacle
Photographer: Tim Kelly
On their debut single, Johnny Hunter told the world, “we want to be One of a Kind.” Last May, in a packed Lansdowne Hotel, the larger than life lead singer, sporting eyeliner, one shiny earring and a flowing red mullet, paraded through the crowd, leading the riotous horde in chorus. it’s hard to dispute that this young band from Sydney’s Inner-West truly are “One of a Kind.”
I met with singer Nick “Hutty” Hutt and guitarist Ben Wilson at their quiet share-house in Redfern. Seated around the living room table, the two band members sipped on tea with what looked like a perfectly mixed cup of thick Milo sludge between them. The band members, which would later include guitarist Xander, drummer Gerry and bassist Nick, initially only ever saw music as “art, to the point of a hobby”, Ben told me, with him and Hutty taking on various projects together. But it was their love of live performances that drove them to “really have a crack.” The trick was to take Ben’s punk influences, from bands like Sonic Youth, The Cure and Daydream Nation, along with Hutty’s vocal influences, such as British legends like David Bowie, Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, The Smiths’ Morrissey, and attempt to both modernise and personalise them in order to represent their new band, Johnny Hunter.
Photographer: Tim Kelly
The band’s formative months in July 2017 were spent taking in all the musical influences they could. Bringing in a wide variety of different artists, genres and styles, Johnny Hunter spent this initial period establishing what music was important to them.
“You can never listen to too much music,” they both repeatedly told me.
Ben said their goal in the early stages of Johnny Hunter was “unlocking that secret art of what makes the music mad to see live”. This resulted in six months of their self-described “smorgasbord style of songwriting”, a mixed and diverse sounding setlis, and a debut gig at Newtown’s Bank Hotel.
“Give people a reason to come to the show. That was our big thing,” said Hutty.
Whether it’s his bravado as a singer or the diversity of genres that influence and complement the punk sound, Johnny Hunter is a certainly spectacle to see live.
“We looked at a lot of old videos and how people performed back in the day for where the energy was coming from,” said Hutty.
Ben added “even when energy’s good, people are either running around in circles, so it gets lost in the chaos, or sitting behind a screen taking photos on their phones.” They found that to avoid being drowned out in Sydney they needed to keep people engaged. They needed a bit of spectacle, and the word they use is “cabaret.”
Following their debut at the Bank Hotel, the boys were treated to a gig with Polish Club and Mac the Knife at the Botany View Hotel later that month. With Polish Club and Mac the Knife’s assembled among similarly eclectic musicians, combined their incredible popularity “put ten thousand people in the Botany View,” as Ben told me.
“We couldn’t even get our gear out afterwards. It was toppers,” said Ben. While they didn’t know where they stood with the crowd, the band were instantly met with a positive reaction. To the band’s surprise, the audience at the Botany View were wholeheartedly open to Johnny Hunter.
“It was nice to see a big crowd like that. They’re not a crew we would normally play to, with our kind of music. They weren’t there for us but it was nice seeing how they handle different stuff in the same scene, and open just to the idea of a mixed bill,” explained Ben.
Blending together punk, pop, psyche genres between fast and slow songs, their “smorgasbord” approach to writing has turned into one of their biggest strengths, despite the risk a broad sound poses for new bands.
“You can’t do that because no-one’s gonna know what the hell you are. But in a way, because it’s all tied together in the cabaret, it’s kinda stood on its own legs,” he explained.
For Johnny Hunter, the shifting sound invigorates the audience, as opposed to confusing them with inconsistency. This is clearly visible at their shows, where the loud and repetitive chorus of “One of a Kind” is balanced with the call and response chorus of “1995”. However, the energy comes from the cabaret, in the form of Hutty, jumping into the masses to sing with the crowd, or the band, exploding in an instrumental uproar after bassist Nick’s final “1995” chant, rather than the songs themselves.
Photographer: Tim Kelly
“We’ll see how long it takes for people to get sick of it,” laughed Hutty.
Forming a band in the post-lockout laws Sydney presents many challenges and struggles. With increased licensing and regulation, or “fun prohibition” as Hutty describes, Sydney’s traditional safety net of bars, pubs and festivals for live music has been lost.
Johnny Hunter weren’t exempt from these issues. However, forming during Sydney’s dullest periods, they were forced to look for support outside these conventional avenues.
Hutty said “when we first started off, it was pretty difficult because you’d go to these venues and they’d be on their last legs.” As Ben and Hutty explained, while Sydney’s nightlife has entered a dull period, the music scene has looked elsewhere to stay afloat. Artists like Johnny Hunter have promoted a culture of mutual support and amateur production to compensate for the loss of venues. As a result, music in Sydney, whether it be Sydney bands releasing records or the playing venues like Lansdowne Hotel, has finally come around since the 2014 lockout laws, with Hutty going as far as to say, “there’s more live music in Sydney now than there’s been in 6/7 years.”
“It has that safety net of local support. Everyone is just so supportive of live music in Sydney, regardless of venues shutting down or anything like that,” said Hutty. “I think it’s cool that it’s birthed this kind of family driven network of a scene where people want to just do their own shit, and also support each other. There’s room to just be what you want to be, and do it, and people will just support that, which is just amazing.”
Looking back on their May gig at the Lansdowne, the community is unavoidable. Groups of fans sang along to the unreleased live tracks, friends and bands met between sets over a beer and a smoke, and Johnny Hunter lightened the mood with an exhilarating opening set.
“Everyone’s already doing festivals in their backyard, everyone’s already getting together record labels with their mates and stuff like that,” Ben told me.
Photographer: Tim Kelly
As Johnny Hunter shows, the culture of self-production has led to bands having their own network of support. While venues still struggle, the bands who play at them are not solely depending on them to break out. Sydney’s nightlife has entered a dull period, but music is finally flourishing. Whether it’s rocking the house down at bars like the Lansdowne, the Bank Hotel, or the Botany View; whether it’s the events organised specifically in spite of overregulation, like the King Street Crawl, which Hutty described as “pure pandemonium”; or whether it’s the amateur record labels that give a voice to grassroots bands, like Johnny Hunter and Break Even Records or Coven, an all-female label; the artists of Sydney are making the best out of it.
While the interview continued, the band gave me example after example just off the top of their heads. A conversation between Ben and Hutty broke out about sets and friends who they had seen. As they laughed, joked and talked it became clear that despite being up on stage, the members of Johnny Hunter, were as much part of the crowd, supporting bands and live acts. Pulling out their phones to check Spotify, they listed some of Sydney’s most impactful bands, such as Georgia June, Sook, Murray Darling, Sunscreen, Triple One, Shady Nasty, Moody Beach, Sick Chicks, the Buoys, Mosey, Bodytype, Bland and Mac the Knife.
“Take this list and go and see every band,” said Hutty, “we wouldn’t tell you about them if they were shit.”
Johnny Hunter have ridden this wave of community-based, sometimes DIY musicianship and played gigs from Newcastle to Melbourne. This week, they release their second single ‘1995’ and recording their first EP. With a bit of momentum, the band is looking forward to the end of 2018.
