OUR CHAT WITH DAAN FROM GUTWRENCH RECORDS
I organised to speak with Daan Steffens from Gutwrench Records over email. Then, I realised I had to talk to this person I had never spoken to before and it became suddenly daunting and I felt pretty nervous beforehand, I was feeling a little blind and fresh to the whole talk to a stranger interview thing. When our cameras clicked on, I instantly knew Daan’s face and remembered I watched him play with his band Spouse only 6 months earlier, supporting Fiddlehead at Crowbar. After their set, I made some what of a comment about the show and showed him that we had incidental matching tattoos. I shared this memory to start off the interview, and luckily Daan remembered too.
Through his label Gutwrench Records, Daan had put together an impressive bill of emerging Australian musicians and curated a bunch of DIY shows over last summer, in parks, in tunnels and backyards of friends houses. It was his last run of shows DIY SUMMER that caught my interest, based in Canberra, Daan used these DIY shows to showcase and support upcoming bands from the local areas. With location instructions for the shows posted on their instagram on the day that bring together a community who are there to enjoy the music. Both Daan and I agree that Canberra’s live music scene is often under appreciated and overlooked when compared to the likes of Sydney or Melbourne. Yet, it is this secular position that grants the scene a unique quality of raw connection and community.
STRENGTH IN THE SCENE is the motto of the label and for good reason. Daan and I talk about the importance of supporting the artists and creatives around you, how it creates growth and strength in a community. It feels Gutwrench is in the centre of something big, have a read and support the scene!
LEWIS: Hey Daan! Do you want to start off with a little bio about yourself and about Gutwrench?
DAAN: Yeah! So, my name is Daan. I've been playing music for a long time. I started Gut Wrench properly in 2022, but it was an idea that was floating around in my head much earlier. I'd daydream about having a label in high school. I came up with the name and the logo a year or two before I started but that was kind of it. I'd been booking shows for bands that I'd played in, and I really enjoyed that aspect. But I found it stressful; you're trying to organise and run the show, then you have to go away and play. So, at the time, I had been thinking it would be fun to just do one and not the other, to just book a show and not play it. Then around August of 2022, I said ‘I'm actually gonna do it’. My original idea to start it off was a full-fledged label and do seven-inch releases for local bands. I wanted to save up a few grand, do a series of split releases with one local band on one side and another on the other side, and get a local artist to do the cover and stuff. That was the original idea.
Then when I made an Instagram for it, I decided I should start by booking some shows to build a connection with the community. I can't just drop a bunch of seven inches under a label if nobody knows what it is. So that's really how it started, and I've been doing it for a little while now. It feels like I've been doing it so much longer than I have.
Well, it might feel that way cause you've done so much in a short period of time. You were saying before about one of the initial plans for Gutwrench being a release of seven inches for local bands. You have recently put out a compilation of local Canberra artists, "Some of Our Parts". Is that a product of this idea?
When I originally started Gut Wrench, it was always gonna be like a label. That was always the idea. But when I started booking shows, that really became the focus and forgot the fact that it was a label. There are these two great Canberra bands called Flowermarket and Mr. Industry. My friend Charlie plays guitar in both of those bands. Well, Flowermarket was having a final show before their hiatus and Mr. Industry was also playing a ‘going away’ show before moving to Melbourne. During the middle of the Flowermarket set, Charlie was like, “Where's Daan? I need to speak to Daan after the show”. I was confused but he came up to me after his set and said he had an idea on stage. He said, “Flowermarket has this song that was recorded but would never be released. Mr. Industry has a song that they've recorded and never be released. You should put them out for us.” And I thought that was a great idea.
Then, it sparked the idea of including some more music from Canberra bands that was unreleased and building a compilation album. A handful of bands had songs were just sitting on, but then there were a few bands that went out and specifically recorded a track for the compilation, which was a great honor. There were even bands with their first ever track on it. So yeah, I'm really proud of that one of how that all came together. We did do a small run of cassette tapes for the album, and I got to work with Josh who also plays in Spouse. He did all the art for these tapes. Any good graphic design on anything Gutwrench is done by Josh.
Well, let’s talk about the DIY Summer. I don't think I'd heard of something like this in Australia before. It's a cool contrast between the DIY ethos, the venues and shows and with you being so organised with it all, having a show every two weeks. So, I have to commend you on that. Let's maybe talk about the venues first. I'm from Wollongong, I don't know my way around or even the scope really of doing DIY shows in Canberra. What’s it like?
