As news of the Greater Sydney lockdown hit over the weekend, Hockey David had to flee a Brisbane gig before they reached an encore. Unlucky!

As a spate of COVID-19 cases affects NSW and other states, the Sydney-based band proved that even 5 minutes more is not good enough in the middle of a pandemic.

I’m all for respecting the health orders, but there’s a strong part of me that wants to yell “Let them finish!” (Behind a mask, of course).  Hockey Dad were playing at The Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane when the new restrictions came into effect, stating that anyone who had been in the Greater Sydney area since June 21 had to isolate and GTFO ASAP.

Even for a laid back, surf-rock duo such as themselves, this was a shattering development as they announced on their Twitter.

“Fuck. This is the heaviest thing we’ve ever experienced.”

“Due to new COVID restrictions from QLD health, the next two shows can’t go ahead.”

“We had just finished our set and were about to walk back on stage for an encore. We were then told we had to leave the venue immediately and isolate,” they elaborated.

“We are absolutely gutted and are lost for words. Our team is working on a solution to fix all of this. Will be back with more updates as they come. Sorry.”

The timing was unfortunate too, as they had just announced new tickets to their Brissy shows.

Windang locals Billy Fleming and Zach Stephenson recently headlined the Yours and Owls festival with the latter speaking about the challenges of touring schedules in a pandemic. “It’s been a year of figuring things out as we go and understand what has been dealt to us,” he told Rolling Stone. 

They had only just returned to live music at the festival.

Stay healthy, boys.

You can read more about this topic over at the Indie Observer and the Live Music Observer.

Check out ‘Good Eye’ by Hockey Dad:

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