For one so young, Joel Green has packed in a lot of musical experience into his 23 years. Now a fixture on the nipaluna/Hobart music scene, he is fast becoming one of the youngest veterans of a music community you are ever likely to encounter.
Buoyed by his success with Legal Noise, the fuzz-rock band he formed back in his high school days and in which he cut his teeth, Green has greatly expanded his horizons through his collaborations with numerous other like-minded, gifted musicians.
He has used that experience to join/form cow-punk rockers, Funeral Jeans and his own Joel Green Band, while he has also recently joined Tasmanian powerhouse psychedelic rock trio, The Spooky Eyes as they expand to a four-piece outfit.
He has also turned a strong DIY ethic and enormous amounts of enthusiasm and community spirit into further ventures working to develop his mostly self-taught engineering skills over the years. Green has always been keen to share his knowledge and resources, never hesitating to jump right in when his peers need help recording a track.
Taking inspiration from the fluidity and prolific output of Ty Segall, amongst others, Green’s main focus at this time is to record as much music as possible – to create with more immediacy and less hesitation. Impressed by the way Segall’s live line-up regularly changes to match different musical phases, Green expresses that the way he works “seems…like a cool, fun, healthy way to have a band”.
Currently, the live Joel Green Band consists of Joel on drums and vocals, Jude Hastings (The Spooky Eyes, Gobzilla) on guitar, and Piper Rayner (The Spooky Eyes) on bass.
Born while listening to little-known 70’s psych-country outfit, Jimmy Carter and Dallas County Green on a plane trip, ‘Drifter’ is a shamelessly romantic serve of psych-tinged southern rock. No matter how far the nomadic protagonist might wander, or for how long, the burning love they harbour for that one special person never fades – and of course at the end of the story they spend their days growing old together. A classic conclusion for a drifter.
Wearing his influences loud and proud, Green says: “This song feels to me like the closest I’ll get to being in Lynyrd Skynyrd.”
‘Drifter’ sees him following on from the band’s debut release, Raspberry House Cake, earlier this year. Not only was the three track EP Green’s first solo release and his first ever release on vinyl, it was also the first 7” to be printed on local artist-run label No Sleep.
On Raspberry House Cake, Green took an express route through psych rock, garage punk, and stop-you-in-your-tracks acoustic vulnerability – stating undeniably that he is an artist to watch. As you would expect of someone moving through their late teens and early twenties, Green’s musical and personal evolution over the last few years has been constant, and significant – and the time was right for his rebirth as a solo artist. Revelling in his new-found artistic freedom, on Raspberry House Cake, Green delivered three strikingly different songs, a testament to his versatility as a writer.
The EP received widespread Australian community radio support, featuring on stations such as 4ZZZ, 3RRR, PBS FM, SYN FM, Edge Radio, and Radio Adelaide, and scored airplay across the ditch on RDU 98.5FM in Christchurch.
Joel Green Band’s next live show will be a free gig at MONA, at 1pm on Saturday the 14th of August, 2026.
Follow Joel Green Band: Instagram ▪ Bandcamp ▪ Streaming ▪ Unearthed
Feature image credit: Sam Cooper
