Grumpy Neighbour

Here's video from our performance at the Paragon Theatre in Queenstown, Tasmania.

We're back after a fantastic tour and a bit of a holiday. Here's a little sample from our tour of Tasmania. More soon...

Mainlanders, our fourth album, is in the Inconvenience Store and ready for listening and downloading. You'll find the full album at Bandcamp, but for all our supporters on this platform we've uploaded another selection of songs for listening at your leisure. They include a live version of an old favourite we took down when we revamped the page a couple of months back, River of Mist.
We'll be celebrating the release of the album, and the start of our 20th Anniversary itinerary with a one off show this Friday evening at Odessa, at Leavers Hotel in Creswick, Victoria.
For those of you that live outside Australia, this album is a good representation of what we can deliver as a live band. Alas, this band will not happen again. It is for this reason that we've dedicated this album and its release to Rex Watts, who passed on in 2019. He is fondly remembered and sorely missed.
The band supporting on this recording is comprised of Neil Hodgson (bass), Bernie Dodd (drums) and Rex Watts (mandolin, dobro, electric guitar) and was recorded in various rooms and stages during 2015.

Mainlanders, our fourth album, is in the Inconvenience Store and ready for listening and downloading. You'll find the full album at Bandcamp, but for all our supporters on this platform we've uploaded another selection of songs for listening at your leisure. They include a live version of an old favourite we took down when we revamped the page a couple of months back, River of Mist.
We'll be celebrating the release of the album, and the start of our 20th Anniversary itinerary with a one off show this Friday evening at Odessa, at Leavers Hotel in Creswick, Victoria.
For those of you that live outside Australia, this album represents what we deliver as a live band.

So, who is Grumpy Neighbour? And a fair question if you’ve just landed here and you’re not familiar with the name or music. There seems to be a few of you dropping by these days.
Grumpy Neighbour, the act has, at various stages, been a band, a duo, a trio, an ensemble, but perhaps more than anything else, Grumpy Neighbour is a mindset. The duo at the core of the band were friends for decades before the advent of their musical collaboration. Grumpy Neighbour is, in that sense, the manifestation of a shared artistic perspective, but there are connections in the mix that go beyond the music and art. These are founded in the bedrock of the island state we consider home. Tasmania.
We have been told a number of times, usually after our live shows, that our music is ‘filmic’, our songs make little movies in people’s heads. To be honest, if we’ve got our grumpy properly on, that’s exactly what’s meant to happen. Our songs, in film speak, are meant provide a script outline, using words and melody to create a plot perspective, and then the listener’s imagination can take over, cast the roles, direct the action, and make the movie in real time, soundtrack and all.
While we acknowledge that a fair proportion of general listeners aren’t overly concerned with lyrics, we are. The quality of the writing is as important to us, as that of the musical composition. If our songs are to achieve what we want them to, there has to be a sense of belonging between the two. Even if the story is not so apparent, as in an oblique aside turned into a song, the lyric still has to feel like an irreducible part of the whole, as a bare minimum standard. And words are so... flexible, playful, meaningful, comical, lateral, surreal, contradictory even, the opportunities are endless.
Lyrics are also a great opportunity to deploy that essential tool of musical story-telling, the hook.
Then there are the times, most often on tour, when it feels like all the planets are aligned, all the wu that ever was is connected up, and the feeling that the audience and act are not only on the same page, but reading the exact same passage. These performances are usually marked by a feeling that we’ve all ended up leaving a different place than when we arrived. The feeling of having been on some sort of journey, arriving inexplicably drained and a little fuzzy, as the stage lights go down and house lights go up.
Like the Van Diemonians we are, though, we know a good opportunity when we see one. After such encounters, some of you may find your heart missing next time you check. We’ll give it back, promise.
All the best for 2024

With Lilydale based business and local venue Valentino Safe Co. getting on board the grumpy train, we have a full compliment of shows over the middle two weekends next February.
We will also be celebrating the launch of our new release, 'mainlanders' and our 20th Anniversary as a performing act at Odessa in Creswick in January. This is one for all of our Victorian friends.
The full details of our tour, new release, and Victorian show will be available in our next newsletter, out soon.
If you would like to know more, be sure to subscribe and you'll receive our newsletter and updates.

