If this blood don’t turn to gold
Jon Hart – Someone not-so-rich, but semi-famous
By Madeline Hoskin

Musical success doesn’t automatically mean a comfortable living. Being in a band is about pursuing a love. If you get paid for it… well then that’s preferable.

I’m at The Little Marionette, a tiny café tucked away off the main strip of the Sydney suburb of Annandale. It has flaking paint, and a giant window that opens up the shop to the road outside. In the front room there are a few unsteady silver tables and an assortment of wooden chairs. A sparse barista station is set up in the corner. It is barely shielded by a simple white bench top, so it shines in all it’s disorderly glory to all who enter. This is the highly acclaimed, favourite coffee stop for Jon Hart, a member of Australian five-piece group Boy & Bear.

Jon leads me through the first room of the café, through a flimsy, painted revolving bookshelf wall, and into the café’s hidden quarters. The room’s décor is completely different to that of the first room. There are plush fake leather lounges and a higgledy-piggledy assortment of mirrors all over the walls. There’s even a mounted deer head prominently on display. We sit at a table and he begins to rave about the coffee. It’s so good here he’ll drive 25 minutes from his house everyday to drink it. He confesses to me, seeking out the top coffee locations in every city has become a ritual for the band. The Little Marionette is currently the winning location in Sydney.

In this café full of central Sydney abiding hipsters, Jon seems to camouflage in with ease. He wears tight, dark jeans and a basic Laura Marling band tee that reads “I speak because I can”. His eyes are hidden behind cheap knock-off tortoiseshell ray-bans. Slung over his shoulder is an old Nikon film SLR. He tells me that he tries to take it with him everywhere, “Just in case”. His facial hair is short but scruffy. He’s in a prominent up-and-coming band. As I talk to him it seems fairly obvious that he’s part of the growing indie “cool” crowd.

When asked to classify the music of Boy & Bear, he ponders the question for a moment before stating, “Somebody calls it Indie-folk, maybe I-tunes calls it that”. For those unaware of the music of B&B, Jon tells me they do set out to create “folk music at its heart, but then try do something interesting”. The result is an array of complex folk-like harmonies and plucked rhythms, topped off with raw and emotive melodies sung by Dave Hoskings. The compilation of their varied instruments allows them to form a fresh new direction in a relatively well-worn genre.

It’s not only the folk fans that are noticing their sound. Critics and reviewers are singing out their praises in multiple publications.
“(They) put an enormous great grin on our face the first time we heard it, and that can never be a bad thing”. (Mad about Mackerel, UK)
“They blew the crowd away every night” (The Music Fix UK). “Fresh and exciting.” (Crack In The Road UK).
Looking over these reviews from their recent stint in the UK it becomes clear. Boy & Bear possess some exceptionally promising Australian talent.

So what exactly is the life of Jon Hart comprised of? The band has been experiencing an explosion of popularity, leading to a clustered touring plan. He seems almost incapable of discussing his life outside of it. “Down time is weird when you’re in a band, you don’t really know what to do with yourself… I don’t have enough downtime to go get a job or anything, so it’s potentially a low place”. This is not surprising. Since the beginning of the year, when Jon joined the originally four-piece ensemble as their banjo, mandolin and keys player, the band has spent a majority of their time on the road. In January they toured as the support act for Laura Marling, moving on to tour with Hungary Kids of Hungary and Ernest Ellis. In March they supported Angus and Julia Stone in their East Coast Australia shows before going to the UK in April to tour again with Marling. May was a busy month touring with Lisa Mitchell, afterwards getting a six-week break to calm down and write some new songs. But their downtime didn’t last long before they were back on the road with Mumford and Sons. They stopped off in Queensland at the end of July to play the Splendor in the Grass festival. Most recently, since the end of September they have started their first headlining tour “Blood to Gold” promoting the release of their EP, With Emperor Antartica. Not bad for a band that only got their “break” a year ago, winning the Triple J Unearthed competition and the opportunity to play at the Homebake festival.

Rambling off this impressive list of achievements makes it sound as though the group is fairly well-off and comfortably on their way to Indie-folk stardom. However there appears to be a tough path ahead of them. When we go to order our coffee, I embarrassingly look in my wallet to realize I forgot to take money out before I arrived. Jon doesn’t even need to look in his wallet to tell me that he only has two dollars in there. The guy behind the counter thinks nothing of it, telling Jon he can pay for it later. It is clear he is a regular customer. I’m standing at the counter feel horrible, but Jon tells me it’s really not a problem. He calls his brother, fellow band member Tim Hart, who arrives bearing a gift of $20 to cover costs ten minutes later.

