Katie Noonan is the latest guest on Making Music, Making Ends Meet, a series focused on Australian and New Zealand musicians during the cost-of-living crisis.
From her time in George to her work as a soloist, Noonan is one of Australian music’s most enduring singer-songwriters, but even she isn’t immune to the perils of the music industry.
She took us right back to the very start of her career, before George, Noonan’s band with her brother Tyrone and more excellent musicians, achieved multiple ARIA nominations and a chart-topping album.
“In February 1996, I got in my brother’s Datsun Bluebird and drove from Brisbane down to the Gold Coast to Seagulls — which was a sort of surf club/RSL. Before the scourge of pokies, it was a great music venue. I drove down and saw Jeff Buckley play,” Noonan recalled. “I was 18, I’d just finished a year of an opera degree and realised I didn’t love opera enough for it to be my obsession. And I saw Jeff Buckley and went, ‘Holy moly — whatever that is, I want to be part of that magical, otherworldly world.'”
She returned to Brisbane and started a band with Tyrone, her flatmate James Stewart, and his identical brother Nick, and they played their first gig at the Battle of the Bands at the Griffith University National Band Comp.
“I played a lot of djembe and may have done some fire twirling outside the venue. I was in full hippie mode. That was our first gig as George,” Noonan revealed.
“My first proper paid gig, though, was something called ‘Ground Control to Major Fun’ — a David Bowie tribute night at The Zoo in Brisbane. The Zoo was a legendary venue, run by two amazing women, Joc [Curran] and C [Smith]. That was my home. I ran a jazz series there with my ex for over a decade, presenting jazz once a month.”
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Noonan studying music at the time, which allowed her to receive Austudy, “which was great.”
“Then once I finished my degree, I went on what we called the dole — jobseeker now, I suppose. As a band, we knew where every single dole office was in every town and city in Australia, because we’d be on the road gigging and gigging, sleeping on floors, doing gigs for crazy small amounts of money,” she continued. “Our first gig in Sydney, we played at the Excelsior in Foveaux Street in Surry Hills and got 10% of the bar — which was $27. Split across a seven-piece band…
“Back in the ’90s, it was very much you’ve got to move to Sydney or Melbourne, and we didn’t want to. We loved Brisbane. We were proud of our home and our history. We were very much a Brisbane band, and our family and friends were there. But we did meet with a manager, Kim Thomas — who was managing The Whitlams at the time — who said you have to tour to Sydney and Melbourne every two months. And we took that advice very seriously.”
The reality of those early days meant that Noonan had to wear many hats.
“For a while there, I pretended to be our own agent, ringing venues, pretending to be someone else,” she said. “We just gigged and gigged and gigged. And thanks to community radio and triple j, we’d show up to Bendigo, Ballarat, Rockhampton, Mackay, you name it, and there’d be people there.
“Back then, there was also a law requiring all international acts to have a local opening support act. That was huge for us. We supported Macy Gray, we supported Coldplay, we got to play to stadium-sized crowds who’d never heard of us. We put on a decent show, they became our fans, they followed us to the next gig. It was a very organic process.
“One of our first regional tours was supporting The Whitlams through Queensland. Then we toured with Midnight Oil, did lots of double bills with emerging bands like The Waifs. We slept on floors, slept in cars, drove a lot of kilometres, and just built it. Our determination was to sound like no one else. That was inspired by Jeff Buckley — seeing him live and going, ‘What the hell is this music? I can’t describe it. Isn’t that awesome?'”
Noonan also opened up about her difficult decision to leave George, which led to her hugely successful solo career (which continues to this day).
“[…] we were at a very successful, unexpectedly successful, level of crossover success. But I’d gotten married and fallen pregnant and realised I couldn’t really be in a band,” she admitted. “Being in a band is a huge commitment, and I wanted my number one commitment to be my family — being a mum and a wife.
“I really needed to just be my brother’s sister, not his bandmate and business co-worker. We’d been together for 10 years. We had a really good innings.”
Read her full feature here.
Noonan will release her new album — her 30th, showing remarkable consistency — Alone but all one later this month — pre-order here.
The ARIA Award-winning artist says the album “is for anyone who’s gone through a life shift — not just separation, but grief, uncertainty, or quiet reinvention. It’s music for sitting with things. For remembering we’re not alone, even in solitude. It’s personal, but I hope it will resonate in a way that becomes collective.”
Noonan will embark on an Australian tour in celebration of Alone but all one next month — check out her tour dates here.
