As for many up and coming bands around the region, the story of Bigfoot Sighting revolves around the Barwon Club band room.
So much so, the band’s vocalist and sometimes guitarist Joel Fletcher described the venue as “the centre of my universe”.
The alternative rock band is poised to launch their first EP Tape One at the iconic Geelong venue, an event that brings them full circle.
“We played our first gig there, so it’s really nice to have the bookends of Tape One being (that and) the EP release at the Barwon Club as well,” Fletcher said.
Referring to themselves as “Ocean Grove’s only export” on their Spotify page, the seeds of the band were planted in high school.
Four of the five members attended Kardinia International College, where three of them – Fletcher, guitarist Zach Parker and bassist Max Humphrey – played in the school’s band program together.
“There are these designated classes, so we were playing in the training band, woodwind and brass instruments,” Fletcher said.
“And then at lunchtime we’d go and play funny covers of Coldplay songs, stuff like that.”
After graduating in 2023, the trio stayed friends, and almost inevitably the idea of forming a band was thrown about.
Not long after the trio ran into an old friend at a service station – drummer Felix Walsh – and all of a sudden three became four.
“Then we started gigging, and I realised that I’m probably not cut out for playing guitar and singing at the same time on stage,” Fletcher said.
“We were friends with (guitarist) Alfie (Mason), so we got him to sign on.”
The result is a alt-rock outfit that blends garage, emo, shoegaze and folk; as the band put it, “if it can be played alone in the dark on an acoustic guitar, it can be played by a five-piece band with cranked amps and stacked pedalboards”.
“It’s a tough one…If I had to put our sound into a sentence, I probably couldn’t, but we’re a big fan of whiny white boys, I guess,” Fletcher said.
“If we could sound like a band from 1994, that would be mission: success.”
Bigfoot Sighting launch Tape One at the Barwon Club on Friday 13 March.
