Joe Mungovan on beer, new music and heading home
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Joe Mungovan on beer, new music and heading home

Recently Joe Mungovan celebrated the three-year anniversary of his single ‘June & July’ coming into the world. It was a song that threw him into the industry, and served as a marker for his change from being a drummer to guitarist/vocalist, though things are quite different from that release.

“I guess like anything you were doing three years ago, it changes a lot,” Joe says of his music. “Whether it’s the art you created or friendships with people, everything changes over time. It’s progressing more and more to the stuff I really want to be writing, and I feel like I’m getting closer and closer to that space all the time.”

As for what that space is he hopes to enter with his music, Joe doesn’t know. Taking the approach of creating music with no end goal in sight, ensuring the creative process isn’t confined by genres and ideals of what he should and shouldn’t be doing.

“I never really have much of a goal,” he says. “I just try to create pretty freely and that’s when I find I’m at my happiest when I don’t restrict myself to any form of anything really.”

An insight into where his music is now taking him came with some demos he shared recently with Facebook fans in the form of a release ‘Afterthoughts’. And while Joe doesn’t know whether they will be released or not (“A few of them I’ll probably put out somewhere in a different form”), it’s a look at where the musician is heading.

“I just felt like I had to get them off my back and give them out to the people that really wanted to hear them and I had some crazy feedback which was awesome,” he says. “It’s good to see people still keen to connect and listen to the new stuff that I’m writing.”

After having his last show for 2016 at Geelong’s Unwined Bar, Joe is currently writing, spending time with family and relaxing in his hometown of Kiama in New South Wales. It’s a rare chance the musician sits still, as 2016 saw him have one of his busiest touring years yet.

“I get pretty itchy feet a lot of the time,” Joe says with a laugh.

With hopes to one day take his music to Europe, Canada and New Zealand, with his extensive touring of Australia, Joe has become a welcome face in Geelong. He’s set to return for an appearance at the Great Australian Beer Festival where, alongside performing, he’ll be sampling some of the local pale ales and dark beers: “I’ll definitely be getting stuck into the beers”.

When & Where: Great Australian Beer Festival, Geelong Racecourse – February 18

Written by Amanda Sherring