A year on from losing beloved icon of the Brisbane punk and live music scene Brentyn 'Rollo' Rollason, his band Blowhard come together with friends to pay tribute to the big man himself in what will be their final show ever.
Larger than life and a true character, Rollo (who was awarded posthumously the Grant McLennan Life Achievement Award at 2020 Queensland Music Awards on 3 March) leaves an empty space in many people's hearts, none more so than the people who loved and knew him the best, like Blowhard drummer and leader of Fred Band, Fred Noonan.“At a loose end, would be kind of what it feels like,” Fred says, describing the past year since Rollo's sudden death.
“My only analogy with it is, you know what a maypole is? You have all these people with these pieces of string dancing around the maypole and together they make that centre pole from an ordinary pole into a braided pole.
“And Rollo was like our maypole – he was the pole we all danced around, so he held us all together, all of our strings were attached to him and when the pole went we were all just standing there holding a piece of string.
“It's taken a lot of time to pull those strings up and get back to knowing what to do because the amount of stuff he did, you just don't realise until he's gone.”
From forming and fronting Blowhard to booking gigs, raising funds for recording and even drawing up the posters for shows, Rollo was a dynamic force in the Brisbane live music scene. There could be only a rare handful of bands of the time that didn't have some sort of interaction with Rollo.
Rollo receives a final, fond farewell when Blowhard host their tribute at The Tivoli Theatre in Brisbane next month, where all who knew him will gather to pay their respects with songs and stories. “It's a reuniting of friends because the last time we all would have met in this type of capacity was his funeral, which was a massive affair,” Fred says.
“When you go to funerals you always see someone you haven't seen for a long time and you go 'we have to catch up', and that never happened to any great extent.
“By doing the show we get not only the local Brisbane people, but also the bands up from down south who have had long-term relationships with Rollo. Rollo brought people together in an unusual way and that community was always kind of based around him and now we have to struggle on without him, so this hopefully will reconnect people.”
The Rollo tribute show also marks the final live performance for Blowhard, with Fred saying there's little point in continuing without the key efforts Rollo contributed. “They won't perform as Blowhard again, I don't think,” he says.
“The Fred Band basically has three or four members out of Blowhard depending on what format we're taking and we're still going to play.
“No one is giving up the ghost as such but it's pretty hard to fill Rollo's shoes, apart from the sheer size of them,” he laughs, “and it wouldn't do justice to the legacy. He started the band and he was what kept it together, so I think we'll go out on a big note.”
