“It’s simple, I’ve always loved it,” says guitarist and lead vocalist Josh Teskey. “I feel like that kind of music is timeless. It’s not a new trend, it’s always been here. I feel like it’s at the core of a lot of music genres. There’s always been someone doing it.”
The band comes from a small town on the outskirts of Melbourne called Warrandyte, known for its beautiful scenery, and now the home of a much-loved soul ensemble that has been making waves, not only in Melbourne, but across the entire country, landing guest performance spots on Triple M and even receiving a shout out via Twitter from actor Chris Hemsworth. Josh says the reaction to their album Half Mile Harvest has been incredible. Through almost a decade of performing with no real direction, Josh claims the band’s time has now come, and they’re willing to show the entire world what they can do.
“It’s been a really long time,” Josh says. “Me and Sam have been playing together since we were only kids, but the format we have now with Brendan and Liam is just over ten years old. Slogging away for a long time, pretty steady, playing all the pubs around Melbourne and even out our way a lot near the Yarra River. We’ve never really stopped gigging, but I think this is the first time we’ve released an album that really represents what we’re doing live.
“We’re just really rapt, it’s been unbelievable. We never expected this much movement around the album. We’ve done a lot of different things since it got released in January. I think the thing about the last six months is now we can say that there’s a lot of things we can tick off our bucket list that are all music related.”
Half Mile Harvest is an ode to ‘60s soul music, and if you weren’t paying attention, you’d think Josh himself was Otis Redding, singing the blues with passion and a fiery soul to match. The album has also received national critical acclaim, with little promotion or gigging involved until their national tour.
“We recordedeverything with tapes, we did everything the old fashioned way on this record,” Josh says. “What we wanted to do was make it look like something and sound like something that was out of the Stax era. We did everything like they would have back in the ‘60s for that authentic soul vibe.
“It’s different from having a lot of options where you can just cut and paste on computer and put everything over the top if you want to. It’s a lot more tricky, we had to be a lot tighter as a band to achieve what we wanted. But we really loved that method of recording because not having a lot of options doesn’t let you get mixed up with all the extra things you can add in that may become overkill by the end of it. What we put down on this record is what we got, and I believe it gave us this really fresh sound that really kept it basic, and structured the song around the core.”
While taking advantage of the buzz that has followed the album, Josh says they are absolutely overwhelmed with the attention they’ve received post-release. The band has now sold out four shows in Melbourne, something that Josh says the band could never have even fathomed achieving only a year ago.
“We were talking about bucket lists before, and one of our things growing up was wanting to have a full house at The Corner,” he says. “We never even dreamed of being able to have a gig at The Corner. It’s way beyond any expectation.”
So what’s next for The Teskey Brothers? Josh says that while the band’s own soul is firmly set on maintaining their recent exposure in Australia, the entire world is the ultimate end goal.
“If you asked me this same thing last year I wouldn’t have known what to say,” Josh says. “But I think the main goal now is to keep touring Australia. Eventually an overseas tour would be ideal, especially in the States. The soul scene in America is massive. It’s unbeatable. We’d love to go there and see how we go.”
