Backsliders are an award-winning Australian band that have a 40-year history of recording and touring the music festival circuit. Their riff-based sound blends rural American blues with distinctly Australian lyrical and musical themes.

Three-time Sydney Blues Society ‘Traditional Blues Artist of the year Award’ recipient, Dom Turner, is guitarist, lead vocalist, and founding member. Dom has toured nationally and internationally and has a number international music collaborations including The Turner Brown Band, and with US blues legends Phil Wiggins, RL Boyce, Sunpie Barnes and Kenny Brown. In 2024 Dom was invited to perform onstage with both The Tedeschi Trucks Band and The Allman Betts Family Band In 2004 Dom was voted Songwriter of the Year’ at the Australian Blues Awards in Goulburn, NSW and has a sculpture in recognition of this honour at the Goulburn Visitors Centre.

Joe Glover is one of Australia’s most innovative and dynamic harmonica and banjo players, and has toured and performed regularly with Backsliders in recent years.

Following the death of long-term drummer and key songwriter, Rob Hirst, the line-up will feature 2 drummers onstage—Rosscoe Clark and Hamish Stuart—both legends of Australian music, performing in the double-drumming tradition of bands such as The Allman Brothers and The Tedeschi Trucks Band.

The band will also include occasional bass from Hoodoo Guru's bassist, Rick Grossman.

It’s a lineup that carries serious weight, not just on the Australian blues scene, but across genres and styles the world over.

The achievements, success and reviews over the band’s 30+ years tell it all.

The latest release (November 2020) 'Bonecrunch' is the bands most adventurous recording to date. The 12 tracks represent a band with varied musical influences—swamp-blues feels on ‘Dog in the Fight’ and ‘Tea & Sugar Train’, intense blues riffs on ‘No Know-How’ and ‘Bad Recruit’; surf sounds on ‘Tombstoning’; to the eccentric ‘Obake’ [Ghost] where 1960s Japanese soundtrack music meets dub-reggae.

‘Heathen Songbook’ (2016) is an eclectic mix of 21st Century original blues as well as a number of versions of songs by artists as diverse as diverse as Robert Johnson, Dock Boggs and John Fogerty. These guys are renowned for captivating live shows - an eclectic mix of blues styles moving from driving delta blues riffs and jungle-like rhythms to ‘Piedmont’ blues influenced ‘all-acoustic’ unplugged treatments of 1920’s songs by blues heroes such as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Robert Johnson.

The 2011 album, ‘Starvation Box’, their 12th release, was heralded as their finest work to date. The 2007 ‘Left Field Holler’ is an eclectic mix of hard-hitting, frenetic new blues mixed with poignant ballads again taking the band to new limits. The 2005 ‘Live’ album is a collection of live performances from the Basement in Sydney, as well as the Melbourne blues festival. The 2003 DVD, ‘Live at the Basement’ features live footage from one of Backsliders many gigs at The Basement in Sydney. The concert featured tracks from Backsliders’ 8th and latest album, ‘Hanoi’. Described as a new direction for a band that welcomes evolution and seems to expand their audience with every new release, ‘Hanoi’ was voted ‘Rhythms’ Magazine Readers Poll Blues Album of the Year for 2002 and was a 2002 finalist at the prestigious Australian Record Industry Awards (ARIA). ‘Hanoi’ is a studio album of mostly original songs by Dom Turner and Rob Hirst. The band’s previous album, ‘Poverty Deluxe’ (1999), was a 1999 ARIA Finalist. A variety of tunes from the Backsliders’ back-catalogue of recordings has featured in the ABC TV programme 'Seachange’, as well as the soundtrack to the latest read by Tim Winton, ‘Dirt Music’ in particular ‘Down by the Riverbed’ from the Backsliders’ ‘Wide Open’ (1995) album. Backsliders have also appeared on a number of compilation albums featuring renowned international and Australian artists including the Byron Bay International Blues and Roots Festival and Live at the Basement Sydney, compilation albums.

Backsliders have made numerous television appearances in Australia and are regulars at major Australian festivals – Womad New Zealand and Womadelaide, Bluesfest, Blues at Broadbeach, Adelaide International Guitar Festival, the Melbourne International Music & Blues Festival (alongside Bob Dylan, Ray Charles & Tony Joe White), Woodford Folk Festival, Bridgetown Blues Festival the Festivals of Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide to name a few.