Queen Juno—the new project from Cindy Ryan, Bow Campbell, Pat Hayes, Chris Newton, and Pete Timmerman—today release their debut EP First Rodeo across all streaming platforms. Produced by Paul McKercher (You Am I, Augie March, Midnight Oil), the five-track EP captures a band with decades of underground pedigree channelling it into something fiercer, darker, and more immediate than anything they've done before.
Queen Juno emerged from Saturday afternoon sessions at Bow Campbell's place—five musicians and veterans of Sydney's underground scene with years of chemistry between them. Drawing from alumni of Stella one eleven, Front End Loader, The Falling Joys, The Widdershins, and SXY XMS, the band isn't a nostalgia project. It's a reckoning.
The band's sound draws from the same well as Nick Cave's raw confessionals, PJ Harvey's unflinching intensity, and Rowland S. Howard's jagged guitar work, but it's unmistakably their own. Named for the Roman goddess—protector, avenger, queen of the pantheon—Queen Juno embodies that same duality: power tempered with precision, fury balanced by grace.
With McKercher at the helm, First Rodeo captures the tension between control and chaos, delivering five tracks that refuse to play it safe. This isn't about reliving the past. It's about what happens when seasoned players stop second-guessing and start swinging.