I felt a few years earlier in Canberra there more of a DIY ‘scene’ with Mulgara, which was a DIY collective that had a lot of shows at one house. I always really loved attending and playing those: backyard shows, house shows, shows on ovals, stuff like that. They were always a lot of fun. Last summer it felt like that spirit was coming back and it was exciting for me. I started using the term “DIY summer” then in a loose way; like the feeling of summer is about being out and about, and being creative, the warmth allows you to be outside and then to do shows outside. I hosted two or three shows that just happened to be around the same time and decided to call it DIY Summer.
Then when this summer came around, I just had to do a whole run of DIY shows. I'd been planning for a while then, since last summer I guess, to do something a bit more structured. Originally, I wanted to do a show a week but needed to dial it back because that would be so much. It became a show a fortnight, six shows in total. One was cancelled, so it ended up being five over the three months of summer. I just had so many DIY spots that I wanted to use. For every show that we did, I had one or two backup locations in mind in case something went wrong at the other one. DIY shows are probably the most fun for me to organise. I really love that when a show is not confined by four walls, the audience becomes the boundary of the venue. I think that is special: that the people who are there create the space.
Yeah, I think that's great. You can see that idea in these DIY shows. The show in between the two bridges was one that looked awesome, and the house show which had probably the biggest lineup, with two of my favourite local bands freezer and 00_.
Yes! That whole show was just amazing. For starters, it was insanely hot in a backyard with virtually no shade. From four till eight o'clock, everyone was dying in the heat, sweating, getting sunburnt, but it was nice to be suffering all together. The first bands play before the sun goes down, one of the bands will be playing during sunset and it's just beautiful. Everyone had put up with the heat for so long that it was so rewarding when the sun finally went down, and it cooled. It was quite special. I expected a lot of people to come at the very beginning and then leave for the night. It was amazing seeing how many people stayed to the very end. The two bridges as well, I also had the least expectation. Well, truly, I go into all of them with zero expectation, you never really know how it's gonna turn out. That’s why I’m always so happy with how they turn out. Will 20 people will come to this or 5? That's part of the excitement: I am seeing it unfold in real time the same way that the audience is. With DIY Summer, I feel so connected to the community and to everyone who's turned up because everyone is experiencing it for the first time and it’s everyone's achievement. If the people aren't turning up then there's no show.
So those two shows seem like highlights for you. Were there any other highlights across DIY Summer, any individual moments that you can pick out?
I loved the way that the people used each of the spaces. The site under the bridges, in particular, is really just a bike path with two steep rock walls either side of it. During the show, a lot of people were sitting up on the walls and created this make-shift tiered seating which was how I'd hoped that the space would be used. Seeing that everyone was utilising it exactly how I’d imagined, that was really cool.
DIY gigs are not like a show at a venue, where there’s some guarantee that certain things will happen or be done for you. I have really no idea how this is gonna unfold. I do everything to set it up the best I can. I've taken all the precautions, I've done all the planning, but I don't really know how it's gonna happen. I don't know if the show's gonna get shut down. I don't know how people are gonna use the space and I don't know how it's gonna sound. I’m reacting to everything in real time in the same way as everyone around me. It’s special to be able to share that with the audience. We're experiencing this together.
At one of the shows there was a small mosh happening, kids just pushing each other around, two stepping. I was filming the band, which I did a lot at the shows in DIY summer, so happened to have the camera out at that point. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I see this kid doing the worm through the middle of the mosh. That's a real standout for me. That's my Roman empire. I think about it all the time. Yeah, I would've kicked myself so much if I'd missed that. Luckily, I got in on film too.
Wow. That's understandable honestly, that would be a highlight if I just saw that happen.
You've been filming a lot of the DIY shows. I’ve seen Instagram page On the Reel (@onthereel_2000) has filmed them as well and a lot of other DIY shows around Canberra. I also saw some awesome photos that my friend Seton took (@seton.bremner).
I agree. His photos of 00_ especially. Do you feel that documenting or recording DIY shows is important for pushing the scene?
I mean, I can't speak for any other city, but in Canberra, documentation is really important because what we have here is so small and insular and it's often overlooked. I really feel passionate about documenting these shows, creating a database of what's happening here right now. What bands are playing and what venues are they playing. There's this YouTube channel called Two Hands Only One Mouth, which is like a huge inspiration for what we do without video documentation. He's been doing the same thing, filming live music that's happened in Canberra from around 2011 to today. He has got over 10 years’ worth of videos on his channel. I remember when I was younger playing in bands, before we had any music recorded, you would have a full copy of your set on his YouTube channel. To be able to share that with promoters or just with your friends and family is huge.
