with Little May, Rob Taylor

November 29, The Den (City Diggers)

Wollongong is gentrifying, modernising, urbanising. As dilapidated beach shacks and shabby sharehouses are sold up to make way for towering apartment blocks and upmarket retail developments, the benefits are manifold - more CBD housing options for our swelling population, new lifestyle options, a more cosmopolitan vibe to the city centre.

However, demolishing these well-loved relics of the Illawarra might be putting a clamp on the local creative scene.

Joey Dawson is part of Wollongong band Round The Corner. They've just finished their second EP Blacket Street, named after the North Beach-adjacent road on which most of the band live. Much of the six-track EP was recorded in the shed and backyard of the Blacket Street house where the six-piece band - five guys, one girl - would practise, write songs and party.

But the house is soon to be demolished, replaced with one of the towering apartment blocks popping up all over town.

"We wrote the songs here, we recorded in the backyard, we all practise in the shed and surf and have coffee down at the beach. It's our local hangout, so we thought we may as well name it after the street," Joey said.

"But the house is about to be knocked down for a big development."

The band, named for the fact the band members literally live round the corner from one another, formed through neighbourhood hangouts and surfing friendships. With members from Canada and Denmark, as well as Berry and Melbourne, the band are a mixed bag of backgrounds and heritage who were all drawn to Wollongong through study at the university.

Joey said the lifestyle of the Illawarra was band-friendly, with cheap rents, a thriving university community and culture, proximity to the beach and a resurgent music scene keys to the success of Round The Corner.

"That's why we got the band happening, because we're all interested in the same thing with the surf lifestyle and the beach," he said.

"It's cheap to live here, you can get around the place easy and ride your bike to practice. The lifestyle brought us all together."

But it is that lifestyle that may, perhaps, be shifting. With established sharehouses being sold up, and a gradual gentrification slowly pushing inner-city rents skyward, the region's musicians may be pushed out along with it. Round The Corner's spiritual home is soon to go the way of "the Mansion", the bohemian enclave of The Walking Who. The Church Street manor, home to a number of local bands over the years, was recently sold ahead of demolition to turn the block into a high-rise apartment complex; but not before The Walking Who memorialised the home with their new EP, aptly titled Mansions, which was recorded by the band inside the mansion.

"These sort of developments will change the vibe of the place. The Walking Who and us, it's this backyard garage sound that people like," Joey said.

"It might change the music community, time will tell. But hopefully it doesn't change the price of rent," he laughed.

Round The Corner will launch Blacket Street with a bumper show at new venue The Den (inside City Diggers) on Friday night.

Joey said the Wollongong music scene is riding a wave of energy with a number of new ventures.