March 24, 2026 • 10 mins
Melbourne based bogan funk band Playlunch are touring New Zealand at the end of May, their singer Liam called up for a chat about the locations they'll grace in the North and South Islands and the story behind the hilarious music video to their song Keith.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Radio Hodakis Off the Record podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Let's have a chat with Play Lunch, Get a Liam,
Get Eggda. How you doing, Yeah, good Man, Play Lunch.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah absolutely. I mean we started off as kind of
a COVID passion project. We were over here in Melbourne,
so we had that never ending lockdown over twenty one
and Yeah, the project sort of came about is a
bunch of silly songs we were putting together. The idea
was sort of to put on a gig that would
be so fun that it would sort of make up
(00:35):
for all the lost time when everyone could go back
to the live music scene again. And everything sort of
came out of that. So we sort of like to
call what we do bogan Funk, which is basically a
bunch of guys who want to sound like earth Wind
and Fire but grew up playing cold chizzl in Ozzie pubs.
It's been a crazy ride since then. I think we
all thought that we had something good on our hands,
but we didn't think it would be sort of doing
(00:57):
nearly as well as it seems to be doing now.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, part of the reason it's doing so well is
that song Keith.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
It's sort of pointing to a bit of a universal
experience that people seem to have. I mean everyone's had
sort of run ins with these sort of scary blokes,
whether you get into a bingle on the road somewhere
or whether you do have a nable or something like that.
And yeah, seems like, you know, a bunch of people
have sort of all experienced something like it.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So, yeah, when you struck a nerve, didn't you because
the reaction to it was huge? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No, I remember the first time we ever played the
song in front of people, like we thought it would
just be a fillo track that we might have played,
you know, once and then forget about it. But then
as soon as we sort of did in front of
an audience, we saw like, oh my god, we're sitting
on something really really special here. You know, the reaction
from the crowd was just insane.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And when you've been at home and you've hit to
call someone around to fix something, are they aware of
the song?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And I mean, certainly, since that song has sort of
hit it big, we've definitely gotten recognized in public a
lot more because of it. I mean it's rare that
anytime anyone comes over that that happens, but you generally
tend to find that you're only a few sentences away
of you know, bringing up the music video or something
like that, and you tend to find that most people
(02:14):
have come across it at some point, which is pretty surreal.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
The guy in the music video isn't actually a trady,
is he.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah? So the guy in the music video is a
sort of very famous AFL player over here in Australia
called Barry Hall. He was to play for Sydney Swans
and a bunch of other people, so he's a bit
of a bit of a legend over here.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
How did you get him involved? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
No, we sort of reached out to him over Instagram,
pitched him the idea.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
You know it.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It was a big role to fill by that point,
and someone had joked that Barry Hall would be a
funny guy to reach out to to get to do it.
And yeah, to our surprise, he was keen and he
was like, what do you want me to do? And
we were like, we want you to be the big
scary bloke in the song and he said okay.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And what was it like when you're actually filming it?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
No, everyone was safe. No musicians were harmed during the
making of the video, but it was a little bit
of a rush. We only had Barry there on set
for about four to five hours, so it's sort of
like as soon as he arrived, we just had to
gain costume and just go go, go, go go.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, and he was he threshing the song on his
way there to get himself in.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
The Yeah, he listened to it enough. I mean there
was sometimes we warned him to lip sync and that
wasn't necessarily his forte, but it kind of only added
to the character.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I think if someone's only heard that song, how does
the rest of your music compare.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
We're definitely taking the piss all the time, although I
would say that like this isn't necessarily the genre you
know that encapsulates all of our music. Every single song
about this sort of a bit of a parody of
a different style of music. So, you know, we've got
songs that sound like old school disco tracks. We've got
songs that sound like you know, mid two thousands R
(03:58):
and B club here, We've got songs that found like Keith,
They're a bit heavier and sort of everything in between.
But all of them, one way or another are taking
the person and sort of designed to be as much
fun live as possible.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah. Great, which brings us into the live performance here
in You guys are coming over for a few days. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Absolutely, So we're going to be there from the twenty
eighth to the thirty first of May. And we're so
excited because it's our first time playing anywhere internationally outside
of Australia and we're playing the Leden christ Church, Auckland
and Wellington.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, and great venues by the way, you've chosen Erics
and Dened and a lot of cool bands go through
there as well. And then that's on the Thursday night,
the twenty eighth of May. Then the following night you're
moving up a few hours. Are you flying around? Are
you jumping in a van? I imagine you guys would
be van dudes, wuldn't you?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
We're doing the van thing. There's seven of us in
the in the band, so yeah, it's going to be
a tight squeeze and a lot of driving, but we're
really looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, And who chooses the tunes on the road trip?
