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Cub Sport on Coming Out and Coming Up

“We’ve had countless people say that our music has literally saved their lives”

Australia's Cub Sport's latest self-titled album is deeply personal, chronicling Tim Nelson's journey of coming out as gay and falling in love with fellow band member Sam Netterfield. The band's openness with fans has helped cultivate a culture of inclusion and has established their unique brand of emotionally-charged pop connect with listeners all around world.

NewNowNext caught up with Tim to get to know the band a bit better.

This new record is so cathartic. I feel very motivated to express myself when listening to it. For all of the new fans out there, what was the inspiration?

I wrote the latest record on the other side of coming out as gay. I feel like leading up to that point, I had gone from a place of self-doubt and living in fear about what people thought of me. I’m taking a lot of that fear on, in terms of how I express myself creatively. By the time I started writing this album, it was the first time I had really gone into a new creative project with so much self-assuredness, confidence and pride in who I am. That really added uplifting and empowering energy into the record while I was making it.

Like you, I met my husband through work and am all about it. What is the dynamic like, working and being so close? Does it make writing easier?

I haven’t known anything any different. We’ve always been soul mates, even before we were properly together, acknowledging what we felt. We’ve always had that bond, so it’s always kind of been the core of what we’re doing and an important part of our journey as individuals and as band as well. But I feel like since we’ve gotten together and even more so as we got married, it feels like what we have has been deepening and strengthening, and it feels like the friendship we have with Dan and Zoe as well – it’s like the same thing.

The four of us are always learning more about each other and our relationships strengthen all the time, which I think is pretty rare for a band, especially when the four of us manage ourselves all together. We run our record label and everything, so it’s a pretty unique situation, but it works really beautifully for us.

Now the U.S. leg of your tour kicks off this month, which is huge. Related to that, Cub Sport received an ARIA Scholarship award and from what I understand, you are the first band to make use of this for a tour?

Yeah, that was incredible. We put in an application and they selected us as an emerging act from Australia. They felt our plan warranted being given this scholarship, so we used that to tour last year. That was a pretty incredible thing, to not only have that help but also that acknowledgement from such a prominent figure in the Australian music industry.

Jennifer Medinaar

Now, you’ve toured all over the world, what have been some of your favorite venues or some of your favorite cities?

I couldn’t pick a favorite place to play, cause I feel like there’s a universal love, like good vibes at literally every show we play. And it’s wild that our fans all bring such a beautiful energy no matter where we are in the world.

The shows we’ve played in the last couple of weeks in Australia are probably my favorite ones we’ve ever played because they’re so huge. The way it’s grown here in Australia over the last twelve months especially has been wild. We’re playing to thousands of people in huge rooms. It’s kind of like a dream come true, doing headline shows on a stage that huge.

I’m really excited to get back to the States and play the more intimate shows. I feel like it’ll be a matter of time before we’re playing those huge shows around the world.

Besides being an absolutely gorgeous place to live, what is the music scene like in Brisbane?

I think that for us, growing up in Brisbane and being surrounded by a lot of friends who are also really creative and making music meant that we met a lot of people that were really instrumental in getting our vision across early on. One of my friends in Brisbane, Joe Agius, shot a number of the first music videos.

I remember he was the first person who really understood the Cub Sport vision before it was as fully formed as it is now. And that’s one relationship in particular, where if I wasn’t in Brisbane, I wouldn’t have met Joe and there are so many things that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t for him. Now some of my favorite artists are my friends and they’re all just making amazing music and it’s pretty exciting.

With so much happening now with LGBTQ visibility in music, are there artists that have inspired you to also be as visible as you are today?

There are a number. My favorite artist of all time is Frank Ocean. I feel like, just listening to his music, there’s a connectedness there. I’m not sure exactly what it is. I feel like knowing that he’s queer is a huge part of that.

And other artists like Perfume Genius, as a performer he is so inspiring to me. Seeing him perform has opened me up to realize there isn’t one specific way that a good performer performs. You can see that he’s just channeling his own unique energy.

Artists like Hayley Kiyoko and Troye Sivan who are tapping into the real mainstream world as prominent queer figures is beyond exciting and encouraging as queer artists.

What have been some of your favorite responses from fans since the new record came out?

We get messages every day, saying that our music and us being ourselves has given them the courage and pride to come out as queer, embrace their true identity and be proud of who they are. We’ve had countless people say that our music has literally saved their lives, which is something that I can’t even properly process.It makes doing this the best thing in the world. That is really incredible.

What do your fans have to look forward to for the next year?

We’ve got a couple of music videos that will be coming out which I am beyond excited for. We shot another one yesterday with Mallrat actually. That one will be out in a couple of months, but it’s maybe the best thing we’ve ever done. Then we’ve got a bunch more shows for the rest of the year. I’ve been writing a lot of new music as well, so we’ll probably try to put out something brand new before the end of the year.

Cub Sport kicks off their U.S. tour in L.A. on May 8.

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