There are plenty of ways to measure thirty years in a band. Albums released, kilometres travelled, festival stages crossed, line-up changes survived, records sold and all those other milestones that eventually get condensed into a few neat paragraphs whenever an anniversary rolls around.
Then there is the 28 Days way of measuring it.
Simon Hepburn is sitting at home when we connect, having been playing Battlefield while waiting for the interview to start. His dog is nearby, gaming comes up almost immediately, and within minutes we are talking about getting older, becoming grandfathers and finding the things in life that actually make you happy.
It probably wasn’t how either of us expected a conversation about thirty years of one of Australia’s most recognisable punk crossover bands to begin, but somehow it makes perfect sense.
Because once we get into the actual story of 28 Days, that same idea keeps appearing. Have some fun. Make the music you want to make. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Appreciate the people around you while they’re here. And if you’re lucky enough to still be doing the thing you love thirty years later, don’t waste too much time trying to explain why.
In 2026, 28 Days have plenty of reasons to look backwards. Their initial 30th anniversary run through Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide sold out, Upstyledown has finally made its way onto vinyl, and the band have expanded the celebrations into another Australian run taking them through regional centres, Western Australia, Tasmania and back home to Frankston.
Even after all this time, that response caught them off guard.
“It blew us away, man. Totally, totally blew us away,” Simon tells me. 28 Days have never completely disappeared, playing scattered shows throughout the years, but a headline anniversary tour was something else altogether. When those shows started selling quickly, Simon says the reaction inside the band was basically, “Fuck, what’s going on?”
For a group that has lived through number-one records, national television, huge festival stages and international tours, there’s something wonderfully grounded about hearing Simon describe the current response as simply humbling.
“We’ve been doing this for so long, man, just having a ball doing it, and we’re all mates,” he says. “That’s the main thing.”
Maybe that’s one of the secrets right there.
No Agenda, Just Make Something That Feels Good
Long before Upstyledown, Big Day Out crowds and the crossover success that would make 28 Days part of the Australian soundtrack around the turn of the millennium, there was Frankston, skate culture, punk, hardcore and a bunch of mates looking for something a little less restrictive.
Simon had already been playing hardcore before 28 Days came together, and while he still clearly has plenty of love for that material, the new band represented freedom.
“With 28 Days, it was more like, let’s just make a band that we can just kind of do whatever the fuck we want with,” he recalls. There was no agenda and no grand strategy about what genre they belonged to or where the band was supposed to go.
The early combination of Simon, Jay Dunne, Adam Nanscawen and Damian Gardiner clicked almost immediately.
“It was just like, fuck, this is fun. How good’s this?”
That lack of rules would become one of the defining parts of 28 Days. Punk and hardcore sat alongside hip-hop, samples, turntables and whatever else happened to sound right at the time. Listening back to the self-titled debut now, you can hear a rawer version of the band on tracks like “Sand”, “Kool” and “Ball Of Hate”, still working out exactly how far they could push the idea.
Simon doesn’t remember it as some carefully planned evolution.
“Just going with whatever felt good. When you’re young, you just do what you want.”
Even his own relationship with music started with something similarly immediate. Somewhere around thirteen or fourteen, Simon heard Jimi Hendrix and then saw a mate with an electric guitar.
The first time that guitar was strummed in front of him, something clicked.
“I just remember the first time he strummed it, I went, ‘Oh, I need one. I want one.'”
Sometimes that’s all it takes.
Throw Everything Into the Song
By the time Kid Indestructible arrived, some of those extra ingredients were becoming increasingly important to the 28 Days sound.
There wasn’t a boardroom conversation about becoming a punk/hip-hop crossover act. Simon remembers it being far more organic, with early experimentation around records and samples simply opening the door to more possibilities.
If something sounded like it might work, they tried it.
That attitude also explains why 28 Days never sat particularly comfortably under one genre label. Punk, hardcore, rap-rock, nu-metal and plenty of other tags have been thrown at the band over the years, but reducing what they were doing to whichever genre happened to be fashionable at the time misses the point.
Simon sees musical influence more like a giant snowball.
Every band hears another band, a riff, a drumbeat or some strange sound that sends them somewhere else. For 28 Days, songwriting meant getting into a room together, throwing ideas around and seeing what survived.
“That’s how 28 Days write songs,” he explains. “We would just go in a studio and just, you know, ‘What do you think of this?'”
It’s a process Simon still misses in an era where files can simply be thrown into a Dropbox for everyone to work on separately.
“I just want to go back to the studio and jam again.”
That old experimental streak also produced some wonderfully strange moments scattered around the band’s catalogue: samples, interludes, B-sides and pieces that didn’t necessarily need traditional guitar, bass and drums to be considered part of the 28 Days universe.
Simon laughs while remembering one track essentially built around a police interview recording of a mate repeatedly giving some version of “no comment.”
“I reckon it’s one of our best works.”
And honestly, that tells you plenty about 28 Days.
When Upstyledown Changed Everything
Then everything exploded.