Do you play your own music so you're you know,
familiar with it and just get in your head or
do you choose other stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Oh no, we're well sick of our own music by
this stage. Generally it's a bit of a rotation different
guys hop on decks at at any given point.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
And you were mentioning that your music is so eclictic
in terms of genre, must be just a free for
all when it comes to playing your own songs in
the car.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Oh yeah, totally. And I think that's part of the
fun of it.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It's like we can be listening to anything from you know,
someone will chuck on old school seventies prog rock, and
then someone will be playing hip hop from the twenty tens,
and someone will be playing some fifties jazz and it
just goes all over the place anyway.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So christ Church, you're at the Loons, which is through
the tunnel out by the coast and Littleton. Beautiful location,
that one there, you'll love that place, The Loons. That's Friday,
May twenty nine. And then you're honing up the South
on I'm guessing you'll be catching the Theory in your
van to go across to Wellington.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, it's kind of
funny because it's like touring like this, it's like you
don't you don't You kind of just go take it
one step at a time, so we'll have love and
itinerary lined out and we'll just sort of see how
we can get through it.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Good luck the ferry crossing, because that stretch of water
can be if it's a bad day, you can get
huge swells on there. On a calm date though beautiful
and it's just serene and lovely and you just think
this splace is amazing, but just be warned, man, coming
into winter, it could be wild.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Oh no, for a guy to see sickness like me,
that's bad news.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You want to take your pills beforehand. What do you
call it this stuff? Yeah, captain something fisherman's friend. Yeah,
that's that's the Saturday night Wellington at mil Nui and
then all the way up to Auckland. Are you driving
all the way up from Wellington Auckland in one day?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I guess Australia used to big distances, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So yeah, man, it's it's quite common for us to
have to do fifteen hours in one day over here,
so I think we should be all right.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, so eight or nine worries. Yeah, and so that'll
be Sunday night, the thirty first of May, and you're
playing at double Whemy. What do you know about Auckland
so far?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well, I've been over there once before. I used to
play in and cruise ship gigs back in the day
and done the sort of trip around the islands before,
and I lucked out with the sea signis then. It
wasn't too bad back then. But yeah, I remember Auckland
was one of the places that just blew my mind.
It was like we did walking to It's such a
(07:30):
beautiful spot. I remember looking at a massive tree, like
a big tree somewhere in the in the in the
city town center, and that the two guards telling us
all about it. I don't know if I don't know
if there's several big trees going on over there. I
assume there probably is, but one in particular definitely stands
out in my memory.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
There must have been a good tree. When you're get here, man,
I want to find that. I like a good tree
as much as the next person.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
So I'll be looking for it, don't you worry.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
You want to show the rest of the band, are
you guys look at this?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah? Too? Fellas you won't believe.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
This tree and then that'll be it. So Dunedin, christ Church, Wellington, Auckland.
Play Lunch on tour around New Zealand. What do you
guys have for lunch? By the way, when you're on tour,
you go sushi to go like a rap or something
or no.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Do you know we've had a few bad runnings with
our food poisoning in our time, so in general things
like like sushi, and I had a bad run with
KFC once, so so I personally try to keep it
a bit more simple. You know, a lot of a
lot of ham and cheese toasties from cafes get me through.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well yeah, there's plenty of those that around the trips. Well, look,
we can't wait to see you man. Safe travels in
between now and then and within the tour itself. If
we want to find out details on.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
All this absolutely so he needs up on Instagram is
probably the best place if you want to keep up
to date with what we're doing at Play Lunch Underscore.
Also on TikTok and Facebook. Our YouTube channel is good
fun if you want to see what we do. You
can see a lot of our music videos there of course,
all of our albums are available on Spotify, and I
did just get told this morning that our latest record
(09:15):
that we released last year in August is now available
at some New Zealand records stores and jbihigh Fi, so
maybe maybe keep an eye off for that.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Okay, jbhigh five for the play Lunch album.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Called Sex Sad. It's a little bit naughty, so maybe
maybe don't listen to the small children around unless you're
feeling very very bold.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, Liam from play Lunch, thanks your Tom and Headache.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Greg cheers radio head Aches Off the Record podcast. Why
not subscribe so they download automatically and don't forget to
rate us five stars?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Thanks mate. Find out more
Speaker 1 (09:55):
About this podcast and the people who make it at
hodache dot co dot mz it
Welcome to Radio Hodakis Off the Record podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Let's have a chat with Play Lunch, Get a Liam,
Get Eggda. How you doing, Yeah, good Man, Play Lunch.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah absolutely. I mean we started off as kind of
a COVID passion project. We were over here in Melbourne,
so we had that never ending lockdown over twenty one
and Yeah, the project sort of came about is a
bunch of silly songs we were putting together. The idea
was sort of to put on a gig that would
be so fun that it would sort of make up
(00:35):
for all the lost time when everyone could go back
to the live music scene again. And everything sort of
came out of that. So we sort of like to
call what we do bogan Funk, which is basically a
bunch of guys who want to sound like earth Wind
and Fire but grew up playing cold chizzl in Ozzie pubs.