“Our money situation is not pretty”, he says. “A band is a business and there are 5 members of that business for us”. He gives me a quick run down of all the people that need to be paid before they get their cut of the profits. It’s an extensive list including manager, booking agent, sound check guy, driver and supporting acts. “We’re successful enough that stuff does come in, but then, I guess you’d say we’re reinvesting it”.

My next question is - reinvesting in what? This leads to B&B’s next hurdle, the Australian music industry. Jon manages to mask very well the behind-the-scenes struggle the boys are experiencing. He seems so calm and at ease, sipping on his extra strong latte, that it’s hard to imagine him stressing.
He takes a casual sip and reclines further in his chair before continuing. Once they get paid, that’s when the real challenges arise. “We have to decide what to do with the money we have… are we going to be a band that plays in Australia or are we going to try to get ourselves into other markets like the UK or the US.” The boys have decided to set their sites on entering the UK market. He says, “The live music scene is happening here and it’s cool, but if you want to look at people who could actually spend their lives doing it… it’s a bit of a tough thing. That’s why we have to look overseas. The Australian scene is just not happening enough.”

It is a sad reality that, despite the large quantity and quality of small Australian acts, it is increasingly unlikely that they can experience enough success to stay based in their home country. Recent talents that emerged prior to Boy & Bear, such as Washington and Angus and Julia Stone have been made to spend a significant portion of time abroad. In their cases it seems to have worked, but it shouldn’t be necessary in order to turn musical ambition into a true career.

Jon tells me, “If you’re in the more indie sort of scene, then it’s tough… so many guys I know are in great bands, but working day jobs or part time jobs to try and get by”. Of course, the hectic touring life of B&B doesn’t even leave the boys this option.

It’s hard to gauge the amount success the band are experiencing by looking at the group’s touring schedule. From a first glance, their growth in popularity seems fairly impressive. However, when one considers the multiple aspects that classify something as “successful”, it becomes a trickier question to answer. Is success decided based on the number of shows, the size of the shows, the amount of money that’s coming in? Is it just the ability to afford your next cup of coffee?
Jon, who quit a steady paying job at Nestle to join the band, seems to think himself successful because he’s lucky enough to pursue his love as a full-time career. However, he is also aware that they don’t want to be struggling forever. Boy & Bear seem to be considering their development of success in a way which means they’ll be able to be around for as long as possible.
“We’ve got a really great booking agent. They understand it’s different when you’re a band that has come through the Triple J side of things. When you let things grow a bit more ‘organically’” – he pulls a funny face as he uses this word – “we don’t want to become too big for our boots too quickly. If we’re suddenly jumping in and playing the Metro in Sydney – it might look a bit like, oh hang on these guys only have an EP, what are they doing?”

Triple J is known for offering listeners more alternative contemporary music. They don’t play the bands that are hugely successful, the type that bring an entire circus on tour with them. So the very fact that Boy & Bear wish to stay in this alternative music scene surely puts a cap on the amount of “success” they can experience.
“No I agree with that. It’s hard to think outside of Sydney, but it would be hard to see us playing anything bigger then the Enmore. That still has a really cool vibe, and it’s got a couple thousand people there - you go up the Hordern Pavillion and it kind of loses its intimacy”.

So until their status increases, what is the touring life currently like for a band on the road, living off little to no spare money? Jon seems to find this question amusing. He hangs his head with a seemingly ashamed smile. “In Brisbane we’ve got some friends, we just kind of sleep on the floor… If we get a bed each, or a piece of floor and a pillow and a sleeping bag then we’re pretty happy”.
He begins to go into detail about varied accommodation. It seems, aside from their one hotel experience in Hobart, the boys have had to accustom themselves with cramped conditions and sharing makeshift beds just to survive their weeks of touring. “It’s like being in a really weird marriage… just without the sex”.

So ultimately, my brief encounter with the life of a Boy & Bear member has definitely got my brain ticking. I’m thinking about the number of bands, even in Sydney alone, struggling to elbow their way into the music business. So many bands trying, very few of them “succeeding”. However, in a crowd of indie-rock, indie-pop and indie-folk culture, Boy & Bear are doing well to keep riding the popularity train. The train that allows a band to make good ticket and merchandise sales, and allows their CDs to make it into record stores.

But, to quote their own lyrics, what would happen to these five boys “if this blood don’t turn to gold”? Would they be doomed?

They don’t even seem to consider this an option. I look across the rickety table and see the relaxation etched across Jon’s face. He’s calm, he’s happy and he’s lucky. It doesn’t matter how “successful” others see him as being.

“I’d like to just think it would go on indefinitely… We’re just a bunch of friends who play music together. That shouldn’t have an end”.