TOODY COLE
DIY ROCK 'N' ROLL QUEEN
After three decades of explosive Australian appearances with Dead Moon, Pierced Arrows, and as a duo alongside her late husband Fred Cole, Toody Cole returns to our shores for the first time fronting her own band. The co-founder and beating heart of iconic Oregon outfit Dead Moon, Toody has spent a lifetime defining what raw, uncompromising DIY Rock’n’Roll truly means. Now, at 76 years young, this door-busting, ceiling-cracking force of nature—part garage-grit Patti Smith, part jagged-edge Joan Jett, part Janis Joplin’s biker sister—continues to hold more than her own in rock’s endlessly youth-obsessed, male-dominated landscape.
For this momentous tour, Toody has assembled a powerhouse lineup to honour and animate the Dead Moon songbook: longtime family friend and Pierced Arrows drummer Kelly Haliburton, alongside Christopher March of Jenny Don’t & the Spurs, whose otherworldly guitar work captures the singular style of the late, great Fred Cole. These rare performances offer new generations a chance to experience the mystic backwoods Rock’n’Roll soul they’ve only heard on record, while giving longtime devotees an opportunity to recapture that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling that made every Dead Moon show unforgettable. This may well be the last time the Antipodes witnesses this essential piece of American underground Rock history brought to life.
Bad Batch was honoured to speak to Toody to find out about her upcoming Australian & New Zealand tour.
Hey, Toody. How are you?
Good.
You home? On tour?
Just got home last night from Spain.
How was that?
It was awesome. We played a festival called Dracula Festival. It’s down below Valencia, where all the flooding is, especially in this town, they actually cut the first night short because the roof was leaking. But yeah, we had a blast. It went down really well.
So, when do you come down to Australia? It must be soon?
Yeah. I’ve got a week before Thanksgiving in November. I should have the date right in front of me, but I don’t. I think 17, 18, something like that.
And so Kelly and Christopher from Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, they’re going to be the band?
Yeah, they’re doing a more extended tour and I’m joining them for the four shows in Australia and then another four in New Zealand.
Ah, awesome. Yeah, we’re from Geelong…
Oh, cool! Yeah, I know Geelong.
Last time we saw you play was in the Pierced Arrows at the National Hotel in Geelong.
Yeah! Well we played down in Geelong in Dead Moon several times. Someone in Geelong sent me the book on Bored!
Marree Robertson we’re guessing!?! Our friend Clinton Rooney, he’s a mad Powder Monkeys fan…
Oh, those guys. WILD WILD WILD (laughs) Yeah!
He’s just put a few books together about this great Australian band and there’s an article in Vol. 2 that mentions the Dead Moon Tour with the Powder Monkeys.
Yeah, that was, like I said, that was a real blast. (laughs)
There’s a story about Fred Cole giving John Nolan his guitar to play at one gig…
Yeah, that was like, he’d never, never, never do that for anyone. He’s probably maybe the one and only that that actually happened. Yeah. It’s amazing. It followed through with all those guys. They were really fun to play with.
John said that he broke the G string that night and sent Fred a G string in the mail?
Yeah he did! Well, Fred broke more than that! The D. He always broke the D string. It’s that damn Bigsby, man! (laughs)
For the Australian Tour will the set be mostly Dead Moon songs?
I’m doing a couple of songs from The Rats. I’m doing ‘Caroline’ that we played in Pierced Arrows. So it’s kind of a bit of a gambit. We’ve been doing ‘You Must Be A Witch’, most of the time, too. Which is off The Lollipop Shoppe album. All Fred Cole songs, but you know, they kind of cover a wider spectrum. I do ‘Acclaim To Fame’ as well, which was kind of… I don’t know… It was almost a Western Front song for a while. I don’t know if that was ever on record.
You released the Dead Moon Box set. Any more songs in the vault that’re ever going to see the light of day?