By 2000, “Sucker” had helped build the momentum before “Rip It Up” seemed to appear everywhere. Upstyledown crashed into number one on the Australian album chart, went Platinum and suddenly this band born from Frankston’s punk and skate culture was operating right in the middle of mainstream Australian music.
Simon remembers the whole period as surreal.
“We’ve gone from playing the Arthouse, which is sadly shut down now, to going on Pepsi hits or whatever it was.”
There wasn’t a manual for what happened next. 28 Days simply took the opportunity and tried to enjoy it.
Some of Simon’s favourite memories aren’t necessarily the obvious career milestones either. He remembers the band carrying video cameras around long before every tour moment could instantly become content on TikTok, resulting in the wonderfully titled When Dickheads Snap and all manner of stupidity being captured along the way.
One memory takes him back to Belgium, armed with a shitty video camera and Jedi Master Jay, trying to make what Simon describes as a crappy B-grade ninja movie.
“It was the funniest fucking day we’ve ever had.”
That’s the stuff that stays with you.
Twenty-six years removed from the chart positions, television appearances and industry noise surrounding Upstyledown, Simon talks less about sales figures and more about those strange little pieces of life happening around them.
Memories that last.
Big Day Out: Terrifying and Fucking Triumphant
For anyone who came through Australian music in that era, Big Day Out remains almost impossible to separate from the memories.
28 Days experienced it across several different stages of their rise, appearing in 2000 as everything was building, again during the massive Upstyledown period and later around the Stealing Chairs era.
I still have my own old Big Day Out ticket from seeing them in Adelaide, so pulling it out during the interview immediately turns what could have been another festival-history question into two middle-aged blokes remembering just how fucking special those days actually were.
Simon remembers the scale first.
“The crowds were huge.”
Sydney particularly stands out in his memory: an enormous audience, unbearable heat and the feeling of walking onto a stage knowing there was nowhere to hide.
“It was basically like playing in the shower. I should have just taken the guitar in the shower.”
But underneath the jokes is a real sense of what those stages meant.
“It was scary, but it was also fucking triumphant too. It was like, fuck, how good’s this?”
That contradiction captures the Big Day Out perfectly. Terrifying because suddenly you’re sharing these enormous stages with some of the biggest alternative bands in the world, but exhilarating because somebody has handed you the opportunity and all that’s left is to step up and take it.
Simon remembers standing there thinking one very simple thing:
“Don’t fuck up.”
He probably did hit the occasional wrong note, he laughs, but that’s part of going to see a live band.
That’s also why Simon sounds genuinely disappointed that younger audiences don’t have an obvious Australian equivalent to what Big Day Out represented at its peak: a place where punk, metal, hip-hop, electronic music, alternative rock and whatever else could collide in front of the same crowd.
Those festivals created memories.
Which makes what happens next in Adelaide particularly interesting.
Back to the Adelaide Showground
In January 2027, 28 Days will return to Adelaide for Froth & Fury Fest.
For Simon, there was an extra detail he hadn’t realised until our conversation: Froth & Fury now takes place at the Adelaide Showground, the same grounds that hosted all those Adelaide Big Day Outs.
That stopped him for a moment.
“Oh, is that the same place, is it?”
Once the penny drops, so does the significance.
He jokes that his first job will simply be making sure “Grandpa” doesn’t break a leg walking onto the stage, but returning to those same grounds more than two decades later clearly hits something deeper.
“It’ll be humbling, that’s for sure.”
For me, walking back into those Showgrounds for Froth & Fury already brought its own wave of memories. For Simon and 28 Days, the experience is going to carry another layer entirely.
The audience will be different. The festival has changed. The Australian heavy scene has evolved several times over.
But somewhere on those grounds will be the ghosts of Big Day Outs past and a band that somehow managed to keep going long enough to come back around again.
Scotty Is Still There
Not every part of thirty years can be celebrated with a laugh.
There is no way to properly tell the story of 28 Days without talking about drummer Scott Murray.
Scott’s death in 2001 came at a point when the band’s career was flying, and Stealing Chairs, released the following year, would inevitably carry everything the remaining members were trying to process.
Simon doesn’t pretend otherwise.
“That was probably some of the hardest times of our lives.”
He was still only in his mid-twenties.
The album, Simon says, had its “yings and yangs” because they consciously wanted it to contain celebration as well as grief. But underneath it was the raw emotion of losing their mate far too soon.
Asked whether creating music helped them process what had happened, Simon doesn’t hesitate.
“Definitely. A lot of that music was just raw emotion of us missing old mate.”
Even now, Scott’s presence hasn’t disappeared.
“We think about him every day. Every time we play. Scotty’s always there, man.”
One particular memory sends Simon somewhere else entirely.
He recalls being overseas, possibly in Nottingham, soundchecking in a dive bar when Scott began playing a beat. Simon started throwing something over it on guitar and, from that little moment between two musicians, “January” began to take shape.
It’s not the stadiums, television performances or chart positions that come to Simon’s mind when talking about Scott.
