The Hangout

The Hangout are a band a long time in the making.

In 2004, Erinn and Matt met each other while studying at the Queensland University of Technology. They quickly became friends and Erinn was soon going to see Matt play the dirtiest venues of Brisbane in his band, "Repeat Offender”.

Erinn soon formed her own band, "Nina May", with some other university friends and both bands started playing shows and touring Australia together. Without wasting much time, Matt started managing Nina May (poorly) and Erinn Repeat Offender (poorly) and the two saw even more of each other and began writing songs together on a regular basis.

As the success of both Repeat Offender and Nina May continued to grow, a friend of the bands, Damon, started to come on tour and work as a guitar tech. Around the same time, Matt was introduced to a skinny, shy, sound engineer named Anthony (Antho to his friends) who also happened to play drums.

After some line-up changes, both Matt and Damon ended up joining Nina May as they continued to tour the country. As Matt and Damon were both bass players, they had a couple of aggressive rounds of rock paper scissors (row sham bow) and it was decided Matt would move to guitar and Damon would stick to bass.

Like all the rock Gods of Brisbane do, Matt started working as a warehouse storeman at JB Hi-Fi and he met a fucking rad dude by the name of James (mooootherfucccckin) See. James was in a band called The Gallant, and was also a local producer/DJ, as well as an all round nice guy. Matt and James quickly developed a serious “Bro-mance” and Matt moved in to a spare room at James’s house.

THAT house. 5 Jackson st, Eagle Junction. Directly on a 6 way train line intersection. So close to the tracks that the doors would fall off the cupboards every time a train came by. Which was every 5 minutes, minimum, from 5am until midnight, 7 days a week. Noise complaints were not an issue in this house. The parties were ridiculous. Soon, Erinn, Matt, Damon, Antho and James (and about 20 other regulars (you know who you are) were spending most nights sitting in the lounge room, playing tony hawks and drinking red wine until 4am, then getting up and going to their respective workplaces four hours later.
It was a bonding experience for all involved.

The good times couldn't last forever and the house was a shit-hole. People moved house and Repeat Offender, Nina May and the Gallant kept touring. Antho kept coming on tour to make sure everyone sounded good.

Eventually all 3 bands broke up:
• James kept producing music.
• Erinn and Matt started a band called Streamer Bendy and went to Sweden to write pop songs.
• Damon started playing bass in a band called Bright Lights (they're on iTunes and they're pretty great).
• Antho toured o/s as a sound engineer for The Veronicas.
• Matt left Streamer Bendy to play in a Queen Tribute band. Then an ABBA tribute band.
• Erinn joined the ABBA Tribute band as ‘Agnetha’ and they lived in South Africa together for the better part of a year.

One day, Matt got a call from The Veronicas and moved to LA to play bass and write songs with them. He convinced them that Antho should play drums in their band too, so along he came. Erinn came too to write tunes. So Erinn, Matt & Antho lived on a floor in West Hollywood for a few months.

Streamer Bendy kept writing songs and somehow managed to wrangle a super massive record deal. No one is really sure exactly how that happened or how it would ultimately hold things up.

So Matt and Erinn went back to Sweden, while Antho continued to play drums in the Veronicas. This time though, they took Damon and James with them and recorded an album. It was a nice record. They all liked it. But somehow, between managers, record label issues and assorted other music industry cautionary tales, this record was never released. It sat in their itunes and sat in their itunes, gathering all sorts of virtual ‘dust’. During this time Antho decided to join the band anyway, because why the fuck not, these were his favorite people to hang out with…

Streamer Bendy managed to get some songs on the radio. They got played on the radio a lot, for a little while.

Not a single bit of difference was made.

The band kept writing songs and kept hanging out, because after all, the only thing they really did well was hang out and make music. In their world, as long as they had each other, they had everything they needed.

After a couple of years of crushing defeats and some very small wins, they were all ready to give it up.

Then they sat down and listened to all the demos they'd written since they recorded their album. They started sifting through over 95 songs they had plugged out in the last year alone, and they didn't really think they sounded like the band they had been trying to make work. They sounded different. They sounded like they had just been hanging out, having fun, and doing what they believed in –