It's been a crazy ride since then. I think we
all thought that we had something good on our hands,
but we didn't think it would be sort of doing
(00:57):
nearly as well as it seems to be doing now.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, part of the reason it's doing so well is
that song Keith.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
It's sort of pointing to a bit of a universal
experience that people seem to have. I mean everyone's had
sort of run ins with these sort of scary blokes,
whether you get into a bingle on the road somewhere
or whether you do have a nable or something like that.
And yeah, seems like, you know, a bunch of people
have sort of all experienced something like it.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
So, yeah, when you struck a nerve, didn't you because
the reaction to it was huge? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
No, I remember the first time we ever played the
song in front of people, like we thought it would
just be a fillo track that we might have played,
you know, once and then forget about it. But then
as soon as we sort of did in front of
an audience, we saw like, oh my god, we're sitting
on something really really special here. You know, the reaction
from the crowd was just insane.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And when you've been at home and you've hit to
call someone around to fix something, are they aware of
the song?
Speaker 3 (01:53):
And I mean, certainly, since that song has sort of
hit it big, we've definitely gotten recognized in public a
lot more because of it. I mean it's rare that
anytime anyone comes over that that happens, but you generally
tend to find that you're only a few sentences away
of you know, bringing up the music video or something
like that, and you tend to find that most people
(02:14):
have come across it at some point, which is pretty surreal.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
The guy in the music video isn't actually a trady,
is he.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah? So the guy in the music video is a
sort of very famous AFL player over here in Australia
called Barry Hall. He was to play for Sydney Swans
and a bunch of other people, so he's a bit
of a bit of a legend over here.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
How did you get him involved? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
No, we sort of reached out to him over Instagram,
pitched him the idea.
Speaker 1 (02:41):
You know it.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
It was a big role to fill by that point,
and someone had joked that Barry Hall would be a
funny guy to reach out to to get to do it.
And yeah, to our surprise, he was keen and he
was like, what do you want me to do? And
we were like, we want you to be the big
scary bloke in the song and he said okay.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And what was it like when you're actually filming it?
Speaker 3 (03:01):
No, everyone was safe. No musicians were harmed during the
making of the video, but it was a little bit
of a rush. We only had Barry there on set
for about four to five hours, so it's sort of
like as soon as he arrived, we just had to
gain costume and just go go, go, go go.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Yeah, and he was he threshing the song on his
way there to get himself in.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
The Yeah, he listened to it enough. I mean there
was sometimes we warned him to lip sync and that
wasn't necessarily his forte, but it kind of only added
to the character.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
I think if someone's only heard that song, how does
the rest of your music compare.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
We're definitely taking the piss all the time, although I
would say that like this isn't necessarily the genre you
know that encapsulates all of our music. Every single song
about this sort of a bit of a parody of
a different style of music. So, you know, we've got
songs that sound like old school disco tracks. We've got
songs that sound like you know, mid two thousands R
(03:58):
and B club here, We've got songs that found like Keith,
They're a bit heavier and sort of everything in between.
But all of them, one way or another are taking
the person and sort of designed to be as much
fun live as possible.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah. Great, which brings us into the live performance here
in You guys are coming over for a few days. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
Absolutely, So we're going to be there from the twenty
eighth to the thirty first of May. And we're so
excited because it's our first time playing anywhere internationally outside
of Australia and we're playing the Leden christ Church, Auckland
and Wellington.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, and great venues by the way, you've chosen Erics
and Dened and a lot of cool bands go through
there as well. And then that's on the Thursday night,
the twenty eighth of May. Then the following night you're
moving up a few hours. Are you flying around? Are
you jumping in a van? I imagine you guys would
be van dudes, wuldn't you?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
We're doing the van thing. There's seven of us in
the in the band, so yeah, it's going to be
a tight squeeze and a lot of driving, but we're
really looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
Yeah, And who chooses the tunes on the road trip?
