Straight Skirt
Don’t you just love it when an old fave returns? Straight Skirt formed in 2008, and played a bunch of music venues around Darwin, including the OG Happy Yess in Bennett Street. In fact, two of the band members were instrumental (see what we did there?) in getting the grassroots live music venue off the ground.
By Tierney White
THIS MONTH, THEY return to another fave Darwin haunt – Darwin Railway Club – to unleash their brand-spankin’ new debut LP, Straight Skirt.
Original band members include Gretchen Ennis, Zeb Olsen, Rod Balaam and Bill Searle, but due to availability at the time of recording the album, Finn Williams stepped in for Searle and continues to do so at The Rails this month. Although, we have it on good authority you can expect a sweet cameo from Searle.
Armed with arguably some of the best chemistry you could find in a band, Ennis says Straight Skirt was forged from friendship.
“Zeb and I became friends in Darwin, and we kind of both really liked each other’s bands, so we went, ‘let’s make a band’, and so that was the inspiration, our relationship really. As we became friends, we became a band,” she says.
“We got closer through writing and playing, and we both had kids of similar age – her daughter Asher and my son Lindsay … So yeah, it formed from our friendship and our desire just to make more music.”
Straight Skirt was recorded in the summer of 2019 and 2020, in an all-analogue studio in an old barn in Campbells Creek in Victoria, just before the pandemic threw a spanner in the works. After playing a few gigs in Melbourne, and officially launching the album in Castlemaine in January this year, Darwin crowds are in for a treat for the band’s homecoming launch.
“It’s a really fresh take on some older songs, but there’s just the excitement of us being together,” Ennis says.
“Bands are like relationships, and this is a long-term one that’s kind of been on-and-off over the years – when we’re together, we just love being together because we don’t get that chance a lot. There’s that excitement of just being in love with one another, it’s good chemistry, and because we’ve played together for so long, there’s a really nice familiarity.”
Supported by local pals Scrub Fowl – featuring Ennis’ son Lindsay – and Tang, this homecoming launch featuring some absolute legends of the Darwin music scene at an iconic venue is set to be a hoot and a half.
Straight Skirt LP Launch
WHEN SAT 13 JUL | 7.30PM
AT DARWIN RAILWAY CLUB
COST $15
INFO facebook.com/darwinrailwayclub
