Drunk Mums
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Drunk Mums

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The musical embodiment of a ‘zero fucks given’ attitude, their songs and general demeanor make you want to quit your day job and devote the rest of your days to the pursuit of just being a baller. I mean, they give fucks – but about their music, and Victoria Bitter, and their fans, and their mates, and the venues that support them.


Typo-ing their name as ‘Durnk Mums’ at least six times whilst writing this seemed to be a rather prophetic lead-in to a conversation with guitarist/vocalist Dean Whitby. But where this interviewer was bumbling and dorky, he was eloquent, polite and rather charming – the kind of bloke you’d feel comfortable taking home to your own drunk (or sober) mum. You could tell her that, aside from being a rock star, he’s also a business owner and record producer on the side.

I caught up with him en route to Spotlight. Apparently the band were planning on getting crafty. “We’re gonna get a sheet and spraypaint our names on it! That’s probably about the hardest task of the day.”

That’s not to say these guys don’t work hard. With three songwriters in the mix, they manage to merge a lot of different influences into one, quite distinctive style. “Adam (bass player) writes the more punky songs. He’s been in punk bands his whole life and he’s a bit of a bad arse. [Laughs]. He’s even got gold glitter on his fingernails at the moment, that’s pretty bad arse. And Jake (guitar/vocals) writes a lot of the more garagey, quick short banger ones. And I suppose I write the more country twangy ones.”

Furthermore, they go about it with some integrity. Perhaps you’ve heard about the iTunes debacle of late last year – the band was denied a feature on the iTunes home page after the cover for their self-titled debut was rejected because (in Whitby’s words) “they didn’t like the boobs”. He says, “In this case we really only had two options: bend over and let Apple put themselves inside of us, or just tell ‘em to go fuck themselves and be total legends… so we took option B.”

On the subject of integrity, perhaps it’s the Queensland in them that keeps them so down-to-earth, or the fact that they’ve only recently just moved into the more hip Northern suburbs of Melbourne, having spent their formative years amongst Footscray’s finest. Either way, a DIY mentality has been ingrained in this operation from the start. When quizzed about the emerging scene in the West, Whitby reflects: “We’re big supporters of The Reverence. We used to actually go there back in the day before it was The Reverence. Jake used to hold parties at this thing called Loose Change and we wanted to start getting more people over to the West ‘cause it was struggling a bit. We had some big-ish bands play there – we had Velociraptor one night and it sold out, which was real nice. He tried to do it every week and we were just trying our hardest to get as much shit going on there as possible. You know, we’d have house parties in Yarraville, just hang out by the pool and have five bands play.”

The band is currently working on a new 16 track album, produced and mixed by Whitby himself. “This record is more like dad rock. We started playing more open chords and keeping it basic.”

Drunk Mums do dad rock? “Yeah! New target demographic! 38-50 year old males who are bored of their day jobs and their kids.”

Recently, Cherry Bar’s legendary James Young has jumped on board as band manager – “Yep, he’s our new daddy. He’s crazy but he’s also really well-connected and motivated. We’re stoked!” – so you can expect to see even more good things in the near future from this bunch of audacious blokes. Whitby assures me that touring plans are well and truly in the works, and once they finish the next album they’re going to “tour the shit out of it”.

BY JESS SHULMAN