Back on the stage after an interrupted world tour, The Hoodoo Gurus kick off Oz music month at Max Watts with a bang. This show is the start of 1,000 gigs by local artists across NSW as part of the Great Southern Nights initiative. Tonight they have teamed up with local powerhouse The Buoys, to amp up the crowd in the second of two sold out shows.

Check out the full photo gallery, shot for AMNplify, here.

The Buoys

Visibly bubbling with excitement to be supporting the Hoodoo Gurus, these four women didn’t waste any time and started giving the room a solid smack of pop-punk energy.

Sporting a new guitarist for tonight’s show, there was no loss of that frenetic power as they played through their latest EP release, All This Talking Gets Us Nowhere, with its bouncy power pop, soaring leads and no nonsense vocals.

There was plenty of movement up on stage as well, with Courtney on bass, prowling around her quadrant and joining vocalist Zoe and Tess on drums in a head banging frenzy, wrapping up the set to the always killer tune Linda.

Check them out on Spotify and catch them live on their upcoming tour later this month.

Hoodoo Gurus

A bit of technical adjustment and the Hoodoo Gurus were ready to blow us out of the venue! A little intro banter from Dave Faulkner set the scene that tonight was going to be a little more personal, a little more relaxed, being a COVID safe seated gig and all, with a bit of whimsy and mixing up the set list.

Starting strong with (Lets all) Turn On, set the scene for the gig, still showing that there is plenty of energy left in the band that can pull off a cracking show.

New drummer Nik Rieth, slotted straight into the scene, never missing a trick or a beat, Rick Grossman prowled in his square like a caged tiger, Brad Shepherd smashed out the twanging riffs with the odd high kick and occasional guitar hero jump; while Dave Faulkner was steadily holding the ship together with obvious delight to be in front of a crowd (even if they were seated).

The set included plenty of older favourites from their impressive back catalogue, as well as a few newer tunes like this year’s release, Get Out of Dodge; but it was the tried and true older tunes that got the crowd excited.

Just when you thought it was all over, a killer encore of Bittersweet and What’s my Scene had a few people in the crowd trying to sneak a little dance in, quickly relegated to the chair dance by the COVID marshal. They finished up with a wild version of Like Wow – Wipeout that had the whole room singing before stepping off stage.

But wait…..there’s more – as the crowd were starting to leave, the band snuck back out for a second encore and pumped out a version of Leilani that absolutely went OFF; and had people charging back into the room, lapping it up.