Alana Jagt

Alana Jagt’s dynamic rasp soars over her blend of stormy folk-rock noir that's refreshing yet somehow familiar. Live she performs powerful, vocal-led solo affairs; playful trio shows; and with her six-piece twin guitar rock band.  

Born and raised on South Australia’s Iron Triangle, Jagt cut her teeth as a teen playing keys and singing harmonies in her parents’ ramshackle blues band. At seventeen she skipped to the capital and established a song-writing outlet as one half of folk-duo Buffalo Boyfriend, but the songs quickly outgrew the folk harmony outlet, and with the 2017 release of her solo debut Wilderness, Jagt steadily built a dedicated audience in her own right–one that has followed her from beloved little Adelaide venues like the Grace Emily to performances at Adelaide Guitar Festival, and supporting artists the likes of Abbe May and Mick Thomas nationally.

If you’ve seen Alana perform live these past few years you’ll know that at Alana Jagt shows you're as likely to hear a Ween cover as you are a folk ballad; she's as big a fan of Aldous Harding as she is Sir Tom Jones.
 
Goodbye Grotebollen is Jagt's long-awaited full-length release, released in October 2022. Granted, it didn't exactly arrive hot on the heels of her sold out debut EP, Wilderness. Okay. True. A few things slowed up the process. There was this pandemic, and before that, an aborted studio session or two, not to mention seemingly endless pressing plant delays. And oh yeah, Alana's parents' house was destroyed in a fire.

That's actually how the record got its name. Sifting through mountains of cold black slush where the house used to be, Jagt discovered a charred, discoloured photograph depicting a cake of mysterious origins. "Turns out, my parents once worked in a tulip bulb sorting factory in Holland for a bit," she says. "When they were due to leave they brought in this farewell cake to enjoy with the other workers. Grote bollen translates to 'big bulbs'... there could be a Dutch pun happening there, I'm not exactly sure, but I eventually came to think of these songs as my bulbs and now I'm saying goodbye to them." 

It's this carefree eclecticism that immediately set Jagt apart from Adelaide's prolific 'Americana' scene. With a meaty rock band formed around Jagt's instinctive, distinguished song writing, and with their deft shape-shifting ability, Jagt can (and will) play a tiny gin bar one night and Brisbane's coveted BIGSOUND festival the next.

Goodbye Grote Bollen was supported by a slew of full-band shows in the Spring and Summer of 2022. "It's a relief to finally put this record out there", Jagt says. "Because, as audiences will soon find out, we've got some pretty big new bulbs growing already."