Sunnyboys Last Dance: Tour kicks off in founding brothers’ heartland

The perennial band that shares its name with an iconic Aussie ice confection has gone full circle for the tour that will bring down the curtain after more than 40 years.

Sunnyboys play Twin Towns Services Club. Picture: Brett O’Malley

Whether you’re referring to the ice confection or the band, nothing says ’80s Australia like Sunnyboys.

Now the four-decades-plus institution that is the band has gone full circle, kicking off its Last Dance tour in a place that has real significance for founding members and brothers Jeremy and Peter Oxley.

Twin Towns Services Club, where Sunnyboys play Friday and Saturday night, is a stone’s throw from Kingscliff, where they spent their formative years.

“We all went to Tweed River High School, we grew up at Kingscliff and we were all surfies, we rode boards ever since we could remember,” Peter Oxley previously told News Corp Australia.

“We were inspired by local bands who were writing and playing their own songs.

“There was a really good music scene happening in the Tweed, the Tweed Valley, Lismore and Byron Bay.

“There were quite a few hippies in those days who were really into playing music, out at Uki and Nimbin.

“It was fantastic to be around as a young teenager, it was really good.”

The Oxleys formed Sunnyboys in Sydney and soon established their own desolate-sounding brand of jangle power pop, turning out hits from Alone With You to Love in a Box.

Sunnyboys play Twin Towns Services Club. Picture: Brett O’Malley

“It was perfect; crossover surfie pop, rock ’n’ roll,” Peter Oxley said.

“All the coastal areas loved us, the Gold Coast, Brisbane.

“We just had a huge fan base all over Australia.”

For those too young or otherwise indisposed to have caught them the first time round, they’ve been active again over the past decade, amid revelations of Jeremy Oxley’s struggles with schizophrenia.

His wife and carer Mary told The Courier-Mail in 2014: “I guess I saw things in him that nobody else had seen for 25 or 30 years.

“But he saw I genuinely cared for him and he reciprocated.

“I guess you could call it fate, that we seem to have been made for each other.”

Twin Towns is also close to the Coolangatta Hotel, where in 2013 Sunnyboys broke Noiseworks’ longstanding attendance record. Not bad for a second go-round!

In 2016 they were a part of the Day on the Green concert series with fellow ’80s alternative darlings Hoodoo Gurus, Violent Femmes, Died Pretty and Ratcat.

Sunnyboys’ The Last Dance tour continues at Dee Why RSL Jan 20, Anitas Theatre Thirroul Jan 21, The Gov Adelaide Jan 25, Northcote Theatre Jan 28, Nex @ Wests City Newcastle Feb 4, The Tivoli Brisbane Feb 11, Drifters Wharf Gosford Feb 16, Enmore Theatre Sydney Feb 18.

Originally published as Sunnyboys Last Dance: Tour kicks off in founding brothers’ heartland