“It pays to say no sometimes,” says one half of Melbourne blues rock act The Teskey Brothers, Sam Teskey.
He is referring to the brothers rejecting multiple offers from juggernaut Glastonbury Festival across the past couple of years. You would think when Glasto comes a-knocking, the word ‘no’ wouldn’t exist in one’s vocabulary. But for the Teskey Brothers, against label advice, Glastonbury copped a left swipe.
Then 2023 called and as Barry White once bellowed, the time is right. The Teskey Brothers joined this year’s edition, stomping their feet on the same stage as Josh Homme’s Queens of The Stone Age and American rockers, The War On Drugs.
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“It’s a very big milestone. For us to be able to play and to have such a good spot, to be able to have it on the second biggest stage and relatively late in the afternoon; it kind of feels like that was the spot that we really need and really want to have.”
So why now? In 2017, The Teskey Brothers were standing on the ledge of success with Half Mile Harvest leading the introduction to their unique blend of blues, rock and gospel – Sam Teskey’s pipes and Sam Teskey’s soaring guitar breaking through the commercial noise. Two years later, they tandem-jumped over the ledge thanks to Run Home Slow. The album won Engineer of the Year at the ARIA Music Awards of 2019, whilst also earning them the title of Best Group, and Best Blues and Roots album. Single ‘Carry You’ was coated gold last year, as certified by ARIA.
Sam Teskey explains, “We were asked a couple of times by Glastonbury to play and we turned them down a couple of times, which was really hard to do. It was really hard, especially for me. I was like “I don’t wanna turn this down”. The labels are really pushing us to say yes to it and we’re like, “no, it doesn’t feel right”. We’re just thinking, “We’ll come back next year if they offer again next year when once the album is released, then we’ll do it. They came back with a bigger and much better offer. It was just right for us this time around.”
The timing perfectly aligned with the release of their third album, The Winding Way, in airwave transit. Released the week prior on Friday 16 June, The Winding Way held space for Sam and Josh to build the album organically, pivoting to work alongside acclaimed producer and long-term Teskey fan, Eric J Dubowsky (Flume, Chet Faker, Chemical Brothers).
“I think everything kind of aligned for us on this one and we got to spend a lot of time on it and really do it in the way that we wanted to record it. It felt really natural. It felt like we could really put everything into it. After the last few years we had a bit more time to prepare or just actually take a breath, and gather everything together, then finally put it down onto a record,” recalls Teskey.
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The result is a full-bodied, adventurous album that captures what the siblings are all about – heart and soul, as evident on tracks ‘Oceans of Emotions’, ‘Take My Heart’ and ‘Blind Without You’. This alignment was in part due to the two writing together, taking into account their family commitments and new values.
“Over time we drifted in a certain way where Josh had become a family man with two kids and then I grew my family to two kids; I already had an eight-year-old. We both were immediately very much on the same page with where we were at in our lives and how we wanted things to go. I think that’s why it took us so long to get to doing another album because we just didn’t have the right environment to do that,” he explains.
“It’s something we’ve also taken into consideration for touring, keeping a model of touring on weekends to have quality family time and not lead to burnout; to actually enjoy what we’re doing!”
On album D-Day, the duo also announced their homecoming for an Australian and New Zealand tour. The extensive tour will provide weekend entertainment across 13 cities and 14 dates. The Teskey Brothers are set to stop by Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Saturday 2 December.
Tickets to see them performing new tracks from The Winding Way are on sale now via Frontier Touring.
