Words and photographs by Dennis Atkins
There’s a song that always worked its way into Blues Arcadia’s repertoire. It was a band favourite and a genuine fan favourite, a song that had been on set lists since the Brisbane blues band became an institution in South East Queensland and beyond, going back a decade.
Corner Girls is a sultry, slow blues earworm that gets feet tapping and hips swaying. Primarily about bad behaviour, discoverable on a few levels, this is also very much a “time’s up” song. That’s why writer, foundation band member and Brisbane blues scene guitarist everywhere, Chris Harvey Blues, knew just where it should go on that last, wildly memorable gig at Lefty’s Music Hall in Paddington’s Caxton Street on the last Sunday in November, 2025.
It was going to close the show; close the irreplaceable space Blues Arcadia occupied since 2016, and close what was for so many Brisbane blues fans a byword for a great night or afternoon out. As many have commented since the band announced on Facebook and Instagram on June 18 last year, they had come to the “end of a long and winding road”, and it was time to “say goodbye”, we were watching a death in the blues family of South East Queensland. It’s been a death that’s left some in the band raw. Alan Boyle doesn’t want to talk about it, although he told the crowd at Lefty’s the primary reason for the breakup was Harvey Blues’s relocation to Melbourne with his partner, Rachel.
Of course, band breakups are never simple, and this one had myriad factors reflecting where individual members were at, and, perhaps, where most weight in this decision can be found, the brutal economics of the live music scene in Brisbane.
First things first, those early days, a decade ago, after Blues Arcadia emerged from another band, Bella Reunion, an EP hit the deck with four great songs, strong enough to last through the new band’s lifetime. The signature tune Corner Calls was there, along with Rockin’ Chair, Take The Money, Operator Please and the dirty soul blues song, Here Comes The Rain. It was a hell of a way for a band to introduce itself. Bang, they were there and remained a fixture on the scene until they weren’t.
Looking back on this remarkable decade, Chris Harvey Blues, known to all as Harvey, reflects on how frontman Alan Boyle gave the band presence and contributed to recognition in those early days.
“It was because of his voice, which was like a breath of fresh air on the whole scene when we started playing,” Harvey said from his new base in Melbourne. “His voice really shaped the sound of the band, and it wasn’t really a blues thing per se, but had more soul to it.”
The closeness of Harvey and Alan is apparent when talking to the guitarist, which also helps explain why the move to Melbourne by a critical part of Bluies Arcadia could be seen as the pivotal factor in the band’s breakup. Like so much in the life and times of musicians, it’s not that simple. According to Harvey, it was becoming harder for Blues Arcadia to secure enough ticketed events to make the band’s future viable and worthwhile.
He said more and more venues in Brisbane were cutting live music completely or, if they did book acts, it was a single performer, a duo or, at most, a trio. For a five-piece like Blues Arcadia, the options were narrowing. A venue like the blues scene mainstay, the Royal Mail at Goodna, which is owned by the publican, can and does book bigger bands, has live music more than once a week and works tirelessly to back local talent. As an aside, the connection between Blues Arcadia, Andrew Café, and the Royal Mail family is most famously on show when the curtain finally went up at the Goodna pub following the dark days and nights of the Covid months of dreary silence. The first band to get the show going again was, unsurprisingly, Blues Arcadia.
However, all this meant that Blues Arcadia faced some hard choices. Harvey was heading to Melbourne to live, drummer Casper Hall’s young family was expanding, and just playing in Brisbane and the surrounding area wasn’t meeting the economic needs to keep the band together. This confluence of personnel movements, eventualities, pressures, and demands generally stared the band down. A breakup was top of the “next move” list. It wasn’t easy, and the hurt was unavoidable. It’s only three months since that roof-raising last gig at Lefty’s, and the future will soon overtake the past.
Harvey returned to Brisbane at the beginning of February to play at the Colonel’s Jam at the Morrison Hotel, Woolloongabba, a gig he’s featured at through his time with Blues Arcadia. He’s also been stretching his musical legs in Melbourne, performing with his partner Rachel Clark in town and out in regional centres like Ballarat. Harvey emphasises that Melbourne offers greater opportunities for blues performers, noting that there are up to five blues jams a week in Melbourne, while Brisbane struggles with fewer than half a dozen a month.
This grim reality is what lies behind the end of Blues Arcadia. It was a death in the family, and many blues industry volunteers, players, and fans are still in grief. We had one last gig that will long be remembered – maybe not quite in the same way people recall the Go-Betweens playing one last time at the Roma Street multicultural festival in October 2005 or the Saints at the Pig City Festival two years later.
However, the 350 or more people who squeezed into Lefty’s on the last Sunday in November will never forget a minute of it. They danced (bum to bum), they sang along, they cheered, and they left with grins that took days to go away.
Goodbye, Blues Arcadia. It was a hell of a ride.
