Indie folk artist Patrick Pierce on how he plans to coach West Vic's young musicians

After more than a decade touring venues across the world and releasing several albums, one half of the Pierce Brothers indie folk duo is heading back to the West Vic coast - this time to help shape the next wave of young musos.

❤️ Local favourites: Twin brothers Jack and Patrick Pierce have become regulars on the West Vic circuit in recent years, including a recent set at Timboon’s Graze the Day festival.

The pair are also included in the lineup for the 2026 Port Fairy Folk Festival. 

🎸 Back to band camp: Patrick will spend this weekend at Kangaroobie Camp, near Princetown, mentoring emerging artists at the inaugural Band Camp - a three-day intensive hosted by Warrnambool City Council and Moyne Shire Council.

• The camp will run as a hands-on workshop with small-group sessions on songwriting, arrangement, live performance, navigating the music industry and creating a signature style, giving attendees the chance to craft their identity as a performer.

📝 Scaffolding for musos: Princetown’s Band Camp will see Patrick swap stages for whiteboards, guiding participants through the “scaffolding” of the music industry, as well as what agents, promoters and tour managers actually do, how to set up accounts, and how to avoid predatory promoters. 

• “I think it’s going to be less about the songwriting and more about the business,” said Patrick.

• “I’ll start at the basics… what an agent does, what a promoter does, and then just slowly build up so no one’s left behind.”

💿 How they started: Patrick told the Brolga the chance to step into a guiding role feels like a natural extension of a career that began with a leap of faith in 2011, when he and his brother took advice from friends in the Melbourne band Bonjah and began busking seriously. 

• “On the first day, we sold, like, 200 CDs… and we were like, oh my god,” he said.

Within months, the pair had quit their “fresh-out-of-uni jobs” as crowds began to grow and their music took off.

🎶 Two halves, one sound: Despite their different creative habits, Patrick said the pair’s songwriting process “just works”. 

• Jack tends to see an idea through from start to finish, while Patrick keeps voice memo recordings of half-formed melodies or lyrics in his phone.

• “If you get a line and a melody together, that’s awesome… that’s a really strong building block,” he said. 

• Inspiration can come from anywhere: a misheard lyric, a drum tone, or a phrase that lands just right. 

“We do butt heads, but we complement each other in the ways that matter,” he said.

🎤 New album and tour: More than 40 countries later, the brothers have carved out a sizable following and have toured Europe in particular several times.

• Their latest album Moonrise, recorded with longtime collaborator Phil Threlfall in Jack’s self-built Melbourne studio, marks what Patrick deems their most confident and self-produced work yet.

The brothers’ next European and UK tour run begins in late January, and despite the grind of logistics, Patrick said the payoff is always worth it.