The Wooshka Cover Band Story: Vol.1
The Wooshka Story: Vol.1, through the eyes & memories of me............Dan
It was 2010, a bunch good friends and work colleagues went on a trip to Crown Casino for a bit of poker and gambling, i can’t remember much about the night except we ended up at a karaoke bar in Melbourne CBD There was probably 6 or 7 of us in total and we all worked together at Port Phillip Prison, A maximum security prison in Laverton. Three of us went on to eventually start Wooshka Cover Band - Jade, Nate & me, Dan.
It was getting late and it was possibly even a week night, but it didn't matter to us guys since we worked shift work and had organised to have the next day off. The karaoke bar was pretty dead with hardly 10 people in total in the entire joint.
I personally wasn’t much of a singer and was quite nervous, but I did love to play the guitar at home and i idolised John Mayer. So as the guys with enough courage had a crack on the mic, I waited nervously for my turn and chose to sing “Waiting on the World to Change” ….i think i held my own, but only against the other guys who were just hacks really.
Eventually Nate jumped up on the mic and blasted out a couple of songs in a row and it was fair to say that he showed us all up, just a tad. I remember him singing “I’ll make love to you” by Boyz2men and me attempting to do the backups with a secondary mic.
Anyway we finished up and eventually got ourselves home, one way or another after a fun night.
It wasn't too long after that night, when i was talking to Jade who was one of the guys at the karaoke bar. Jade was a friend of mine and a fellow guitarist. He had been in a few bands in the past and he mentioned that he was wanting to start a new band and he’d asked Nate if he wanted to be the lead singer and Nate was down to give it a go.
I thought “Cool !i This is exciting” I never really had any plans to be in a band myself or even had any real experience but i was kinda hoping/expecting Jade would want me to be in the band as his second guitarist. Sadly for me at the time, Jade had made promises to a couple of his other friends (guitarists) from the outside world that if he was to start a band again, they would all do it together.
I was slightly pissed and disappointed that i didn’t get the nod, but i certainly understood that he had an arrangement with some otherwise prior to me coming on the scene, so i copped it on the chin and went about my usual life, albeit a little sullenly.
In the meantime there was 2 of my closest work mates (Jade & Nate) planning a band around me and they had organised for a full band get together to have a chat about plans and ideas going forward. It was going to be a 5 piece band with 3 of Jades friends from outside the Prison filling the spots of Bass player, Drummer and 2nd guitarist.
The 5 fellas met up and chatted about all things band (well i wasn’t there, but i imagine they did), and that was that, they were going to start a cover band. Not much happened for a while (anyone the knows Jade knows he worked about as fast as a sloth back in the day - sorry bud) and i’ve got no doubt that i was getting into Jade and Nate’s ear about me being keen to jump in if given the opportunity, since there didn’t seem like much movement from the other guys to get things rolling.
Maybe a few weeks past and the same bunch of guys organised a poker night get together at a friends place in Tarneit. I may have turned up wearing one of those stupid Snuggie outfits that were in vogue at the time for a joke. We all setup around our friend Laurie’s large kitchen table (at the time Laurie’s wife was on holidays overseas) and proceeded to get into a game of Texas holdem. Poker was huge at the time, i loved it because it was a strategy game and i love strategy.
A few hands in Jade and Nate started talking about how the other 3 guys that were meant to be starting the band weren’t really interested and they’d have to look for a few more options.
Jade knew plenty of people from his muso days in the past but i was pretty happy to hear the news and was very confident that i was going to get the call up. I didn’t say anything though and i just continued playing my poker hand as the Jade and Nate kept talking about who they might use as the second guitar player. I was a little surprised at the time that they were doing this in front of me because they knew i was super keen to be in the band (a band that wasn’t even a band at the time) and they even started mentioning some older guys names from work that played the guitar that they were hardly friends with, but i just kept plating my poker hands thinking “WTF are they talking about, this is weird as but i ain’t biting”.
They band talk stopped and the poker game continued for a while (i was seriously weirded out by them not asking me to join, but i showed zero emotion about it) Jade and Nate started laughing and said to me “hey we were just taking the piss before, you’re in the band”.
The idiots were trying to set me up by talking about every single other option they have in the world (except me) right in front of me. From memory they were pretty impressed that i didn’t bite….so was I, but i was actually pretty pumped at the time.
It was the start of something we never expected.
