It’s 30-something degrees, a week away from a major event he has been planning for months, and Jameel Majam is moving house.
Not that you’d be able to tell he has so much on his plate, mind you, as the celebrated bassist for Sydney legends The Lockhearts sounds surprisingly unhurried. He might be just days out from the 2017 edition of Old Mate’s Block Party, the mini-music festival he has designed to celebrate local music and respond directly to the draconian lockout laws affecting our fair city, but his calm voice is one of a man with few worries.
“It’s alright,” he deadpans. “We had a band house – me, The Lockhearts’ guitarist [Sam Sheumack] and Tim [Meaco] the singer all lived together and now we’re all moving out. We have to be out the day before the Block Party.” He laughs. “Yeah, great timing. I think we’re planning to be all moved out and then we’ll just do six hours’ worth of rehearsal in one go.”
Certainly, if there is any band able to make such a tight schedule work, it’s The Lockhearts. The psych-pop grungers live and breathe the Sydney music scene, and they’re incredibly hard workers. One can imagine part of their drive comes from the fact that playing in a band isn’t some diversion for them – it’s been a dream that has been gathering strength for almost a lifetime, and they are a group of young men who relish every element of what they do.
“You know, when you’re a high school kid you’re like, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna get a band house and it’ll be the best thing ever,’” Majam says. “‘We’ll have all the afterparties.’ And that’s what happened. Everyone used to come and stay at our house. Whenever there was a band on tour, they would always end up coming and crashing back at our house. It wasn’t odd to see people in the morning sleeping on top of the coffee table.”
Majam particularly appreciated such a communal atmosphere because it was one he had been denied for so long, and he notes that Sydneysiders are perhaps luckier than they sometimes realise when it comes to the options available to them.
“When I was 17 or 18, when I was trying to see local bands I’d noticed on Facebook or Myspace, I’d have no way of getting home because the buses would have stopped. I had to come from Avalon. So I’d be sleeping on other people’s coffee tables. I think that’s why I let people crash at mine now – you kind of just pay it forward as you get older.”
Indeed, that’s exactly what Old Mate’s Block Party has been designed to do. The mini-fest boasts an incredible lineup of bands both celebrated and underappreciated; class acts like The Persian Drugs, Twin Fires and The Stiffys. Majam hand-curated the lineup after spending over a year seeing a couple of gigs every week, and says the event was aimed at collecting together the cream of Sydney’s overstuffed crop.
“You go to see at least one or two gigs a week, and then you end up discovering all these different acts and you’re like, ‘This is incredible,’” he says. “As venues are closing, you’re still getting all these cool little venues opening up.”
Majam stops – his voice is warm; hopeful, even. “Even pubs that weren’t doing live music are starting to do it, which is awesome. The number of bands are definitely not going down. Especially quality bands around Sydney – there’s heaps.”
Old Mate’s Block Party 2017, featuring The Lockhearts, The Stiffys, Borneo, The Persian Drugs, Twin Fires and more, happens at Factory Theatre, Saturday January 28.
