Dropping Honey trio back to play mix of new and old

The Wollongong band was around in the late 1990s and early 2000s, recording two EPs and an album before singer-songwriter Damien Lane and guitarist Jolyon Pagett left for the UK in 2003.

Now the original trio of Lane, Pagett and drummer Darren Ireland have joined up to play a gig at RAD this month.

Though the band played a few gigs in recent years as a four-piece, these are their first shows as a trio - and with new material - for more than a decade.

But, despite the passage of 12 years, Lane said the band never actually called it quits.

"It was never something that was spoken about, but we just didn't know what was going to be happening," Lane says.

"From that point on, none of us lived in the same city. We got together for a one-off gig in 2010 and after that Tumbleweed asked us to go on tour with them so we did that as well.

"Without doing that I don't know that we would have gone on to do any more shows.

"It made us realise it was something we enjoy and was worth doing a bit more."

But only if they were performing some new songs. Lane says a third of the set-list for next week's show will be new material, which includes songs he wrote several years ago and one or two that are a few months old.

For Lane, it was crucial they took some new songs to the show in Wollongong and another in Sydney.

"Just to make it something we can be enthusiastic about," Lane explains.

"Some of the old songs I wrote when I was 17 so it's a bit odd to be playing them now.

"I don't mind playing them, but they need to be amongst newer songs, otherwise it feels like a nostalgia thing, which we're not really interested in doing."

Bringing the band back also gives Lane - who composes soundtracks for TV and film - an outlet for material he has written but didn't really fit anything else he was doing.

But they did fit Dropping Honey, even if age may have changed a few things here and there.

"I think we're better as players and I think I'm better at writing music now," Lane says.

"But they definitely do sound unmistakably like Dropping Honey.

"I think we're more aware of what our strengths are so I'm more likely to write things that I know we're going to be able to pull off well, rather than go off on these tangents just to prove to myself that we could do stuff."

These days, Lane says the band is "more peaceful", with everyone in it more for enjoyment and a sense of escape than any idea of becoming a big band.

"When you're younger and in a band you're constantly trying to go up whatever ladder of success you might be on," Lane says.

"But now, as long as some people rock up to our shows and they have fun, I'm pretty happy.