By Luke Voogt
Melbourne pop rock band Taxiride will join Australian music icons John Farnham and Kate Ceberano in a first-time concert at Geelong Racecourse next weekend.
Singer and lead guitarist Jason Singh was keen to get on stage with The Voice again after playing alongside him earlier this year.
“It’s a great honour,” he said. “Anyone who’s heard Farnham in the last 40 years knows he’s the best voice Australia’s ever produced.”
Singh grew up idealising Farnham and remembered him coming into his parents’ Melbourne restaurant when he was a child.
“He kissed one of my sisters on the forehead and she still tells that story to this day.”
Since February Singh had played alongside Farnham with Taxiride and in “intimate” solo gigs.
“I know him and he knows me so it’s pretty amazing,” he said.
Singh said the Twilight at the Track on 9 December would be his first local gig with Taxiride since moving to Ocean Grove.
He moved to the town in May 2016, seeking a ‘sea change’ with his wife and two children.
“Why would you want to live anywhere else?” he said.
Taxiride will play the hits many locals grew up to in the ’90s, like Get Set, Everywhere You Go and Creepin’ Up Slowly.
“We’ll get strung up by our ankles if we don’t play those songs,” Singh said.
“They’re the songs that people know and the songs that people want.”
Singh was excited ahead of playing with all the “great acts” like 1927, Richard Clapton and The Black Sorrows.
“And it’s only 10 minutes up the road,” he said.
“It feels like I’m a part of this town now. There’s so many good things coming to Geelong and it’s great to be a part of it.”
He had played alongside some of the bands already this year, he said.
“We tend to bump into each other each weekend.”
The Indy last spoke to Singh in 2015 when Taxiride had just reunited.
He has since released new solo albums, but playing with his bandmates was more about returning to their roots, he said.
“So far it’s been more about paying homage to our incarnation – so to speak.”
The band split in 2008 due to the pressures of its rapid rise.
“We went from relative nobodies to the top of the tree really fast,” Singh said.
“When you’re in three different countries in one day, that sort of takes its toll.”
But Singh said it “would have been a crying shame” if his bandmates had remained apart.
“We had all these amazing experiences and saw the world together, but weren’t talking to each other.”
So Singh jumped on the phone to his bandmates and “sent 150 messages” to guitarist Tim Watson.
“I was going to keep calling him until I died,” he said. “I just started hounding them.”