Do you play your own music so you're you know,
familiar with it and just get in your head or
do you choose other stuff.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
Oh no, we're well sick of our own music by
this stage. Generally it's a bit of a rotation different
guys hop on decks at at any given point.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
And you were mentioning that your music is so eclictic
in terms of genre, must be just a free for
all when it comes to playing your own songs in
the car.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Oh yeah, totally. And I think that's part of the
fun of it.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
It's like we can be listening to anything from you know,
someone will chuck on old school seventies prog rock, and
then someone will be playing hip hop from the twenty tens,
and someone will be playing some fifties jazz and it
just goes all over the place anyway.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
So christ Church, you're at the Loons, which is through
the tunnel out by the coast and Littleton. Beautiful location,
that one there, you'll love that place, The Loons. That's Friday,
May twenty nine. And then you're honing up the South
on I'm guessing you'll be catching the Theory in your
van to go across to Wellington.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, that sounds about right. I mean, it's kind of
funny because it's like touring like this, it's like you
don't you don't You kind of just go take it
one step at a time, so we'll have love and
itinerary lined out and we'll just sort of see how
we can get through it.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Good luck the ferry crossing, because that stretch of water
can be if it's a bad day, you can get
huge swells on there. On a calm date though beautiful
and it's just serene and lovely and you just think
this splace is amazing, but just be warned, man, coming
into winter, it could be wild.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Oh no, for a guy to see sickness like me,
that's bad news.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
You want to take your pills beforehand. What do you
call it this stuff? Yeah, captain something fisherman's friend. Yeah,
that's that's the Saturday night Wellington at mil Nui and
then all the way up to Auckland. Are you driving
all the way up from Wellington Auckland in one day?
Speaker 3 (06:48):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I guess Australia used to big distances, aren't you.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So yeah, man, it's it's quite common for us to
have to do fifteen hours in one day over here,
so I think we should be all right.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Yeah, so eight or nine worries. Yeah, and so that'll
be Sunday night, the thirty first of May, and you're
playing at double Whemy. What do you know about Auckland
so far?
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Well, I've been over there once before. I used to
play in and cruise ship gigs back in the day
and done the sort of trip around the islands before,
and I lucked out with the sea signis then. It
wasn't too bad back then. But yeah, I remember Auckland
was one of the places that just blew my mind.
It was like we did walking to It's such a
(07:30):
beautiful spot. I remember looking at a massive tree, like
a big tree somewhere in the in the in the
city town center, and that the two guards telling us
all about it. I don't know if I don't know
if there's several big trees going on over there. I
assume there probably is, but one in particular definitely stands
out in my memory.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
There must have been a good tree. When you're get here, man,
I want to find that. I like a good tree
as much as the next person.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
So I'll be looking for it, don't you worry.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
You want to show the rest of the band, are
you guys look at this?
Speaker 3 (08:04):
Yeah? Too? Fellas you won't believe.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
This tree and then that'll be it. So Dunedin, christ Church, Wellington, Auckland.
Play Lunch on tour around New Zealand. What do you
guys have for lunch? By the way, when you're on tour,
you go sushi to go like a rap or something
or no.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Do you know we've had a few bad runnings with
our food poisoning in our time, so in general things
like like sushi, and I had a bad run with
KFC once, so so I personally try to keep it
a bit more simple. You know, a lot of a
lot of ham and cheese toasties from cafes get me through.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
Well yeah, there's plenty of those that around the trips. Well, look,
we can't wait to see you man. Safe travels in
between now and then and within the tour itself. If
we want to find out details on.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
All this absolutely so he needs up on Instagram is
probably the best place if you want to keep up
to date with what we're doing at Play Lunch Underscore.
Also on TikTok and Facebook. Our YouTube channel is good
fun if you want to see what we do. You
can see a lot of our music videos there of course,
all of our albums are available on Spotify, and I
did just get told this morning that our latest record
(09:15):
that we released last year in August is now available
at some New Zealand records stores and jbihigh Fi, so
maybe maybe keep an eye off for that.
Speaker 2 (09:26):
Okay, jbhigh five for the play Lunch album.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
Called Sex Sad. It's a little bit naughty, so maybe
maybe don't listen to the small children around unless you're
feeling very very bold.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Okay, Liam from play Lunch, thanks your Tom and Headache.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Greg cheers radio head Aches Off the Record podcast. Why
not subscribe so they download automatically and don't forget to
rate us five stars?
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Thanks mate. Find out more
Speaker 1 (09:55):
About this podcast and the people who make it at
hodache dot co dot mz it
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