My Friend Chloe have been making some serious waves around Brisbane since their formation in early 2023, which is especially impressive considering that, until very recently, they hadn’t even released their debut single. I reckon they’re well on their way to becoming the next big thing in our scene if they’re not there already!
Last week was a preview of what’s to come with their first ever headline show for the Sunny Times in the Sunshine State single launch, happening at the wild West End punk stronghold of The Bearded Lady. Friends, family and fans were doubly rewarded as they got to witness both the support acts pop their first gig cherry, with the powerhouse of Kings Currency and the frantic furore of FREE ENTRY (the band). Before they took to the stage, we managed to catch up with My Friend Chloe and ask them five quickfire questions!
Members
James Gantry: Guitar/Vocals (Interviewed)
Alice Headlam: Bass/Vocals
Rob Heyman: Keys
Tom Urdanoff: Guitar
Tyler Schilling: Drums (Interviewed)
1. Do you have to be called Chloe to be friends with this band? That seems a bit limiting. Because I see a band room full of people behind us, possibly not named Chloe! They kind of love your band, and you love them back even if they are not called Chloe. Is this false advertising? Or do we need to change our names, because the person on the door did not ask if my name was Chloe, and they just let me right in!
James: To be fair how many does The Bearded Lady hold? One hundred and twenty?
Tyler: Something like that yeah…
James: I think there is at least… eighty Chloes in there.
Tyler: Give or take…
James: So if your name’s not Chloe, you are still welcome to be part of the crew but like-
OB: Can we still be friends?
James: Yeah, we can still be friends, but it is definitely a cult of Chloes.
Tyler: It’s just by its nature that we attract Chloes inquiring and getting into our tunes, but it’s an open invitation to all Chloes and non-Chloes also. But it helps to be a Chloe.
James: It does lend itself to a mystery that’s for sure.
Tyler: And that mystery is the beauty of it. We all have like a friend of a friend, that guy orthat girl, a mystery.
OB: Take the Tom Waits approach here My Friend Chloe and never give the same reply to this question ever, keep it shrouded in mystery forevermore.
James: I love that! Agreed.
2. What other close friends apart from Chloe (other local Brissie bands) would you tour with? And who are your dream touring partners?
Tyler: We’ve got a lot of love from the Brissie music community like Radium Dolls, the 4ZZZ community obviously…
James: Full Flower Moon Band, Bean Magazine, Tomorrow’s Forecast, we feel really grateful that we are friends with such a pool of talented musicians and bands. Even in the current cost of living crisis, with our backs to the wall situation we are in now, the scene is just thriving in a way. Maybe even because of that as well. Brissie is small, we get a lot of crossover between genres that you may not expect to have in larger cities.
Tyler: Absolutely, I think there is a lot of crossover, I see that in other bands that I’m a part of that are quite different in styles.
James: Shout outs Sixth of the Sun!
Tyler: Thank you! Yeah, a lot of friends and fans from different musical landscapes within Brisbane, and we are all along for the ride together.
James: I saw on our Spotify that it shows bands that the fans listen to from totally different genres. I was like “That doesn’t make any sense from a rational straight punk music perspective”, but then you look at some of the artists they are listening to such as Big Wett and she is definitely punk as well.
Tyler: Oh, She’s awesome. Even if she doesn’t class her music as punk, she has a full punk-esque attitude.
James: There’s a definite crossover and punk is more of an attitude as opposed to a sound in most ways. Those are the sounds and attitudes of people that connect with us, and we connect with them.
Even though My Friend Chloe didn’t directly state their dream touring partner, they show some heavy admiration for Big Wett, so let’s lock that in, as well as…
3. Hands up any other band in Brisbane that has supported Private Function not once but twice! What does that do for punk street-cred? That should be like just flopping it out, one big foot long of PF love right there, right?
James and Tyler: Ha-ha-ha! Still on top baby! Still on top!
