'No Doubt She’ll Punch Me In The Dick': Dylan Lewis On Seeing All His '90s Mates Again

Australian music scene staple Dylan Lewis may be a little rusty when it comes to playing with his band, The Brown Hornet, but he is trying hard not to let the nerves get to him. 

“I want to be able to say ‘I’m pumped up and ready to rock!’, but it has been a while since I’ve graced the stage,” he laughs. 

“The last time I played with The Brown Hornet was at Womadelaide, I reckon may 2016 or something like that? It was a while ago. So there’s a nervous anticipation, but that leaves me with a whole pile of excitement. We have our first rehearsal today for a couple of hours, and then a couple over Thursday and Friday, so hopefully it all comes back to us! I’m totally confident with the whole band, I just hope I can remember all the words. I wrote too many words back in the day and now I’ve got to try and bloody re-remember them all!”

The singer and presenter also admits his vocal cords aren’t exactly what they used to be. “The other thing that I’ve forgotten how to do - which I’ve been practicing for the last two week in my car while I’m driving - is that I can’t scream anymore. 

"Listening back through most of our stuff, I sort of scream through most of it, and do this kind of metal yell and all that sort of stuff, but it doesn’t work anymore. I can’t do it. So I’ve been trying to ruin my voice enough that I’ll be able to scream by Saturday. I’ve got my fingers crossed, I’m getting there, getting a little bit more husky, but I’ve got to just keep screaming in my car hopefully it’ll open up those metal screaming passages again. 

"It’s been a weird experience doing that, because the other day I was in my car screaming, and a lady looked across the way at me and she looked really alarmed because I sounded like a dying possum. So I just pretended to look around being like ‘who did that?’ But other than the screaming and the lyrics and my oldness, I’m feeling very confident.”

Performing as part of the Leaps & Bounds festival’s Fitzroyalty program this Saturday, Lewis is honoured that his group has been bestowed with the adulation. In what he describes as “just full ‘90s nostalgia,” The Brown Hornet will play alongside some of their favourite contemporaries from back in the day.

“I was talking to the greatest bass player in the world just the other day - Fergus Fingers, Thunderthumbs from The Brown Hornet - and he was feeling really chuffed that he got included under that banner of ‘Fitzroyalty.’ So I had to tell him, ‘Bro, you deserve it!’ Although I may be slightly biased, I do believe he is the greatest bass player in the world and he deserves that title. As does everyone on that list: The Wolfgramm Sisters, The Feeling Groovies, the Checkerboard Lounge... The Band Who Knew Too Much! Land Of Milk & Honey! We’ve got massive history with those guys it’s going to be amazing to see them all again.”

While it has been some time since the group have performed or even written new tunes together, Lewis admits there’s something about the classic Hornet tracks that still resonate today.

"It’s been a weird experience doing that, because the other day I was in my car screaming, and a lady looked across the way at me and she looked really alarmed because I sounded like a dying possum."

“We’re going real OG for this gig, and the songs, lyrics-wise, I’m really on the same page as what I was on back then,” the singer says. 

“I’m a little embarrassed about some of them because I’ve got kids now and I hope they don’t pick up on every single swear word that I say. But with the content and the meanings of the songs, I haven’t changed. I might have gotten a little more succinct and a little bit better at saying what I was trying to say back then, but I still enjoy hearing them. There’s a nice nostalgia.”

He continues, “A song like Focaccia (pronounced ‘fock-a-chee-ah’), for instance, I’ve been playing that in my car and my son was in the car and he asked, ‘what are you singing about? What is this about?’ And I told him that it’s a song about mispronouncing the word focaccia because I had just moved to Fitzroy and I was trying to fit in to this groovy scene, and I was going to the Black Cat Cafe and all the things on the menu were just completely foreign to me. A focaccia, water in a bottle, kombucha - it was just a pisstake about becoming a Fitzroy funk band and ingratiating myself into this beautiful and wonderful bohemian world. But I think my son just liked it because I was saying focaccia a little bit like a rude word. He is only eight, though.”

Lewis is also pulling double duty for the show, MC’ing the gig alongside The Bamboos’ singer Kylie Auldist.

“Her and I are gonna have so much fun,” he chuckles. “She’s an old friend of mine, we used to play in a band together called Megabias - I was actually talking to her today about it and she said she’s nervous to MC so I told her ‘you’ve never done it, that’s going to be in your favour! I know how scary it is, I’m the one that should be nervous!’ But I know she is going to be great. Her and I are like brother and sister at this point, so no doubt she’ll punch me in the dick or something like that.”

Lewis’ excitement for the gig is palpable, but he also divulges the group were close to pulling the plug due to the current lockdowns interstate.

“It was only last Sunday that we found out we are definitely doing this gig. And we had to get our drummer down from New South Wales because he moved up there recently, so we were watching the news going ‘Fuck, if he can’t make it we can’t do the gig. What do we do? Do we get a fill-in drummer? We can’t do that, that’s wrong.’ Anyway, he was supposed to leave today, and if he had done that he wouldn’t have made it. He changed his flight to come on Sunday and he’s made it in. So now we feel it’s really on. It’s really happening, motherbitches.”

Leaps & Bounds is currently being rescheduled due to the Victorian lockdown. For all the info, keep an eye out at theGuide.