Into the Wild(hood)

Rod Dalgety and Lauren Harthas

Indie style duo Wildhood has been busking together on the streets of Melbourne for the last six months. The duo, Rod Dalgety and Lauren Harthas, have been hanging out and busking together since January but have been playing separately for a number of years.

Since playing solo and since being introduced to one another by mutual friends at a gig, the pair has been inseparable and harmonized in such a way that it was magical. Working together enabled the pair to gain perspective on each other’s talents and they became the outstanding duo that is Wildhood.

Originally just wanting to busk on the streets of Melbourne, the pair became increasingly popular and started to see an incline of followers every week.

Derived from a spin off of “childhood”, Rod and Lauren made up the name Wildhood.

New Zealand born, Rod moved over to Australia about a year and a half ago to check out the music scene, while Lauren has been around music her whole life growing up with instruments and singing in school choirs.

“A lot of our friends said that we would work really well together and we did, we formed a connection and went from there.”

Performing covers of Sam Smith and Ed Sheeran, the duo is in the process of writing their own songs so they can release an EP and get noticed.

For Wildhood, the future of busking is unpredictable, however Rod feels that busking will always be around and is a great way to get noticed in a “cash driven city”.

“Busking is a really good promotional tool, I think it’s a good way to get noticed. You get really passionate people the come in to listen to your music.”

“A lot of people come to Melbourne for the music, which is great. Once the cash stops and people only have cards it will shift and there won’t be so much promotion” but Rod feels that it will still continue for a long time. Lauren says it’s hard to predict what the future holds, “with the amount of people who use cards these days instead of cash, it’s hard to say how much we would collect.”

Wildhood have a varied audience and love to hang out and play for hundreds every day. Their indie style is a taste that street walkers can enjoy for a long time.

If you want to see more photo's of Wildhood or see some behind the scene's photo's head to our Facebook page.

Feedback is also always welcome so please leave a comment below telling us what you think, what you'd like to see more of and of any great buskers you'd like to see on here.

Written by Katherine Allen

Edited by Kimberly Grima

Photography by Kate Katrina