Darren Hanlon will cap off a busy 2025 with his 20th annual Christmas tour. The tour comes to Howler one week before Christmas.
Darren Hanlon, who describes his conversational style of folk as “camping music”, played his first Christmas shows in 2005. He wasn’t expecting the festive performances to become a tradition.
“It was just a one-off,” Hanlon says, speaking to Beat from Perth ahead of the first date of the tour. “I’d always been around bands that did Christmas shows, especially Weddings Parties Anything back when I first started playing music. They would do a number of nights in Melbourne and it became a legendary thing. And my band used to support them there when we were young whippersnappers.”
Darren Hanlon: 20 Years of Christmas
- Howler w/ Lily Morris & The O’Hanlons
- 18 December
- Tickets here
Check out our gig guide here.
Inspired by Mick Thomas’ group, Hanlon decided to do a couple of Christmas shows at the Mandarin Club in Sydney and Northcote Social Club in Melbourne. Back then, he was mainly performing with a full backing band, but he challenged himself to do these shows solo.
“It was more nerve-wracking for me to just get up without the band and do a set,” he says. “But it was looser and I liked that.”
The shows were a success, but even then, Hanlon didn’t imagine he’d be reprising the format the following year.
“I thought, ‘Well, that’s that,’” he says. “And then the next year rolled around and I had a few emails from people asking if it was going to happen again. And I don’t need too much encouragement.”
Two decades later, Hanlon’s Christmas tour has become one of the defining parts of his career. This year’s tour will visit nine cities across seven states and territories.
“I’m just known as the Christmas guy now in some circles,” Hanlon says. But he’s not complaining. “I enjoy having a career in eternal plateau. I’m just grateful that people keep showing up.”
Unsurprisingly, given the durability of the tour, Hanlon has built a loyal Christmas following, and he’s got to know some of his fans quite well.
“This year, by the time I came to announce it, half the tickets were already sold because people already know it’s going to happen,” he says. “After 20 years, sometimes it’s the kids of the original people that came. I’ve seen families grow up. There was a woman that almost gave birth at the Sydney show about 15 years ago in the front row, and now the kids are like 15.”
“It’s pretty surreal,” he adds, “because I don’t feel any different. But it’s like one of those flip books – every year I flip a page and it changes a little bit.”
Hanlon released his sixth album, Life Tax, in 2022, 20 years after his solo debut, Hello Stranger. While he’s remained a curious songwriter, he feels like much the same musician and performer he was two decades ago. However, these days, he puts more emphasis on giving the audience something high-quality and unique.
“I never thought I’d be doing it this long and I just want it to be good,” he says. “The moment I feel like I’m not hitting the mark, I probably will wrap it up. I stress way more about it being as good as the year before, and just want to keep people happy.”
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Even for a performer with as much experience as Hanlon, getting onstage and giving it his best requires considered effort.
“It’s such a head game,” he says. “You might be four or five shows into a tour and feeling really comfortable, and suddenly in the middle of a song a thought hits you of what’s happening, the strangeness of the situation. You’re standing on this thing, singing into this electronic thing, and there’s people, watching you, staring at you.”
Hanlon has a couple of new songs to perform on this year’s tour, and in Melbourne he’ll be joined onstage by a few top-secret guests.
After spending many years based in Melbourne, Hanlon now lives with his family back in his hometown of Gympie, Queensland. He’ll wrap up the tour with a show in Pomona, half an hour outside of Gympie, but he’s confident that the Melbourne show will be a special one.
“It feels like a homecoming,” he says. “Melbourne’s always been a great sing-along crowd and it’s had a little bit more of a rock and roll energy to it.”
Get tickets for Darren Hanlon’s Christmas show at Howler here.
