An interview with and article on Doug Falconer, drummer from Hunters and Collectors.

Author:  Midland Express.

Date: 14 March 2024.

Original URL: https://midlandexpress.com.au/community/2024/03/14/doug-lives-down-the-road/

Article Text

Doug Falconer’s business Shedshaker Brewing, located in Castlemaine, is a popular watering hole for locals and tourists alike.

This month features Doug Falconer, Hunters and Collectors drummer, who chatted with the Express about the ups and downs of being in a band, his seven years of study to to become a doctor and the pressures of running a brewery.

When you look at Doug Falconer, drummer of the famous Australian rock band, Hunters and Collectors, turned brewery owner, you would not immediately assume the six-foot-something gentle giant, also trained as doctor, or entered the Air Force, before ‘running away to join the circus’.

Born in Sydney, Doug moved to Melbourne with his family when he was 12-months-old and spent his formative years in Hawthorn, attending Trinity Grammar School. When he finished school he headed off to join the Air Force….for two weeks.

“While I was growing up I always wanted to fly jet fighter planes,” Doug said.

“After a few weeks, the squad leader came over to me and said ‘You don’t belong here’.

“All I’d done in that time, was march up and down and polish my boots, so, I went back to school and repeated year 12.

“That was a really good thing to do. I was young, only 17, and that gave me a bit more perspective. That’s when I chose to study medicine.”

Doug, who had been playing the drums since the age of 10, went to university and studied medicine for seven years, but upon qualifying, he gave up his medical career and joined Hunters and Collectors.

“I ran away and joined the circus,” Doug said.

“I didn’t like medicine from the get go and I knew I wasn’t really meant to be a doctor. I much preferred being a drummer.

“I still keep in touch with people from medicine and they’re so unhappy and there have been numerous suicides.

“I’d played in a band with John Archer and Mark Seymour, so when John rang and asked if I’d be interested in joining a new band, I said I’d go down and and check it out.

“The band was so good and the sound was so good – so, I joined the band and here we are 45 years later.”

Doug, who had played in a number of different bands and had threatened to quit medicine and become a drummer multiple times, finally found a band worthy of chucking in his profession.

Doug’s parents hated the idea of him leaving medicine to join a band, so he didn’t tell them he was quitting, but two years after he started in Hunters and Collectors, he presented his parents with a gold record.

“After that they stopped complaining,” he laughs.

Hunters and Collectors performed together for 17 years, disbanding in 1998, coming out of retirement 11 years later, for Sound Relief, a multi-venue rock music concert held in March 2009 to help support victims of the Victorian bushfires.

“We didn’t exactly get back on the horse after that, but we got an offer two years later to do the Super Cars for a stupid amount of money, so we said yes to that.

“That didn’t go well, but they paid us anyway.

“We left it alone for a little while and then we got the phone call to do the Grand Final and supported Bruce Springsteen and did a Day on the Green Tour.

“By that stage we were also sort of in our 60s or late 50s and kind of hadn’t made a lot of money while we were together, so we figured, this is superannuation and that tour went really well. Really well, and we kind of knew that we still had it.”

A few years later the band got the next call and said yes straight away. While they’re not together as a band right now, Doug catches up with some of the members and when a gig comes up that interests them, they dust off the gear and jump back in.

“Being in a band is the best,” Doug said.

“We were known as the good boys. We were all sorts of uni-trained and reasonably intelligent, we didn’t go down the rabbit hole that several other Melbourne bands, that shall remain nameless, went down.

“Which is not to say we didn’t do the odd partying, and a bit of naughty stuff, but generally speaking, we were pretty tame. It’s pretty much why no one in the band has written a book, other than the singer.

Doug told the Express there was no average day in the life of a performer, but there was a cycle, with blocks of rehearsing/writing music some of the time, and then blocks of recording, and of performing. Every new album, included a tour and often travelling overseas.

“We knew that we were good at it and plugged away at it and it’s paying off. It only took 40 years…

“It’s a job, and you have to treat it as a job. Part of the reason we were successful is we took it seriously, as work. We had a work ethic and a production ethic that we stuck to.

“We didn’t make a lot of money while we were touring, in that first 17 years. It’s not a great way to make a buck, unless you’re Taylor Swift, then it’s a great way to make a buck!”

Doug said the changes in the music industry and demand for music meant they were earning more in one afternoon now than they would in an entire year when they were a full-time band.

“It used to be, we’d go play six pubs a week, and have all the costs of travel, accommodation, crew, equipment and all the rest, and we’d pay ourselves the average weekly wage in the end.

“They call us a ‘Legacy Act’ now – heritage and legacy. We’re one of the few bands of that era that can still actually play, because none of us has died and none of us are crippled or mad. We can actually produce the music and a lot of bands from our era can’t do that for one reason or another, so it’s kind of special in some ways.”

“It’s good now we’re older, you’re comfortable doing this stuff, you know that it works, you don’t over think it. When you’re a young band, you think you’re the best band in the world, you think everyone else is sh**, and there’s the constant battle to prove yourself.”

Doug moved to Castlemaine in 1992 and for the past eight years has spent his days running a local brewery, which he finds time-consuming and all-encompassing.

“I never wake up and think, ‘what am I going to do today? I’m basically on duty 24/7, 365 days a year,” Doug said.

“But if I need to do something with the band, like we did the Mushroom 50th a little while ago, I have to just park what I’m doing here and hope that people can cover for me.

“I love living in Castlemaine. It’s got a wonderful eclectic mix of things and if you need a dose of the city, it’s not far away.”

Doug and his company Shedshaker Brewing are heavily involved in supporting local causes. He is currently chair of the Community Land Trust and he was once involved in the campaign to stop the local council selling the heritage jail.

“It was incredibly successful, except that it got sold,” Doug said. “It was the most objections ever received from the council on anything, it was quite remarkably successful, except that it didn’t work, but the jail is still there and it hasn’t been covered up in apartments, who knows, we might have influenced that in some way. But I met my partner Jacqueline on that campaign and naturally fell into a thing and we’ve been together 12 years now.

“We’re a good team because she’s an energiser bunny of ideas and I’m the ‘make it happen’ guy,” he said.

Comments

N/A.