Entertainment
14 June, 2026
‘Take me to funky town’
FORTY years after ‘Funky Town’ became an international hit, Pseudo Echo is bringing its ‘Take Me to Funky Town Tour’ to Atherton this month.
The iconic Australian band will perform at the Atherton Hotel on Friday 19 June with frontman Brian Canham promising a modern live show built around the group’s classic sound.
“It’s a six-piece lineup these days. It’s a fresh sort of younger band. There are a couple of girls in the band, and we generally have it pretty slick, sort of a choreographed show,” Mr Canham told Cairns Local News.
“It has big visuals that all synchronise to the music. It’s just come a long way in professionalism, and really is a show these days, rather than just songs played by a band.”
The tour coincides with the release of ‘Machine Remixes Volume One’, featuring reimagined versions of some of Pseudo Echo’s best-known songs, including Funky Town.
Despite four decades passing since the song topped charts around the world, Mr Canham said it still holds a special place in the band’s live performances.
“It still feels like a current song. It still feels valid,” he said. “It was the song that we play that’d be really the button for excitement when it was in the set that was the point where it would always climax, and it still is.”
Mr Canham said the band’s famous version of Funky Town almost never happened.
“We stumbled upon that song again and just threw it in the set as a bit of a kind of a mucking around song, really,” he said.
“We threw it in an encore one night and we didn’t even know how to play it exactly. We just sort of jammed it and fudged our way around it, and it went over so well.”
The band has a long history of touring regional Australia and Mr Canham said Far North Queensland audiences have always welcomed them.
“We don’t get up there often, so when we do, it’s a big hoo-ha,” he said. “I love Cairns in particular. I’ve often headed off on a motorcycle ride up north and I’ve done diving up there, so it’s fantastic.”
Mr Canham believes Pseudo Echo’s influence on the modern synth-wave revival has helped keep the band’s music relevant.
“Our sound in particular has been a massive influence on that synth wave sort of resurrection that’s happened,” he said. “That’s really where it came from, was that original sound that we had in the 80s, that’s really made it relevant again.”
The Atherton show forms part of the band’s national tour supporting the release of Machine Remixes Volume One, with 18-plus tickets available through Oztix: www.bit.ly/3PQnj2l.
