Newcastle music guru Greg Bryce: how to stay relevant

After all, the first single he released, in 1979 with his band Meccalissa, was titled “Darby Street Blues”.

But that’s not why he has chosen Goldbergs for lunch. He knows this place has good vegetarian meals on the menu. Then, to take us further away from the rock and roll stereotype, Bryce orders an apple juice. He doesn’t drink alcohol.

“But I’m really happy for you to have a glass of wine,” he says with a cheeky glint in those clear eyes of his.

Yet Greg Bryce looks like a rock star, a very relaxed and healthy one, with his slightly shaggy brown hair and toned body. He looks nowhere near his 60 years, and the only legacy of a long career standing in front of big amplifiers is a little deafness. That, and a huge reputation in this town as a performer and songwriter. And, for a time, he was considered a local rock star. But not by Bryce himself. 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like a rock star, to be honest,” he muses over a vegetable burger. “That might have held me back a little bit too.”

On his website, Greg Bryce describes himself in a down-to-earth way: “Guitarist, Singer/Songwriter.” For Bryce, that was the order in which he engaged with making music. 

As a kid, Bryce moved around frequently, as his bank worker father was promoted.

“It set me up for being a musician, with the gypsy lifestyle,” he says. “I could live anywhere, resettle myself somewhere.”

A constant companion from the age of eight was music. That’s when he began piano lessons, after his dance-hall pianist grandmother – “she could play anything; she was amazing” – recognised that young Greg had musical talent.   

He studied classical piano, reaching fourth grade, before telling his mum he didn’t want to do that anymore, because he felt it was too restrictive. She suggested the 12-year-old try guitar: “So I’ve got my Mum to thank for that.”   

The guitar strumming reverberated with more possibilities when Bryce was about 15. He was at a party when he heard Deep Purple’s albums “Machine Head” and “Made in Japan”. The British band’s heavy metal shook the walls and a teenager’s soul. 

“I was dancing to it at this party,” recalls Bryce. “I had that feeling of ‘I really want to do this, there’s something magical about playing in a band and playing guitar’.

“And that stood out for me. ‘I want to do this!’, and that’s what I set about doing.”

He hadn’t been long in Newcastle, but Bryce made mates through music, playing with guitarist Mark Middleton and drummer Darrell Mepham. The core of the band Meccalissa was formed.

“I think Meccalissa was a kind of a hippy name I made up at school,” Bryce explains. “I think it was an old school exercise book with that name written in it, and a picture of a guy standing there with a guitar and a big amp stack. Instead of doing maths, I was probably doodling. I was working out what the name of the band was going to be.” 

“Mark and I both played guitar, I didn’t want to play bass, so Mark took up the bass. We just started jamming in the garage, which is what you did. We did our favourite songs - Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Slade, rock and roll stuff. We all loved rock and roll. It suited this town.

“At first, we had to go out to places like the Stroud School of Arts; we couldn’t get work here. That was all taken by the professional bands like Maya, Armageddon, Crazy Otto. They were all older than us, and we were just kids.”

When he finished school, and to make ends meet, Bryce was also playing in a country-rock band called Earthwood and working as a storeman. The gigs started to come Mecalissa’s way, including playing at the Star Hotel, and the band built a following with its predominantly blues rock sound. Having found his voice, Bryce began writing songs. The first he wrote for Meccalissa was titled “Country Boy”.

“I don’t even remember how it goes anymore, but a few people still come up to me and ask, ‘can you play that song?’.”

Bryce moulded some of his impressions of Newcastle into “Darby Street Blues”. In turn, the song was pressed onto vinyl and into local ears. The single reached the Top 20 on the 2NX radio chart. The song on the other side of the single wore the confronting title of “Kill The Warden”. Bryce emphasises he was not an angry young man; rather, the song was a reflection of the music of the times, particularly the sledgehammer effect of punk rock on popular culture.

“I stopped playing it for a while, because it’s a bit full-on,” says Bryce. While he revisited “Kill The Warden” because audiences wanted to hear it, there are a couple of early songs Bryce won’t play because of his discomfort with the lyrics.

“When we wrote them, it was all in good fun, but as you grow up and mature, you look back at your life and you think about what you’re singing about.”

“Kill The Warden”, however, has taken on a life of its own. A popular Canadian punk band recently came across a copy of the song in a rare records store and has recorded it. 

With the arrival of the 1980s, Meccalissa decided it was time for a new name: DV8.

Playing catchy and aggressive guitar rock, DV8 became the BHP of Newcastle music: it was the biggest thing in town. The three-piece outfit released hit singles and albums, and the band’s live shows attracted crowds of up to 2000. 

