{"id":34059,"date":"2026-06-18T22:56:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/34059\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T22:56:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T22:56:14","slug":"katie-noonan-recalls-early-years-with-brisbane-band-george","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/34059\/","title":{"rendered":"Katie Noonan Recalls Early Years with Brisbane Band George"},"content":{"rendered":"

Katie Noonan is the latest guest on Making Music, Making Ends Meet<\/a>,\u00a0a series focused on Australian and New Zealand musicians during the cost-of-living crisis.<\/p>\n

From her time in George to her work as a soloist, Noonan is one of Australian music\u2019s most enduring singer-songwriters, but even she isn\u2019t immune to the perils of the music industry.<\/p>\n

She took us right back to the very start of her career, before George, Noonan\u2019s band with her brother Tyrone and more excellent musicians, achieved multiple ARIA nominations and a chart-topping album.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn February 1996, I got in my brother\u2019s Datsun Bluebird and drove from Brisbane down to the Gold Coast to Seagulls \u2014 which was a sort of surf club\/RSL. Before the scourge of pokies, it was a great music venue. I drove down and saw Jeff Buckley play,\u201d Noonan recalled. \u201cI was 18, I\u2019d just finished a year of an opera degree and realised I didn\u2019t love opera enough for it to be my obsession. And I saw Jeff Buckley and went, \u2018Holy moly \u2014 whatever that is, I want to be part of that magical, otherworldly world.’\u201d<\/p>\n

She returned to Brisbane and started a band with Tyrone, her flatmate James Stewart, and his identical brother Nick, and they played their first gig at\u00a0the Battle of the Bands at the Griffith University National Band Comp.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played a lot of djembe and may have done some fire twirling outside the venue. I was in full hippie mode. That was our first gig as George,\u201d Noonan revealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy first proper paid gig, though, was something called \u2018Ground Control to Major Fun\u2019 \u2014 a David Bowie tribute night at The Zoo in Brisbane. The Zoo was a legendary venue, run by two amazing women, Joc [Curran] and C [Smith]. That was my home. I ran a jazz series there with my ex for over a decade, presenting jazz once a month.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Noonan studying music at the time, which allowed her to receive Austudy, \u201cwhich was great.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThen once I finished my degree, I went on what we called the dole \u2014 jobseeker now, I suppose. As a band, we knew where every single dole office was in every town and city in Australia, because we\u2019d be on the road gigging and gigging, sleeping on floors, doing gigs for crazy small amounts of money,\u201d she continued. \u201cOur first gig in Sydney, we played at the Excelsior in Foveaux Street in Surry Hills and got 10% of the bar \u2014 which was $27. Split across a seven-piece band\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBack in the \u201990s, it was very much you\u2019ve got to move to Sydney or Melbourne, and we didn\u2019t want to. We loved Brisbane. We were proud of our home and our history. We were very much a Brisbane band, and our family and friends were there. But we did meet with a manager, Kim Thomas \u2014 who was managing The Whitlams at the time \u2014 who said you have to tour to Sydney and Melbourne every two months. And we took that advice very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reality of those early days meant that Noonan had to wear many hats.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a while there, I pretended to be our own agent, ringing venues, pretending to be someone else,\u201d she said. \u201cWe just gigged and gigged and gigged. And thanks to community radio and triple j, we\u2019d show up to Bendigo, Ballarat, Rockhampton, Mackay, you name it, and there\u2019d be people there.<\/p>\n

\u201cBack then, there was also a law requiring all international acts to have a local opening support act. That was huge for us. We supported Macy Gray<\/a>, we supported Coldplay, we got to play to stadium-sized crowds who\u2019d never heard of us. We put on a decent show, they became our fans, they followed us to the next gig. It was a very organic process.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of our first regional tours was supporting The Whitlams through Queensland. Then we toured with Midnight Oil, did lots of double bills with emerging bands like The Waifs. We slept on floors, slept in cars, drove a lot of kilometres, and just built it. Our determination was to sound like no one else. That was inspired by Jeff Buckley \u2014 seeing him live and going, \u2018What the hell is this music? I can\u2019t describe it. Isn\u2019t that awesome?’\u201d<\/p>\n

Noonan also opened up about her difficult decision to leave George, which led to her hugely successful solo career (which continues to this day).<\/p>\n

\u201c[\u2026] we were at a very successful, unexpectedly successful, level of crossover success. But I\u2019d gotten married and fallen pregnant and realised I couldn\u2019t really be in a band,\u201d she admitted. \u201cBeing in a band is a huge commitment, and I wanted my number one commitment to be my family \u2014 being a mum and a wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cI really needed to just be my brother\u2019s sister, not his bandmate and business co-worker. We\u2019d been together for 10 years. We had a really good innings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read her full feature here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Noonan will release her new album \u2014 her 30th, showing remarkable consistency \u2014 Alone but all one later this month \u2014 pre-order here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ARIA Award-winning artist says the album \u201cis for anyone who\u2019s gone through a life shift \u2014 not just separation, but grief, uncertainty, or quiet reinvention. It\u2019s music for sitting with things. For remembering we\u2019re not alone, even in solitude. It\u2019s personal, but I hope it will resonate in a way that becomes collective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Noonan will embark on an Australian tour in celebration of Alone but all one next month \u2014 check out her tour dates here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Katie Noonan is the latest guest on Making Music, Making Ends Meet,\u00a0a series focused on Australian and New…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99,12034,29994,29995,18593,29996],"class_list":["post-34059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brisbane","tag-brisbane","tag-brisbane-music","tag-george","tag-george-band","tag-katie-noonan","tag-katie-noonan-george"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}