All photos & words by James Adams.

Let's talk about Sex Drive.

The rush of blood. The anticipation of oncoming energy. The inevitable bubble over. When I left school I lived with three brothers. The youngest was barely a teen and his mates would always be around, hanging out with the older guys. They were mostly loud, confident young men but Beau was clearly a little more reserved. He spoke softly and thought deeply. I appreciated that about him as when he did speak I really listened. His take on everything seemed more considered and meaningful.

With age Beau’s confidence grew, as did his desire to express his thoughts. So with his closest mate, Jake & Benaiah they started the band, Sex Drive. Their impact was immediate. Talk of their maiden shows filtered out rapidly but the extremity of the stories left a question mark as to what actually happened. Either way, they’d grabbed the attention of the Australian punk scene and the snowball began rolling. Chaos, addiction and bloody vomit fuelled their trip that resulted in fans as holy as Amyl & The Sniffers & Iggy Pop. I linked up with the band last Saturday before their show on home turf at Vinnies Dive Bar. I had questions, they had answers.

ON FIRST SHOWS 

In the beginning there were two pivotal shows at Miami Shark Bar and the band struggled to differentiate which show was which. Both sound as memorable as each other, for different reasons. The second show was them supporting The Peep Tempel, which the venue reluctantly allowed them to play after issuing a life ban after the first show.

The first show was a fundraiser to replace a friend's teeth that were knocked out. The cause is messy but the show sounded messier. In short, excitement led to intoxication. Gold Coast skater Jesse Noonan introduced the band. Security attempted to nullify the pit. Noonan took the security guard's legs from under him. The venue manager was directing Beau to take control of the crowd as he had the mic but when the sound guy started laying into one of their mates hell broke loose, the power was pulled, lights went out, fire alarms were blaring, someone was pushed down a flight of stairs and the rumble ensued on foot down the street.

‘They pulled the power. The manager was yelling at me ‘You’ve got the mic, you’ve got control’. Benaiah kicked a security guard off the stage, the sound guy bashed Kyle (friend) and pushed a female friend of mine down the stairs so we all chased him down the street and he turned out to be a childhood friend of mine. It was a chaos night.’

ON THE BEGINNING

Every band looks back on the beginning of their ride as the most exciting part. Not playing huge shows or meeting tons of people, the struggle before the success. At the very beginning, when playing music for money is the dream, life consists of making ends meet until a path is forged and the band breaks or succeeds. That’s where the magic happens, where a band's identity is built. 

‘The three of us lived together in this beachside apartment, Santorini, above Miami High School. We were content that something was evolving, that it could be a proper band and we had responses that it would be a proper band. It’s where all the best songs were written. We lived together, we worked together and lived in each other's pockets. Jake was living in the living room, sleeping on the floor. If someone was having a woman they could have my room. I’d do it again, it was the best time of my life. But by the end i was like, fuck this’

ON THE FIRST RELEASE

Sexy Romance Records released their demo, which led to the band's first gigs in Sydney. Sharing a bill, among other things, with Royal Headache was a momentous achievement but seeing the crowd pack out for their set informed them that stories from the first shows had trickled down the grape vine. With word out about the band they landed show’s for Red Bull, had songs in Quiksilver parts and felt the momentum evolved more for the music as opposed to their notorious first shows. But that didn’t mean the free choice making had stopped. 

‘When we’d first started to get paid we didn’t know what to do with money, so we’d rehearse, eat hot pots, drink soju, go to the casino and wrap it up at the strip club if we could get in. Spend all our money, that's what it’s for.’

‘Chapter Records were looking at putting out our first LP but after getting trashed and talking too much the label withdrew interest as they figured we’d be impossible to manage.’ 

ON PEAKING 

Everyone wants to hear how fast the car went. I doubt Sex Drive has peaked, that’s up to them. But if they pack it down now the excerpt below might just be the crescendo. 

‘After the Sydney gig’s exposure, we got hype in Melbourne. We did our first Maggot Fest which was pretty iconic at the time. We ended up doing 4 of them in a row. It looked like a drug fucked sess pit. That’s not who we’re targeting but that’s who comes. 2018 rolled around, we wrote the album and got it recorded by Micky Grossman, fantastic job. At that stage everyone wanted a piece. We heard he wanted to record us so we approached him, he said yes so we recorded it in 48 hours in his studio in Marrickville, Sydney. We kooked a few songs so we went back and did a few more hours before another Sydney show that featured some vomiting of blood. It’s not like everything needs to be this intense to power the band, but it just seems to always happen.’ 

ON MELBOURNE

What appeared to be a sensible career decision turned into a temporary demise. Sex Drive members moved to Melbourne between 2016 and 2019 then fled before/during the great border closing of 2020. 

‘Melbourne turned on us after a while. They realized who we really were, they realized we were different people to them. It’s nice to rock their world, Queenslanders do seem to do that to Melbournians. Life went different ways for all of us there. Different lifestyles, different suburbs, different friend groups, different stimulants and Sex Drive wasn’t on our minds.

But that didn’t stop us, Covid stopped us from pursuing anything else in Melbourne and once Benaiah and Jake made the move back it became clear that it was time for me and Riggaz to move back. Shit just started flowing again up in the Sunshine State, as it always does because it's brilliant up here and it led us to even better shows and more exposure.’

ON RECORDING

Energy, resentment and anger distil nicely to create punk music. Its purest manifestation is while viewed exploding in a live setting and iitsmost challenging setting is in the calm of a recording studio. 

‘I think the way Sex Drive operates is diverse in so many ways because everyone's energy is so different. Look at Fergus, he doesn't say a thing. When it comes to recording it's a whole different world. I'm really scared of recording. The pressure, the takes and I don't want to waste people's time. Even when I'm paying for it. It’s just the way I look at it, I'm not very good at it. I’m nervous because I feel like a burden. Not happy with any take.’

ON THE FUTURE

Although Sex Drive have been on a far bigger journey than I'd been aware of, I still can’t help but think that if they find the motivation and a pinch of luck this might still be the band's infancy that gets looked back upon as the fun times, the glory days.

‘We’re sitting on tracks, maybe a 7 inch by the end of the year. I refuse to make a worse album than the one we just put out. We need to start practicing again but our shows are our practice. If we’re too serious about it we fuck up more. I find if your mates are in the crowd you can win the show with energy, if your mates aren't there we need to play properly to win them. When we supported Amyl & the Sniffers we found it didn’t matter who we were playing to or what the venue was cause we’d kind of embrace it and take it as it comes and go as hard as we can. I guess that’s what Sex Drive is.’

At the start of this conversation, we sat down at a brightly lit, conveniently located Chinese restaurant. Beau asked ‘Should we be in a better location, should we wait for a big bowl of rice?’ Right at the end just before I pressed pause on the recording you can hear him say ‘Where’s the Sex Drive key card?’ before Benaiah asked, ‘Why, it doesn’t have any money on it?’ I don’t have a point here but I think this sums up where Sex Drive is currently at. Optimistically disorganized. I somehow think that just might work.