“We were just like any other touring Australian band,” Bryce says. “But mostly in Newcastle. We hadn’t gone out that far.”

Out front, closest to the roar of the crowds, was Greg Bryce.   

“I wasn’t a natural extrovert; I was more into writing songs and expressing them somehow,” he recalls. “It’s not until later years that I felt totally comfortable on stage, and that’s part of getting to know myself better and being totally comfortable with myself.”

The young man in the spotlight had started to realise he didn’t know himself. 

“I got to a point where I had all the things I’d dreamed of having when I was writing in my school book the name Meccalissa, and dreaming about playing rock and roll,” he says. “I had achieved, on a local level, radio airplay, fame and fortune, there were lots of pretty girls, I had had a couple of relationships that I thought were important, but I realised I wasn’t really happy. That there was something else I had to dig for.”

In exploring that most elemental of questions, “Who am I?”, Bryce knew alcohol and other drugs didn’t provide answers for him. He read philosophy books. He surfed. Then he attended a meditation night in Sydney.

“It was an epiphany for me, because it touched that part of myself that was calm, pure, full of ecstasy,” he recalls. “Just knowing that I was home inside myself and nothing could touch me. And it stayed with me for hours and hours afterwards. I was feeling euphoric. I thought, ‘Wow, there’s something to this’.

“I’m an all-or-nothing person. Instead of playing on in the band and doing this on the side, I said, ‘Hang on’... It’s like when rock and roll first grabs hold of you, it takes you on this whole ride, and you want to go with it, and find out everything about it and go and do it. Because it’s exciting! And this was another one of those.”

In 1987, Bryce travelled to India and immersed himself in yoga and meditation for three and a half months. He returned to DV8 and the stage “to check in with myself to see if I wanted to keep doing that …There was a certain excitement in it, an adrenaline buzz, but it wasn’t anywhere near as wonderful as this other experience I had had.”

Greg Bryce stepped out of the limelight and dived deeper into himself. He packed up his belongings and literally gave away a chunk of his musical life. Bryce says he gave his leather jacket and a bunch of songs to a young local musician, Grant Walmsley. A number of those songs eventually found their way into the world via Walmsley’s band, The Screaming Jets.

Bryce went back to India for about three years, then on to the United States, studying and practising yoga and meditation. He was finding the answers he was looking for, but, in the process, it seemed as though music had lost Greg Bryce. 

But he returned to Australia, and to music. In the late 1990s, he formed a folk-pop trio, Jigzag, with bassist Liz Frencham and violinist/vocalist Caroline Trengove. The music was joyous and gentle. It pulsated with the journey Bryce had been on, and where he was at in his life.

“Jigzag had a lot of dynamics and a lot of heart,” says Bryce. 

And the band was taken into audiences’ hearts. Jigzag was a drawcard on the international folk festival circuit for the best part of a decade. But the three musicians decided to go their separate ways.

“Change is an inevitable part of human life,” he says. “A big part of my life is looking for that part of me that doesn’t change and anchoring myself in that. They say in yoga if anything changes, it’s not real.”

In one respect, Bryce’s life and career came full circle. He was back living in Newcastle, and – after a lot of thought – he reformed DV8. He also began playing solo, relying on just his voice and an acoustic guitar – “There’s a great deal of freedom in that”. He also joined friends in other outfits, including an acoustic funk group, Hot Yogis. 

While the solo work now takes a lot of Bryce’s time, DV8 still plays fairly regularly and continues to pull crowds. For DV8 songs can transport audiences back to Newcastle’s thriving pub rock past, and to their own youth. As long as the music is playing, and you know the words to the songs, you can feel as though little has changed.

But, of course, so much has changed, including for the man singing those songs. Bryce is not just a musician, he’s also a yoga and meditation teacher. And he meditates every morning for an hour.  

“It’s like coming home, it’s coming back to your essence,” Bryce explains. “And you find you’re a lot more beautiful than you thought you were. And in turn, when you look at other people, no matter what their behaviour, they’re beautiful too. They’ve got light shining out of their eyes. They might be going on like a goose because they’ve had 10 bourbon and Cokes, but that doesn’t matter.”

Greg Bryce has found a home within himself, and on the stage. He takes joy in it, and he finds joy all around him. No matter the venue, no matter the size of the audience, he loves to see people having a good time. 

“The joy for me is in just expressing myself musically in whatever song it may be, and getting into the heart of it,” he says. 

“It’s connection, it’s all about connection, whether you’re in a band, or listening, responding, you’re having that conversation, then you’re having the greater conversation with the crowd.”