Some truly uplifting footage has emerged of Brisbane rockers Dead Letter Circus covering the John Farnham classic ‘You’re The Voice’ with Birds Of Tokyo and Karnivool frontman Ian Kenny.
On Friday night, 10th March, Dead Letter Circus brought their 10th anniversary national tour to Melbourne venue Max Watt’s, and ended the show by belting out the Farnsy classic with a lil’ help from their m8 Kenny.
“Huge love to all the people in Melbourne and Adelaide who came to the Anniversary shows. Not only did we get to play our favourite song ever written, we did it in Melbs with one of our fav humans,” the band later wrote on Facebook.
Speaking with Music Feeds, DLC frontman Kim Benzie says the experience will go down as one of the most epic moments of his life, not least because it perked him up from a nightmare week which saw him forced to undergo an emergency root canal procedure on the arvo of the band’s gig in Brisbane.
“It was the worst start to a tour ever,” he says. “I woke up on the morning of the show, and it just escalated to the point where I had tears in my eyes at about 2pm and said, ‘Someone’s gonna have to take me to a dentist.'”
Then, after battling through a handful of east coast shows dosed up on codeine and Nurofen, DLC hit Melbourne and were struck by the genius idea to recruit Kenny for a cover of Farnsy’s fist-pumping Straya’n power anthem, which fans will know has been their regular walk-on song for more than four years now.
Recapping how it all went down, Benzie explains:
“We’re all friends behind the scenes, and [Kenny] just did the usual, ‘Hey, can I grab some tickets for tonight?’ And we’d played ‘The Voice’ at The Cambridge in Newcastle the weekend before and it went down a cracker. Like, it’s literally collectively the band’s favourite song. So we thought, ‘Let’s just have a crack at it!’
“We said [to Kenny], ‘Would you like to jump up?’ and he goes, ‘Hells yeah. Mate, I’ll pop in to soundcheck and we’ll give it a little go.’ And then we just got up there and did it, kind of impromptu.
“The crowd energy at that gig… I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything that loud before! Like, it actually hurt my ears at first, I was going ‘Holy shit!’ It was really hard to actually hear ourselves onstage because they were just belting it! The crowd were amazing.
“It was one of the most epic things I’ve ever been a part of,” he says. “For me, the journey of that Thursday beforehand — just going, ‘Oh my god this is the worst timing of anything’ — just ended in the hugest smile… It was the complete healing to my week, I loved it.”
Even more epic, the whole thing happened not long after Benzie got to meet his vocal hero Farnsy for the first time ever. And he wasn’t disappointed.
Apparently, Farnsy’s son had shown him footage of DLC using ‘You’re The Voice’ as their walk-on song, and The Farn-man was so chuffed that he invited the band backstage at his recent Brissie show.
“He was probably the most humble, down to earth person I’ve ever met in my life,” Benzie says. “And his performance at Bribie Island that night was absolutely gobsmacking. The guy’s getting better as he’s getting older. He fuckin’ smashed it out of the ballpark, it was incredible.”
Dead Letter Circus’ current national tour continues in Bunbury this Friday, before finishing up in Perth. The group are also preparing to release a new album called The Endless Mile this May (which will feature reimagined versions of songs from their back catalogue) and a “heavy” album of new material later this year.
Watch the band cover ‘You’re The Voice’ with Ian Kenny in crowd-shot video, below.
