Grief, music and moving forward

AFTER losing her bandmate and best friend of 20 years, getting back on stage hasn’t been easy for The Audreys’ Taasha Coates — but it’s become an important part of her healing journey.

Coates, the band’s vocalist, and guitarist Tristan Goodall first met as university students in Adelaide in the late 1990s. They formed The Audreys in 2004, embarking on a musical partnership that would span nearly two decades.

Together, they toured internationally, performed at major events including Woodford Folk Festival, Falls Festival, and Bluesfest, and earned three ARIA Awards for Best Blues & Roots Album.

So when Goodall passed away in 2022 at the age of 48, after a long illness, Coates was left devastated.

“It sent me into a spin for a while and I didn’t want to write songs without him,” she said. “I lost my voice a bit and lost my confidence. I didn’t know what I was meant to make without him.

“I’d lost family members who were ageing before but someone my own age who was my best friend it just really hit me. A lot of people took my hand and helped me up.”

One of those people was Goodall’s brother, Cameron — also a musician, who had performed on the band’s debut album Between Last Night and Us before moving into theatre. He had the idea of writing songs together for what would become The Audreys’ most recent album, released in March.

“A lot of the songs were about Tristan so were quite sad,” Coates said. “We thought we can’t release an album that’s only sad songs, so I also wrote some songs with our guitarist Tom which were deliberately not about Tristan or death.”

Although the creative process was often overwhelming, Coates said working on the album was ultimately a powerful and restorative experience.

While she returned to the stage just days after Goodall’s death — an emotionally charged moment — she knew it was something she had to do.

“Everyone was like, ‘Taash you don’t have to do this, just refund all the tickets’, but I said, ‘I think it’s what I need to do to process this’,” she said. “I got on stage and it was so hard, but also incredible. For me it was probably more profound and healing than his service.”

A multi-instrumentalist who plays keyboards, melodica, harmonica, ukulele and guitar, Coates is now looking forward to sharing songs from the new album, Ruin & Repair, at the upcoming Nimbin Roots Festival, which runs from October 24 to 26.

And while the set will feature new material, fans can still expect some beloved classics.

“People still want to hear our old songs from early records but for us the new stuff is really fun,” she said.

For more information, visit nimbinrootsfest.com