Tyler: Absolutely! We were very gracious to have an opportunity to support Private Function a second time.
OB: And they chose you directly the second time.
Tyler: Yeah! From Kirby’s 21st birthday house party with him paying for Private Function to close out the night. Shout outs Kirby!
Tyler: Private Function saw us and loved our performance on that night, we got chatting to them and the next thing we were supporting them at The Zoo! Yeah…
James: You know, to support Private Function twice without us even having a song out, it was very surreal to us. And even them giving us the opportunity to play The Zoo! That was something we had always dreamed about, for a long time.
Tyler: That was our first time playing at The Zoo also.
James: It’s something we will always remember and be grateful for. We love Private Function; they are just going from strength to strength and we are honoured to be their friends. Playing with them twice, and hopefully not the last, we are pretty stoked.
Tyler: We are very happy to be mentioned in the same sentence as Private Function!
4. Referencing the Parquet Courts, would you rather be Stoned and Starving anywhere else in Australia or Stoned in Brisbane?… “Smoking Bongs in New Farm park ‘til it got dark” could be very different with daylight savings anywhere else? Is it true the seccies at Ric’s Backyard are giving you side eyes and double pat down searches now?
Tyler: That actually comes from life experience, I used to be a bit of a prankster at Ric’s…. Mostly falling asleep. Just harmless wild times. I have tempered now in my 30’s.
James: No, the bar staff always looked after me, good crew there. To answer your question, is there anywhere else we’d rather be stoned and starving? Absolutely not! Meanjin is obviously where it’s at 24/7, 365…
Tyler: 100%!
James: Does anywhere else really matter? Probably not in the grand scheme of things.
Tyler: Indeed!
OB: Ah, that response leads me perfectly into the next question.
5. Sunny Times in the Sunshine State. Let’s imagine you get to set up a new festival, anywhere in QLD, without any restraints: no money, engineering, state prohibiting factors, the laws of physics, nothing is off limits. You can pick any iconic area in QLD to run a My Friend Chloe festival. Where do you do it? Bonus question, who is on the line-up?
James: Phwoah! That is a good question, you know we could easily reinvent the wheel. But there have been so many amazing local festivals that have already done what I consider to be the ultimate Arcadia. Jungle Love is one, they’re sort of rebuilding after a tough time in the financial climate. I’ve had some of the best times of my life at Boonah out west, on the Mogra Dam there, and more recently we’ve done it like on the Sunny Coast Hinterlands at Imbil. That was like as QLD as it gets, fucking beautiful. So you know, that would be my answer.
Tyler: I feel there are some really lovely festivals underway for local and emerging artists in smaller communities and I feel like some great local nights like Psych Night at the end of September and a lot of events being organised in The Valley, there are lots of events to look forward to.
James: It makes you proud, doesn’t it?
Tyler: Yeah, despite venue closures. I feel like it’s in the spirit of DIY people that are still making things happen, and getting events off the ground.
OB: And who is the ultimate band to join you?
James: Dan from Heavy and Weird in his beautiful music review he did of us recently, compared our sound very flatteringly to IDLES and Fontaines D.C.
Tyler: Who are definitely bands that we love.
Ob: Nice!
James: These are big scale here, but if it’s pie in the sky dreams kind of stuff, I feel that we share ethos, and they sound like fucking legends and we’d have a great time.
Tyler: Absolutely, I also have to rep DIIV as well. Their album from this year is amazing, and we all really love.
James: Shout out Mannequin Pussy as well. Dude they are fucking amazing, that’s another band we’re inspired by, so they are on the list.
OB: That’s it. Thank you so much My Friend Chloe! We look forward to more songs to come, and are so pleased to see the throng of Chloes getting heaps of shows all around SE QLD!
Thanks heaps to Jorge Tichbon (@swellbows) from Fast Johnny and the Slow Burners for the photos in this article!
You can listen to Sunny Times in the Sunshine State below:
