★ Best Debut Album · AFMA 2024
- Limited-edition CDTwo-panel cardboard sleeve, edition of 50A$25
- Digital albumStreaming and downloadA$15
Debut album · released 6 October 2023
Home
'Home' is the debut album from The Good Behaviours. Borne out of Nick's covid era plunge into all things clawhammer banjo, 'Home' sees him applying his prodigious compositional talents to a chamber-folk setting.
Read the album notes
The album was inspired by two places that Nick calls home. Much of the music was composed and arranged on Dharug land in Kurrajong, an idyllic pocket of the Hawkesbury. Here Nick spent time with his parents' border collie, the inspiration for 'For Miles' and a small adjoining creek inspired 'Down by the Stream'. Reflections on growing up near the mighty Dyarubbin along with a new understanding of its geological and cultural history led to 'Across the Hawkesbury (Dyarubbin)'.
Nick's other home is Peppermint Grove Studios (Dharawal country), the home studio he built with Chris and Emily-Rose during lockdown. The album was recorded here and the vibrant garden and relaxed home setting permeates the music. Sometimes the clouds roll in low over Heathcote National Park, the scene inspiring 'Cloudy in the Gully.'
Both 'Together' and 'Sometime Soon' are covid-era odes to the joy of spending time with the people you love. 'Little Happy Dance' is the first piece Nick wrote on banjo and the impetus for this whole banjo-chamber-folk ensemble. 'Driving Home Again' sonically explores a late night return journey while 'Troubadour' captures the essence of a good old jam session.
The closing track 'Sunset Walks' is a banjo/piano duet that strolls gently along a magenta lit beach as dusk falls.
This album joyously captures five friends coming together at Peppermint Grove Studios and creating a little slice of 'Home'.
Tracks and the banjo tuning for each
- gCGCD3:42
- f#BF#BC#5:10
- gDGCD4:59
- gCGCD5:12
- dBEAB2:28
- gDGCD6:05
- gCGCD3:18
- aDADE3:39
- gDGBD3:14
- aDADE4:57
Tap a track to play it. It keeps playing while you look around the site.
Credits
- Nick Henderson — banjo
- Emily-Rose Šárkova — accordion, piano (track 10)
- Chris Stone — violin
- Felix Lalanne — guitar
- Holly Downes — contrabass
- All tunes composed by Nick Henderson
- Recorded and mixed by Nick Henderson at Peppermint Grove Studios
- Mastered by Adam Dempsey
- Photography by Ned Henderson and Kirsten Spry · design by Kitty Blackman
- Limited-edition CDFour-panel gatefold wallet with art by Shay TobinA$25
- Digital albumStreaming and downloadA$15
Second album · released 13 September 2024
It'll Be Alright
On 'It'll Be Alright', The Good Behaviours seek new emotional depths and foster a deeper understanding of their instrumental capabilities, honed over a year of touring their debut release (2023's 'Home'). In this new work, composer Nick Henderson draws not only on his Old-Time and Bluegrass influences but also incorporates elements of Nordic-Folk, Post-Rock, and Contemporary Classical Music.
Read the album notes
The band travelled to South Coast New South Wales to record in the Windsong Pavilion at Four Winds, a specially designed acoustic space nestled in the bush, typically used by classical chamber music groups. What emerged from those sessions are nine tracks that range from the heartfelt to the awe-filled, the delicate to the crushing and the melodic to the virtuosic.
The album title derives from the third track; 'It'll Be Alright, Nicky Boy', composed by Henderson as a personal pep talk, a musical hug.
Life can be hard sometimes and saying something simple like 'It'll Be Alright' can make a world of difference.
Tracks
- 7:56
- 5:52
- 5:04
- 5:57
- 5:21
- 2:54
- 4:53
- 5:20
- 4:08
Tap a track to play it. It keeps playing while you look around the site.
Written whilst Nick was on a banjo pilgrimage to the USA in 2023, the piece is an ode to new friends, whilst also a reckoning with the loneliness of solo travel. … Outside a dusty hut, amongst the red earth and tall jarrah trees of Dwellingup, WA, the piece crystallised.
It has become a band motto to not get pulled in to negative self talk and try to see the bigger picture of one's life. This piece features the fretless nylon-string banjo, an instrument that more closely resembles the ancestral African instrument that would become the modern 5 string banjo.
Credits
- Nick Henderson — banjo
- Felix Lalanne — acoustic guitar
- Holly Downes — double bass
- Chris Stone — fiddle
- Emily-Rose Šárkova — accordion
- Recorded in the Windsong Pavilion at Four Winds
- Mixed by Nick Henderson at Peppermint Grove Studios
- Mastered by Adam Dempsey
- Art by Shay Tobin
- Made possible by the generous support of Four Winds and The Yuin Folk Club
We acknowledge the Djiringanj and Dharawal People, on whose lands this music was created and recorded and pay our respects to elders past and present.
The first single · 19 May 2023
Cloudy in the Gully
The first release: a name-your-price download that became the opening track of Home, inspired by the clouds rolling in low over Heathcote National Park.