It’s a drummer playing a beat in some little room on the other side of the world while his mate thinks, I’ve got something for this.
That’s a band.
“Very, very talented man,” Simon says quietly. “Very sad to lose him. Rest in peace, Scotty.”
Life Is a Gift
We eventually move through Stealing Chairs, Extremist Makeover, the independent years, the stopping and starting and everything else that can happen when you cram three decades of living into one band.
Then Simon says something that shifts the conversation again.
“Life’s a gift. You’ve got to get out there and use it.”
He isn’t offering some carefully rehearsed philosophy. It’s Simon being Simon. Play games if gaming makes you happy. Make music. Walk the dog. Go to work. Find your thing and enjoy it.
“Just be happy.”
That hits home for me for obvious reasons.
I tell Simon about going through stage four cancer in 2023, getting through it and deciding I wasn’t going to spend whatever life I had left sitting on the sidelines waiting to live it. Music media had already been part of my life for years, but surviving that changed the equation completely.
If this is what I love doing, then fucking do it.
Simon gets it immediately.
“Life’s for living. Just have a bit of fun.”
It’s a simple sentence, but sitting inside an interview about a band that has survived thirty years, huge success, grief, burnout, breaks, reunions and everything in between, it suddenly feels like the whole story.
Loxton, 2005
Which brings us to another old piece of cardboard.
I still have the physical ticket from seeing 28 Days play Loxton, South Australia, in August 2005 with Behind Crimson Eyes supporting.
Twenty-one years later, I hold it up to Simon through a screen while interviewing him about thirty years of his band.
“Fuck. Look at that.”
That little ticket is why the regional side of this anniversary run matters.
28 Days weren’t only a Big Day Out band. They didn’t just exist on Channel V or in packed capital-city rooms. They came out into places like Loxton where fans didn’t have major touring bands rolling through every week.
Simon says regional touring remains hugely important to them.
He remembers more recent trips where people travelled for hours from farms and properties just to come out and have a good night, and that’s something the band doesn’t take lightly.
“I hope we gave them that.”
The new anniversary dates are taking 28 Days back into those kinds of places again, including a Tasmanian stop at Forth that caught Simon’s attention when he discovered just how old the pub apparently was.
“How good’s that? Go and play a 147-year-old pub.”
Then there’s Frankston.
Home.
Simon admits that one might be daunting in its own completely different way.
But regional venues and hometown rooms are as much a part of this band’s DNA as any enormous festival stage.
I ask him what it feels like knowing somebody held onto a ticket from one of those nights for more than two decades.
“It makes me feel good,” he says. “If people feel good from the music I’m playing and have good memories, that makes me feel good.”
Simon has his own collection.
He has kept passes from shows across the years, a giant tangled stack that he reckons would probably require ten blokes and ten hours to unravel properly. Each one carries the same thing my old Loxton ticket does: a portal back to a particular night, city, stage and version of yourself.
Those memories aren’t always perfect.
Neither are live shows.
That’s the point.
“You want to see something unique,” Simon says. “Sometimes good, sometimes maybe shit.”
I’ll take that over perfection every time.
Thirty Years Later, They’re Still Mates
Near the end of our conversation, Simon starts talking about the other guys in the band.
He praises Damo’s musicianship and gives plenty of credit to Jay for knowing exactly how to work a crowd. Simon even jokingly calls himself the weakest link, which I immediately call bullshit on.
But the way he describes 28 Days live in 2026 tells you why people are still showing up.
It isn’t supposed to feel like watching some untouchable heritage act carefully recreating an artefact from 2000.
It’s supposed to feel like catching up with old mates.
Jay walks out, talks to the crowd, somebody buys someone a beer and the room becomes part of whatever happens next.
That’s the 28 Days experience.
Thirty years after a group of mates decided they wanted a band where they could do whatever the fuck they wanted, they are still here. Still nervous before shows. Still taking songs into rooms around Australia. Still laughing about old disasters. Still remembering Scotty. Still jumping in vans to play regional pubs. Still finding ways to enjoy it.
And most importantly, still mates.
For Simon, there doesn’t seem to be some complicated answer to why 28 Days has survived.
Have fun.
Look after yourself.
Look after each other.
And when the opportunity comes around again, plug the guitar in and fucking go for it.
As Simon tells me before we wrap things up:
“We’re out there to have some fun. If you see us in the crowd, say hi.”
Thirty years in, that might be the most 28 Days thing he could possibly say.
TOUR DATES
Friday, October 2: Torquay Hotel, Torquay
Saturday, October 3: Pelly Bar, Frankston
Thursday, October 8: Edge Hill Tavern, Cairns
Friday, October 9: The Warehouse – with Eskimo Joe, Townsville
Saturday, October 10: Magnums, Airlie Beach
Thursday, October 15: The Carine, Duncraig
Friday, October 16: Amplifier Bar, Perth
Saturday, October 17: Dunsborough Tavern, Dunsborough
Friday, October 23: Forth Pub, Forth
Tickets via
www.teamwrktouring.com
