Joannou and Dunn put their musical minds together

Joannou as the bassist of the era’s most successful band, Newcastle’s Silverchair, and Dunn as a Sony A&R man credited with discovering Something For Kate and Jebediah. Together the pair are now trying to encourage the next crop of talent with the launch of The Edwards’ free Good Oil sessions on Thursday nights.

The Good Oil began on Thursday with Sydney’s electro band Yon Yonson and aims to diversify Newcastle’s live music scene and introduce listeners to emerging sounds.

“It’s just about reinforcing that with The Edwards, there’s so many layers,” co-owner Joannou says. “There’s the whole food and beverage side, but there’s also a lot of effort put into these creative music, art and cultural aspects.

“We kept talking about this idea and sat down at the start of the year and decided what we wanted to rip into and this was definitely one we’re both passionate about.”

Dunn, who is the manager of The Edwards’ record shop, is curating the music for The Good Oil. He certainly boasts an ear for identifying cutting-edge sounds.

After growing up record obsessed in Kotara and serving in the air force, Dunn broke into the music industry as a roadie before becoming a partner in Sydney’s fabled Waterfront Records, which signed acts like Tumbleweed and Ratcat and released Nirvana’s debut record Bleach in Australia.

Dunn later became Sony’s Melbourne A&R man around the same time Silverchair signed with the multinational’s subsidiary Murmur. At Sony, Dunn uncovered Something For Kate and Jebediah, who would become two of the most successful bands of the era, and developed a reputation for having an ear for the industry.

“Because I grew up in Newcastle at Kotara and it was the classic middle-class white society, when it came to why a band would be economically viable to normal people, rather than inner-city crowds, I was able to understand that.”

Deciding if a band has the ability to develop widespread appeal is no exact science.

“I used to say I could pick a band in quarter of an hour,” he says. “I’d start with the drummer, go to the bass player, look at the singer and listen to the songs. It’s about a lot of things after you make your first decisions, but someone who has that appeal an audience will react to them and you can see if they have that presence.”

Dunn would eventually become Something For Kate’s manager, but quit shortly after they released their debut album Elsewhere For 8 Minutes in 1997 due to frustrations over leader Paul Dempsey’s hesitancy to tour away from his girlfriend Stephanie Ashworth. Ashworth would later join the band and marry Dempsey.

“Right on the first album coming out he [Dempsey] buckled against everything,” Dunn says. “He didn’t want to do it anymore, he wanted to stay in Melbourne with Stephanie. So I was like ‘not again’.”

Dunn keeps an ear in Newcastle’s music scene and has been impressed with Thursday night’s support act Jingle, aka electro-pop artist Josh Ingle. Dunn even passed on Jingle’s music to EMI Australia managing director John O’Donnell. 

“When I played his stuff it blew me away,” Dunn says. “He’s literally by himself. He sits in his room and does his electronic stuff, but he has an ear for pop and he doesn’t just play on that either.

“He does soundscape stuff as well. He has more than being that one pop-song writer, he’s got everything.”