T BONES

What became clear was that the original T-Bones - songwriting collaborators and life-long mates Andrew "Pip" Pupillo and Charlie Wilde - grew up writing songs, not covering them. Sure, they tipped their hats to the greats, but they didn’t bother copying them. Before Barnsey tried and failed, the Boners were Australia’s Springsteen or Cougar/Mellencamp celebrating provincial ordinariness, finding poetry in the dusty blue-collar existence of 45-degree heatwaves, shot-up road signs and speed-baked truck stops, traversing the contradictory lure and alienation of cities, marveling at the eternal mystery of women, and despairing at the violence in men.

Before ABC-TV discovered the slide guitar as the motif for stories about the bush, the T-Bones had already defined an aural image of drought, shimmering horizons and cooked engine blocks. Before John Fogarty sang about playing ''Centrefield'', the T-Bones were singing about footy – the frozen mud trudge to the ‘G in July, the Melbourne Bitter taste of defeat, the inevitable fight in the pub, the woeful and beloved Tigers getting smashed week after week. (In fact, footy historians might like to track the parallel fortunes of the T-Bones and the Richmond Football Club. The Tigers since have won three flags since the T-Bones began playing to the cocksure roustabouts and backpacker grape-pickers at the Robinvale Hotel back in the late 1980s.)

Over time, the T-Bones created their own unique anthems that would become cult classics in their adopted town of Melbourne, and which helped spawn a new breed of uniquely Melbourne roots music that married rockabilly, country and blues, and embraced the themes of Australiana that were once reviled as kitsch and decidedly uncool. Sure, not having a trusty repertoire of standards made some gigs pretty tough. (The band was once chased out of Tamworth because the crowd didn’t get these long-haired city boys playing what is ironically only now being celebrated at the so-called Country Music Festival – original, unapologetic, distinctly Australian music.) 

Members

Andrew ‘Pip’ Pupillo (vocals/guitar) Charlie Wilde (guitar) James Stewart (guitar)

Alics Gate-Eastly (bass) Miles McNicol (drums) Helen Cattanach (bass), Rob Lastdrager (drums),
Garret Costigan (pedal steel)