Dirt River Radio
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Dirt River Radio

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“I’ve known Alex for just short of 20 years – we met as part of the Ringwood/Croydon scene in the mid ‘90s,” Brady recalls. “He jammed in a band [Couchgrinder] that I was in that we didn’t really stick with, and right about that time he joined Bugdust.

 

“I moved to London around the time. By the time I got back, Bugdust, with Alex fronting them, had gotten really big, recorded an album, he was drinking with Al Jorgenson, had fallen in love with a girl in El Paso and he got hooked on country. And you see, I had been raised on country music in a lot of ways as my dad was a rodeo cowboy, and we had a lot of Johnny Cash, plus I’d been listening to a lot of rockabilly as a kid.”

 

In 2005 and 2006, Raunjak was residing in Texas and Brady was living quietly in Melbourne’s east, working hard on country songs. Then, when Bugdust were back in Melbourne and headlining The Espy, Brady caught up with Raunjak and that’s where the seed of Dirt River Radio grew.

 

“Alex said to me that he’d been working on some country songs and he wanted me to put some of my twangy Gretch (guitar) on there,” Brady explains. It was around this time that Raunjak made the decision to leave Bugdust.

 

“I was a session muso initially, and then I took over a lot of the guitar parts as we booked some shows as a duo – our first show was at bar on Barkly Street as a duo and then it grew from there. And when we had more players and were looking like a band, we brainstormed the vibe that we wanted the band to be and I really liked that Creedence Clearwater era where they were essentially a rockabilly sound.”

 

From these early days as a duo, Dirt River Radio quickly became a full band that played many legendary shows around St Kilda and other haunts in Melbourne. One of the most famous series of performances was a Thursday night residency at the recently defunct Pure Pop, that consisted of three years of three-month residencies.

 

“All summer, three years in a row we would pack it,” Brady exclaims. “People would be smoking weed and drinking and singing along and just having a great time – that’s 80-100 people packed into space big enough for about 40.”

 

With this rich St. Kilda gigging history in mind, it’s only fitting that before Dirt River Radio head off to Europe, they are playing a farewell show at Prince Of Wales Public Bar this Saturday night.

 

“We can’t wait for the gig,” Brady enthuses. “We’re playing two sets, so will be debuting songs from our forthcoming third album Tea & Pornography and I reckon we’ll have all our mates down there so the sing-a-long to our most well-known song All My Friends should be huge.”

 

BY DENVER MAXX