Emerging Sydney band, Edgecliff, has been booked to play at the Cobar Bowling & Golf Club this Easter and will also return in September as the headline act for the Run-ning On Empty 2022 Festival.
While the band of former school mates may be based on Sydney’s northern beaches, one of its members, lead singer and guitarist, Will Howell, has a strong connection to Cobar and Cobar’s musical history.
Will learnt his craft as a musician from his father, Jason Howell (of Typhoon fame) who, in turn, learnt from his grandfather, Keith Mitchell (from The Tymekeepers).
“Our family has been involved in music in Cobar spanning over 60-70 years,” Jason said.
“William’s great, grandfather Keith Mitchell was the founding member of The Tymekeep-ers.
“They played shows for the entire area at clubs and pubs and were the main entertain-ment for most balls and dances of the era.”
Jason said Typhoon started their musical career in his pop’s back shed, which was where the Tymekeepers before them had gath-ered regularly to practice.
“I would be in there from a very young age listening and watching the group master their tunes,” Jason recalls.
He said his grandfather Keith taught him and brother Brad, and also Typhoon’s other band members, Jason ‘Moon’ Arnold and Gary ‘Locko’ Loughran, how to put together their tunes and prepare for a show.
“Typhoon were very fortunate to have Keith get up on stage and play with us at one of our gigs at the New Occidental Hotel,” Jason re-calls.
“Keith got a great reception and was labelled ‘the oldest living teenager in the world’.”
Will started out playing gigs with Typhoon at age 14.
He played as their lead guitarist in 2019 at Cobar’s Tribute Night for Keno Josephson and he’s also played with his dad and uncle at a few COHOE Roosters Rugby League Masters Team fundraisers.
“Will also played the very first Running On Empty Festival with Typhoon back in 2018 and he really enjoyed being on stage with Ter-ry Serio [from the Running on Empty movie] and performing the movie’s theme song It All Comes Runnin’ Back.
“So it’s very special the Edgecliff band get to do the 2022 festival on the 40th year anniver-sary of the cult movie,” Jason said.
Jason is now Edgecliff’s manager and is stoked about bringing Will and the band back to his home town of Cobar to play.
“Edgecliff’s early learning days mirrored that of Brad and I,” Jason said.
“They’re five young boys who all went to high school together and had a passion for music. All but William had never played a musical note before picking various instru-ments in my jam room!
“Each member of Edgecliff learnt their craft at our house, which has brought back so many fond memories of the early days way back when we cut our teeth learning from all the great muso’s Cobar produced.”
Jason said Edgecliff (made up of Will, Kai, Jesse, Nick and Jacob) have evolved and are now one of the premier acts to come out of the northern beaches.
Their debut single Waitless (which the boys described as a “hard edge, 70s psyche rock/post grunge style”) was released in April 2021, and one the band describes as their “benchmark track”.
It was quickly followed up by their second single, Belong to the Crowd, which was re-leased last May.
In addition to the release of a number of Youtube clips and playing gigs around Sydney (when COVID does not interrupt them), Edgecliff has recently released their new single Calling For More which will feature on their first EP later in the year.
“Edgecliff has recently signed and have been taken onboard by On The Map PR team which is super exciting for their future,” Jason said.
After their Easter performance, Edgecliff will be back for Running On Empty’s 40 year reunion in September.
Running On Empty Festival organiser John de Bruin said it was great to have the next gen-eration playing at this year’s event and he’s thrilled the Edgecliff boys are also working on a song for ROEF2022 which is planned to be released on all platforms this June/July.