No, not really. I mean, at the very end, Fred was working on a couple of more songs. I mean, on that box set, for instance, there’s nothing from ‘Dead Ahead’. The last album in that. So, that’s at the tail end of that, and then all the Pierced Arrows stuff as well. In the duo, we were just pretty much covering songs that had been written before, but the two or three songs that we were kind of messing around with at the end, before Fred passed, he was just too sick to record them. We kind of never got it, and they weren’t completely finished. So, those never got recorded, unfortunately.
What was Fred’s process when writing songs? Was it the riffs first or was it the lyrics that kicked things off?
A little bit of both. A lot of times it was lyrics. He was always grabbing whatever was close, a paper bag, a napkin, whatever, to write a thought down on. I think a lot of it started pretty much with a riff or more the melody line that was in his head. And he basically kind of composed everything in his head. He knew what he wanted, everything to sound like. So when we’d get together to rehearse a song, he’d kind of, you know, he’d show me a bass part to start out with. Because he started out as a bass player himself and he’s the one who taught me how to play bass. And then after that, I just kind of take it and make it my own. And, you know, I would give Andrew, you know, try, blah, blah, blah, and different points. But so he could hear how it should all go together. You know, he’s as much of a composer as anything else too.
Do you write songs yourself?
I have some of the lyrics, but I’ve never… Unfortunately, that’s a talent I don’t have. Wish I did. But, you know, it’s kind of something that you either have or you don’t. So, there were a few different songs where I wrote one of the verses of lyrics or whatever. That’s as far as my contribution to that went.
We’re guitar and pedal nerds. What equipment will you bring with you?
I don’t use any pedals. No effects. I’m bringing my baby, which got delayed in flight on the way there [Europe] and on the way back. I just went to the airport this morning and picked it up. So I’m still playing the same Vox Teardrop Wyman bass. It’s duct-taped together and beat to hell, but she sounds awesome. That’s the only one I’ll ever play!
We interviewed Jason Summers a couple of months ago about the Dead Moon documentary ‘20 Years in the Crypt’. Do you know if the DVD is coming out?
From what I heard the last time I talked… We talked, you know, once or twice a month on the phone. But the last time I talked to him, yeah, he was still planning on doing something with it. So, I don’t think it’s been done or finished or whatever just yet.
You’ve just got back from Spain. Spain and Australia seem to have a great Rock ‘n’ Roll connection…
You know, again, the weather is conducive to having festivals later in the year or like you guys in Australia. It’s during our winter when most bands aren’t really touring all that much. It opens up that whole area again for doing a lot of outdoor kind of stuff too.
Any bands that stood out in Spain?
There was a band from Japan, from Tokyo, called Angel Face that I saw that was really good. There was 1800Mickey, who was really great. I’m trying to remember, there was another local Portland band that I really wanted to see called Exploding Hearts, but they were one of the ones where they had to cut the festival short. We went out drinking with those guys and a bunch of other people. They just stayed up all night because they had to catch a plane to Stockholm at four o’clock the next morning!
Jenny Don’t and the Spurs, they’re going to be playing in Geelong at the River Rocks Festival. River Rocks has been going for 17+ years. It’s one of the best Rock ‘n’ Roll events in Australia…
Wow! It’s amazing that it’s survived that long. That’s great!
Are you going to come down for that? We’re assuming you’re going to tag along with the band?
I don’t get there until the 17th, so I’ll miss it unfortunately.
So, where is your favourite place to tour?
Pretty much all the ones that we kept coming back to all the time, you know? Mainland in Europe and then up in Scandinavia, especially in Norway, we really loved playing there. And then Australia, New Zealand, and then in the States, it was, you know, the different major cities up and down. The I5 corridor’s what we call it on the West Coast. And Brooklyn and New York down in Manhattan especially, we’re grateful to keep coming back to, over and over and over again… And Athens and Greece… There’s a bunch of different cities that we always play every tour.
You had an antique store called Junkstore Cowboy?
Yeah!... until COVID came! (laughs). No, that was a really cool thing to do. This was after Fred had passed, and it was kind of like… it kind of hits you and just to have to do something. It was kind of an idea that we had talked about doing together. So it was really cool. This was in the basement of Mississippi Records, so it was really tiny, really small. And so again, when COVID hit, that was the end of that, there was no six feet of separation that was possible (laughs). So pretty much everybody just kind of shut down for a long enough time to where it was just, at that point, rather than have to make that almost hour drive in and out to commute into downtown Portland to where I live… It’s just,”I’m done!” But it was really fun while it lasted. It was great. I had a great time doing it.