This has been a common inquiry, with many of you complaining, and rightly so, that you can't find a link to buy our product. We are available on a number of platforms, including iTunes, as posted by a record company we granted a licence to.
However, the company proved to be a tad unreliable and, as a consequence you cannot buy all the songs off each album, or the complete bundle of each album.
To remedy the situation we are directing you to our official download page at Bandcamp. It is the only place on the internet (that we can find) where the entire albums can be downloaded, with all requisite artwork for the covers as they would appear on the CD version. And we run the page, so the revenue goes directly to the band, as opposed to trickling down through the food chain.
We are really just getting our heads around the whole digital medium thing, but it is quite likely that future releases will come with a greater variety of bonus items. For instance, there will be a bonus track included in our upcoming release (Mainlanders) and possibly a poster, if relevant.
In the meantime, for those who wanted to know where our songs can be downloaded, look no further.
Here 'tis:

Glendi and I, that is, Grumpy Neighbour, would like to offer our sincere thanks for sticking around.
Life has a way, and not long after we started this page, it overtook us and the band had to take a number of breaks. Illness, death and grieving, and then the virus, have brought us to a point where we are, only now, reconvening where we left off.
Needless to say, the world has changed, as have we. While Grumpy Neighbour is no longer the main squeeze, as it were, we were friends for 25 years before we started the band, and this music is just another aspect of that ongoing friendship. It may not be our main priority these days, but it's not over 'til the fat lady sings.
In saying this, we have put a band together to tour our home state of Tasmania (the island at the bottom of Australia) for our 20th Anniversary, and we will be releasing an EP leading up to the tour in February. It will feature three unreleased tracks among the six on offer, and were culled from live recordings between 2013 - 2015.
We just thought you might like to know.

Some of you may have noticed we updated the songs on our profile. We've taken popular tracks from our debut and follow up albums, and added River of Mist's sister song, Wing Upon My Wheels.
"Why I ran Away From the Circus" is one of our most popular live tracks and usually requested, if not played.
"All Good Things" is rarely played live, but is often cited as a favourite by fans of the second album.
"Wings Upon My Wheels" describes the same journey as undertaken in River of Mist. We both came up with songs about our epic drive up the east coast of Oz. Playing, singing, laughing all the way up and back.

Lastly, to all those who left messages of interest and support over the intervening years, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It is now near impossible to answer them all individually, but please know that you all have our heartfelt thanks.
Ray

We will be releasing a new album in January, leading up to our first tour in a decade. Entitled "Mainlanders", it will feature some live versions of released material and a number of unreleased songs. It will be released as a dedication to Rex Watts, our guitarist and local Castlemaine legend, who passed away peacefully in 2019.
The album will be available from Bandcamp from 15th of January. Link in photo.

Thanks for sticking around.

Glendi and I, that is, Grumpy Neighbour, would like to offer our sincere thanks for sticking around.
Life has a way, and not long after we started this page, it overtook us and the band had to take a number of breaks. Illness, death and grieving, and then the virus, have brought us to a point where we are, only now, reconvening where we left off.
Needless to say, the world has changed, as have we. While Grumpy Neighbour is no longer the main squeeze, as it were, we were friends for 25 years before we started the band, and this music is just another aspect of that ongoing friendship. It may not be our main priority these days, but it's not over 'til the fat lady sings.
In saying this, we have put a band together to tour our home state of Tasmania (the island at the bottom of Australia) for our 20th Anniversary, and we will be releasing an EP leading up to the tour in February. It will feature three unreleased tracks among the six on offer, and were culled from live recordings between 2013 - 2015.
We just thought you might like to know.

Some of you may have noticed we updated the songs on our profile. We've taken popular tracks from our debut and follow up albums, and added River of Mist's sister song, Wing Upon My Wheels.
"Why I ran Away From the Circus" is one of our most popular live tracks and usually requested, if not played.
"All Good Things" is rarely played live, but is often cited as a favourite by fans of the second album.
"Wings Upon My Wheels" describes the same journey as undertaken in River of Mist. We both came up with songs about our epic drive up the east coast of Oz. Playing, singing, laughing all the way up and back.

Lastly, to all those who left messages of interest and support over the intervening years, we thank you from the bottom of our hearts. It is now near impossible to answer them all individually, but please know that you all have our heartfelt thanks.
Ray

We've just completed a four week residency at the Bridge Hotel in Castlemaine, and while hopes of getting a good video from the series of shows came to nought, it was nevertheless a well attended and boisterous series of shows. Yesterday we were informed that we will be on the bill for the Bendigo Blues and Roots Festival, a big regional event in the Victorian Goldfields, so we'll be focussed on making an impact at that event in November.
The video I've added is from the Live on Lydiard series and is one of our less serious songs and celebrates our origins in Australia's most southern state. There are also a few photos from our time at the Bridge.