After being “treated as gods” in the USA and establishing a strong fan base in Australia, Midnight Oil’s Rob Hirst and Martin Rotsey, team up with Dom Turner to form the Angry Tradesmen.  The name was chosen with the realisation that everyone was either an angry tradesman or has hired one!

Rob Hirst and Dom Turner are also the founding members of the successful Australian blues group – Backsliders.  In the 90’s the trio realised they each understood how the others operated and so the band Angry Tradesmen was born.  Rob Hirst (Drums, Vocals), Martin Rotsey (Guitar) and Dom Turner (Guitar, Vocals, Harmonica) all share the responsibility of song writing.

Rob Hirst appreciates the easy going style of the Angry Tradesmen compared to the pressures he was under with Midnight Oil.

“With my history in Midnight Oil, we used to work ideas in every different key and in every different arrangement.  I was kind of glad to be released from that, from that endless rehearsal [and] to do something very spontaneous which is the way Dom always liked to work, so I felt kind of liberated by that.  [The] idea of just doing stuff which felt right at the time and not dwelling on it too much.”

"The way the Tradesmen album came together was very haphazard. We had ‘x’ number of riffs, vocal ideas and lyrics and beats and then threw them together, following our instinct in rehearsal rooms.  We recorded very quickly in Megaphone Studios in Sydney.  The album’s got a lovely timbre sound to it….," explains Rob.

With the wealth of previous fame and experience behind all band members, this down-to-earth Australian band is in the industry purely for the love of making music, not for fame and fortune:

“Music is more like a sentence that you carry to your grave, unless you are the Back Street Boys when you probably shouldn’t,” jokes Rob.

Article and photos by Chrissy Layton, AusNotebook Music & Creative 1/5/08