Episode 1: Dan Haggis & Tord Knudsen – Sunship Balloon, The Wombats

Sunship Balloon

Listen to the Trusty Chords podcast via your preferred platform of choice here.

Hello and welcome to Trusty Chords, the podcast which aims to celebrate music and those that create it.

This is the very first episode of the podcast and if you’re listening to it, it probably means that you know me personally, heeded my incessant recommendations, and were incredibly charitable, or alternatively, the various algorithms and the mysterious ways in which they work have been kind to the both of us.

But there is a third reason you could be listening to this, and it’s possibly because you’re a fan of Sunship Balloon.

That’s who I’m chatting to on this debut episode, and if you’re not across that name, there’s a chance you might know the folks who make up that duo. Comprising Dan Haggis and Tord Knudsen, the pair have been creating music as two-thirds of English outfit The Wombats for over two decades now.

In 2007, The Wombats released their debut album, A Guide To Love, Loss & Desperation, and swiftly began a career as a hard-working group that continuously pump out brilliant songs and equally impressive albums. I’m talking songs like ‘Let’s Dance To Joy Division’, ‘Jump Into The Fog’, ‘Lemon To A Knife Fight’, and ‘If You Ever Leave, I'm Coming with You’, which combined, would make up four pretty good additions to any greatest hits package.

For Australian music fans, they’re a mainstay of local stages, with 15 tours of the country in the last 16 years, and close to 100 performances throughout Australia as a result of those tours.

In 2018, The Wombats’ vocalist Matt Murphy (better known as Murph) kicked off a solo career as Love Fame Tragedy, and in 2019, Dan and Tord decided to pool their creative resources to launch their own project, Sunship Balloon.

Releasing debut album Everywhen in 2020 amidst a global pandemic, I had a chat to Dan for Rolling Stone Australia at the time and got a wonderful insight into some great musicians making wonderful music. Fast forward a couple of years, and after The Wombats released their highest-charting album to date in early 2022, Sunship Balloon are back with another record. Titled Real Humans, it’s another great example of why they’re such impressive musicians.

For this first episode of Trusty Chords, I was lucky enough to have a lengthy chat with Dan and Tord. Unfortunately, we did have a few first-episode issues, and near the end, we actually lost Tord (though I’m assuming he’s still located safely in Norway), so only Dan joined in for the Trusty Chords segment of the podcast.

Regardless, enjoy the chat with Dan and Tord, and I’ll see you at the end of the episode for some general housekeeping.

Dan Haggis’ Trusty Chords

Dan’s One Influential Artist

1. Nirvana

Dan’s Three Impactful Albums

1. Foo Fighters – The Colour And The Shape (1997)

2. Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)

3. Neil Young – After The Gold Rush (1970)

Dan’s Five Trusty Songs

1. David Byrne – ‘Strange Overtones’ (2008)

2. The Smashing Pumpkins – ‘1979’ (1995)

3. Bon Iver – ‘Holocene’ (2011)

4. Phoebe Bridgers – ‘Motion Sickness’ (2017)

5. Alvvays – ‘Not My Baby’ (2017)