This week at The Stag & Hunter Hotel, Newcastle – Friday, February 17th; The Rumjacks with Spin Gents & Wiliam John Jr | 8:00 pm $15 online @ www.bigtix.com.au – The Rumjacks came bursting from the bluestone streets of Sydney town in 2008, when frontman Frankie McLaughlin met bassist Johnny McKelvey, the band hasn’t stopped running since. A couple of EPs – Hung, Drawn & Portered and Sound As A Pound in 2009 – cemented early promise, debut LP Gangs Of New Holland the following year, building upon that. The Rumjacks had something, rough and raw, visceral and real.
“It’s like growing up with a tear in your eye and a storm brewing in your heart,” muses McLaughlin on the musical heritage of the group. “We were raised on the Scottish and Irish music in our parents’ record collection, before colliding head-on with punk/rock as we grew older and thought we knew everything.” These musical meldings held the band in good stead and they hit the road, barely stopping, a force to be reckoned with. It takes its toll though, and so they called a hiatus through 2013, before reemerging with the shudderingly powerful Sober & Godless, their second full-length release, in 2015.
Saturday, February 18th; Gwyn Ashton | 8pm Free Entry – Gwyn Ashton has been hauling his beaten up National steel guitar and ’63 Strat around the world for nearly 20 years, opening for top-billing artists such as Van Morrison, Johnny Winter, Canned Heat, Robin Trower and a multitude of other fine musicians, as well as headlining his own concerts from the UK to eastern Europe. He has been captured on film by ZDF TV (Germany), Czech National TV, Bulgarian TV on the Slavi Show and many other European networks at festivals, concerts and television shows across the continent.
He has appeared at festivals in Brazil, Mexico and his native homeland of Australia. He has opened for Status Quo at 15 UK major concert venues including London’s prestigious Wembley Arena. He has released six albums and one EP, came third place behind Jeff Beck and Gary Moore in a French guitar magazine poll had two albums simultaneously in the Amazon Top 100 and records and tours with some of the world’s leading rock musicians.
COMING UP @ THE STAG
*WEDNESDAY, FEBUARY 22ND – MORELAND & ARBUCKLE – TICKETS @ BIGTIX