The Teskey Brothers have spent so much time on the road that they’ve become masters of it – albeit, with a few hiccups along the way.

“We love the bus. It’s your little home wherever you are, it follows you around everywhere,” says Sam Teskey. In fact, he adds: “it’s a bit unsettling when we have to leave the bus. I’ve accumulated so much stuff over here, I’m like, ‘oh shit, what do I pack?’”

His prized possessions include a bunch of leather-working tools, with which he keeps himself busy between shows. “I’m building a big black guitar case/wardrobe-type thing, to house my gig essentials. It has enough space for gig clothes and some boots. There are compartments made of canvas and leather. So when I go off the bus, I bring that into the band room — it’s got my guitar in it as well, a dressing room guitar so I can jam out backstage. It’s got everything I need.”

Sam plays lead guitar and produces the songs he co-writes and records with younger brother Josh, whose astonishing vocal stylings have helped establish The Teskey Brothers as one of the most in-demand touring acts this country has produced in years. And in January, they’re bringing the show back home, as the headline act of a six-date A Day on the Green winery tour, after a year largely spent on the road in Europe and North America.

As we speak, Sam is on the tour bus in Edmonton, Canada, before catching a plane to Nashville for the four-day Bonnaroo Music Festival, where The Teskey Brothers shared a bill with the likes of Fred Again, Megan Thee Stallion, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Post Malone.

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His family is back home in Melbourne – the tour is three weeks on, three weeks off, and he flies home in between – but Josh’s partner and kids are on the tour, on a bus of their own. On last year’s nine-month tour of Europe, they had both families with them, and the band played shows only on weekends.

“Touring with the family tends to be a lot more expensive, but that’s just how we have to do it,” Sam says. “It’s either that or we don’t tour.”

But it wasn’t always this way. The Teskey Brothers began in 2008 as Sam and Josh and whatever friends they could rope in. But by the time they broke through with their debut album, Half Mile Harvest, in 2017, they were officially a four-piece, with drummer Liam Gough and bassist Brendon Love core elements of the line-up. Sam already had a child then (he has a second now), and Josh and his partner had two during the enforced touring lay-off of the COVID-19 pandemic years. When The Teskey Brothers re-emerged in 2022, it was as a stripped-back fraternal two-piece.