I really wanted to do that for people as well. I feel passionate about that now because bands do come and go and not everyone gets a chance to record. Even if you do record, you don't record every song. If you stop playing those songs or you break up, those songs don't exist anywhere. It’s great to be able to have an archive of all this material. Occasionally, I'll go back and look through his videos, or at old show flyers, and each time I see a band name or venue that I’d forgotten about, it sparks a bunch of memories. It's beautiful to be able to look back over five years or a year and just see how much has happened here. It’s easy to forget all of that stuff when it's not documented somewhere.
Daan's band Spouse playing at sideway featured on the channel.
Another Instagram page I love is Southward Migration (@southward_migration). They share photos and videos from Canberra music from similarly 2009 onwards, so a period of 10 years showing what the Canberra scene was. It really inspired me to keep doing what we're doing, seeing all the amazing things that were happening back then. Plus, the parallels; how it's different, how it's changed and how some things haven't changed at all. To see that there was this incredible vibrant, interconnected scene 10 years ago in Canberra, that was massively impactful. Now there's an entire new system of bands and we're doing similar things; it's also sort of connected. Through Southward Migration, I personally feel connected to that old Canberra scene just by being able to see it. One of those bands is Assassins 88, which are incredible. They have just done a reunion show for the first time in ages and are now becoming an active band again. I do think seeing DIY shows even from 10 years ago inspires what I do, and what I do moving forward. It is interesting how looking back will inspire you and remind you that what you’re doing right now will hopefully inspire what happens in the future. I feel really proud to be contributing to the history and to be a part of an amazing scene that’s happening right now.
Is there something unique to Canberra that enables the scene or the DIY shows?
I think the thing that is unique about Canberra is that there is so much open space everywhere. It's kind of perfect for DIY shows. Every suburb has a nature reserve with great stretches of grassland or forest and a mountain that you can go and walk on. You can pick any suburb and pretty easily find a spot to put yourself up somewhere away from houses.
What are venues like in Canberra? There is Sideway and the Basement, but other than that, I’m not too familiar. Are there many venues putting on live music? Do you kind of feel like you have to take it upon yourself to put shows on?
I don't feel like I have to do it or that I'm doing it because it's not being done. The Canberra scene is very effective regardless of what we do. That said, it is a weird time right now because there are so few venues. We've recently had two that have closed or stopped putting on shows. Now there are only a handful of active venues, and some that are not really invested in local music. The idea of the DIY shows for me has always been ‘Let’s just go out and do this’. Even before I was booking shows and just playing them. We don't have to wait around for someone to give us a show. Whether it means booking your own show at a venue, organising a house show, playing at a party, we can create these opportunities for ourselves. But Sideway is a really important one in Canberra right now. What they've contributed to the scene is pretty incredible. I think they've brought so many people through who would've never come usually. It’s become like a real staple venue. If you look back two or three years ago, no one was really coming to Canberra on an East Coast tour. Now, so many bands are coming and they're all playing sideway. You can see the pull that has created. There’s also a consistency in their efforts. People trust in Sideway. It has this beautiful relationship with the community. If they are really excited about a show, the people get really excited about it because of that trust. We've seen a lot of that with the punk bands that have come down from Sydney, like Gee Tee, 1800 Mike, TV Repairman and RMFC. And we've been lucky enough to have other bands from overseas come through, like Autobahns from Europe, and so their fans come. There's been such a great reception every time. Sideway has had a huge part in exposing Canberra to new scene of music that maybe people weren't as tuned into before. big underground Australian music. I feel like what Sideway has done for Canberra is pretty incredible. I think we owe them a lot.
Great! Thanks a lot for sitting and talking with me. What's on the cards for Gutwrench in the future?
Yeah, there's one DIY show coming up, which I can't wait to share with people because it's at an incredibly silly venue. I'm also working on a documentary of DIY Summer. I've got to wrap up a few things and then I'm gonna dive into that. I've filmed so much footage over the course of the shows, so I'm looking forward to see that come together into a long form thing, which I've never done before. Besides that, there’s not much planned. There'll be a few random DIY gigs that pop up over the winter, but nothing as structured. I’ll be working on the next Nervewreck festival which will happen at the very end of this year or the beginning of next. I’m very excited about that.
Thanks again, Daan. Great to meet you.
Yeah, nice to see you again! Such a coincidence, a nice little icebreaker, like ‘Oh, we know each other.’
Yeah! It’s kind of exactly what we're talking about. One big, interconnected scene, one community. Strength in the scene, right?
Strength in the scene, man.