We thought it might have been Trump’s tariffs that might have killed it.
(Laughs) No! That was pretty much all stuff that I had saved over the years and different stuff that I found. Just junk. I love junk stores. I love finding hidden treasures.
So… the ICE agents rockin’ up to Portland. What do you make of it?
Well, it’s pretty funny. As far as I know, and I’ve been gone for a week, so, you know I’m not certain of what I’m saying, but at this point, from my understanding, they asked the Oregon Guard first to come and they went, “Oh, hell no! No, we’re not doing that.” So, supposedly we’re supposed to be getting troops from Texas or something crazy. Yeah, so I don’t know. As far as I know, I mean, there’s some federal agents there, from my understanding, but it’s very few. I don’t think they’ve actually sent the National Guard. And this is a building that’s way out away from downtown. It’s out in southeast Portland. It’s really isolated and everybody’s been really cool protesting, whatever. So, I don’t know. Anyway, we’ll see what happens. But that’s all we heard in Europe was, “Oh my God, what’s going on in Portland?” You know, it’s just the way Trump builds everything up to be such a (Trump voice) BIG DEAL. It’s like, really? I live here. That’s not happening. What are you talking about? (laughs)
Yeah, he describes Portland as a war zone…
Well, what was truly insulting is that he said it was run like a third world country. I mean how would you like to hear that about your hometown? Which is completely false. I mean, we’ve got our same issues with the homeless population as all the rest of them, but they really dealt with a lot of that over the last couple of years. But, you know, it’s even worse in Seattle. I mean, every major city is pretty much dealing with the same problems all over the world. So it’s just kind of like, to be singled out like that, and a lot of it’s just because we are a sanctuary state, a sanctuary city, you know? So, I think that’s why. And at this point, Oregon, Washington, and California are all suing Trump about sending troops. We’ll see what happens with that.
We love the protesters dressing up in inflatable frogs…
Halloween’s coming, yeah come on! That’s how Portland is, okay? (laughs) Keep Portland weird! Yeah, it’s a great way of dealing with it because everybody knows how absurd it is. Let’s have fun with it, what the hell.
What would Fred have made of it? Would he write songs about it, do you think? Was he political?
Once in a while he’d write something that was political, but neither one of us was really that political, even in the ‘60s when there were people in the streets and protesting the Vietnam War. But yeah… I don’t know. I mean, at this point, I know he’d have the same opinion that I do, how completely ridiculous it is. Yeah. You know? And especially once they did this thing of taking one of the late night shows off air for his comments and threatening to hunt him down. It’s just like, really? I mean, come on. You should by now have a thicker skin than that. Just because not everybody loves you. Give me a break! (laughs)
Yes, he needs smoke blown up his ass constantly. How do comedians make a parody of it when it’s already this nuts!
It’s so ridiculous but they still do. Bring it on!
The Kimmel’s and Colbert’s have come back even stronger and going harder on Trump.
Wouldn’t you?
TOODY COLE AND HER BAND - AUSTRALIAN TOUR NOVEMBER 2025
Thur Nov 20 - The Tote w/The States, Burning Effigy, Velvet Haze DJ’s - ON SALE NOW
Fri Nov 21 - The Tote w/ Fancy Weapon & Lewis Hodgson - SOLD OUT
Sat Nov 22- Theatre Royal, Castlemaine w/ The Gnomes
Sun Nov 23 - Social Club, Balnarring w/ The Miffs
Tickets from linktree.com/ontheloose.au
BAD BATCH ZINE AVAILABLE TO ORDER (#2 LOW STOCK - DON’T MISS OUT)
Only $15 delivered anywhere in Australia. VISIT: paypal.me/BadBatchZine
If you don’t use Paypal email us at badbatchaustralia@gmail.com for bank details
(Please include your Name and Address)
International orders: fantasticmessrecords.com