The Same Kind Of Bad As Me

On Family Bands, Family Bonds & The Family Business

In my world, music has always been the family business.

My dad, Peter Head, has been a working musician from the age of thirteen. My big brother Josh has been a pro guitarist since he was a teenager and my daughter

Holiday Sidewinder

started touring the world with her first band Bridezilla at fourteen. Compared to the rest of them, I was a late bloomer, forming my first proper band (a 12 piece country extravaganza) at 20. My dad and I perform together often as a duo, recorded an album together, fittingly called ‘The Apple Don’t Fall Far From The Tree’ and hope to record a follow up soon. My extremely generous mama Mouse (a now retired professional film industry seamstress) has made/altered/mended a never ending pile of stage wear! For a while my daughter played melodica in my rock’n’roll band and she even humoured me by featuring in a music video. My dad and my brother now play in a country funk band together.

Here’s me and my dad, singing about all the struggles & joys of making a life in music - and crappy jobs we’ve done:

And me and my lovely daughter on melodica… I loved playing music with her, the melodies she chose to play hit all the right buttons for me. It was almost like she could read my mind…

Also here she is hanging with the band in her bassinet when she was only a couple of months old… she was totally born into the family biz.

Not to mention a soundcheck veteran by 8!

Tom Waits’ son Casey has been working with his dad, playing drums, percussion and turntables and adding a certain cool something to the sound since ‘Real Gone’ in 2004.

Jeff Tweedy | Starship Casual

and his sons

Spencer Tweedy

and Sammy Tweedy have also joyfully made music together for many years - Tweedy Snr told Spin “The fact that we get to play music together makes me feel like the luckiest person in the world.” Sammy echoes the sentiment, saying “We just think of it as part of our evolution as artists. We want to be in a family band. We have a rare, close family dynamic, and that might be another reason why these types of bands are hard to form. We’re really lucky.”

Willie Nelson Family Band has been bringing the ‘the family that plays together stays together’ maxim to life forever. Willie’s sons Lukas and Micah play with him and his sister Bobbie was the ink in his signature sound until her recent passing.

Of course it makes sense that families share similar skills and interests and there are a lot of phenomenal family bands to prove it, from The Jacksons, The Staple Singers and The Osmonds to Hanson and Kitty, Daisy and Lewis (whose parents accompanied them in the early years - their mother Ingrid Weiss played drums in The Raincoats (Kurt Cobain’s favourite band!) - and double bass with her children - and their dad Graeme Durham is a mastering engineer and drummer). Ingrid explained to the Independent in 2008 ‘They started the band without us’ but that ‘it feels natural to be their session musicians’.

There’s so many great sibling duos/bands (Death, The Kinks, AC/DC, Haim, Beach Boys, The Ronettes, The Bee Gees, Creedence, Allman Brothers, Avett Brothers, Devo, The Corrs, The Carpenters,

Allison Moorer

&

Shelby L Moorer

) that I could write a book about those beautiful blood harmonies!

There are the occasional mother and child/children acts - Carter Family, The Judds, Judy Garland & Liza Minnelli, and many sons go on to tour with their dads (see Eddie Van Halen, David Alan Coe) or take over from their dads, such as Glenn Frey’s son joining the Eagles - but it does seem to me that father/daughter combos are a little rarer. Please illuminate me if I’m wrong!

There’s the groovy 1967 hit duet ‘Somethin’ Stupid’ by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Apparently they sung the lyrics together throughout so that it could sound equally like they were conferring with each other about their romances with other people - finding lyric appropriate father/daughter songs can be tricky sometimes.

There’s a slightly disturbing and likely true daddy daughter duet by George & Georgette Jones called ‘Daddy Come Home’ - when Georgette was grownup they also recorded a beauty called ‘You & Me & Time’ - her voice has the Tammy Wynette note of heartbreak.

Also witness Charlotte and Serge Gainsborg’s fairly disturbing duets (or don’t)! I’m a huge Gainsbourg fan (of both of them actually) but I can’t listen to these.

On homegrown soil (Australia) we have Kasey & Bill Chambers occasionally recording and performing together and we were blessed to have the brilliant jazz pianist Dick Hughes (no longer hanging round on Earth with us) and his sensationally talented daughter Christa Hughes (seek her out wherever she may be playing!). My dad and I teamed up with Dick and Christa for one show we called the Double Daddios & Daughters Show. Our dads teamed up for some piano duetting and we joked about them embarking on a tour together titled The Dick/Head Show. I have wonderful photos but unfortunately my laptop blew up yesterday so all I have is what pics are on my phone… that’s also why I’m a day late and a dollar short with my Loose Connections delivery schedule… typing long winded treatises on phones takes a very long time.

Like Willie says, the life I love is making music with my friends.. and family… and I’m endlessly grateful for the chance to do it.

In very exciting news, I’ve been approved by Documentary Australia to raise development funds to make a 6 part TV series based on my book ‘Lovers Dreamers Fighters’ through them, that will feature many stories from my musical upbringing. Here’s my dad spruiking my book back when he was my first reader in January last year!

And here’s a link to read more about it and make a tax deduction contribution if you are inclined/ able - which would of course incur my deepest and heartfelt gratitude:

https://documentaryaustralia.com.au/project/lovers-dreamers-fighters-docoseries/

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn’t indulge in spruiking a little family gig promotion while I’m here:

Next shows for me’n’my dad:

This Wednesday night at the Australian Museum (Sydney) 6 til 9pm for ‘Nights At The Museum’

Then-

Peter Head & Lo Carmen at Lazybones

Sunday 16th July, doors 5pm

https://m.moshtix.com.au/v2/event/lvl-1-lo-carmen-peter-head/152606

Thanks for indulging my family band party and please share any suggestions for those I have missed! I think I need to do a married couple Loose Connections deep dive too … maybe my husband would finally let me reveal the duet we recorded of ‘Jolene’ twenty years ago on that one!

Rock on,

Lo x