You Am I star Tim Rogers: ‘Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll are great, but it’s the writing I love’

It’s early evening on a weeknight, and Tim Rogers is back at his home in regional Victoria after a day spent rehearsing for his role as Pozzo in the play Waiting for Godot.

“I’m doing it with a head cold, so the dreariness of some of Samuel Beckett’s writing is feeling right up my weary alley,” Rogers says. “It’s a good little theatre company just starting in Castlemaine. I like being involved in things from the ground up – we’re sort of building the house.”

Rogers is of course no stranger to standing on stage, with one of his most notable appearances of late being at the 2025 ARIA Awards in Sydney last November. During the ceremony, his band You Am I were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.

“Quite where our popularity sits is an odd one,” Rogers muses. “At the Hall of Fame, I looked at the trophy cabinet, and all the other acts [who were inducted] had sold millions of records and could play these huge venues, and here’s us. We really were the runt of a beautiful litter. So whoever chooses these things, good on them for looking out for the runts.”

On Zan Rowe’s Double J program Take 5 earlier this year, Rogers lamented the irony of being inducted into the Hall of Fame despite the band being “completely broke”. When asked about the financial pressures placed on working musicians, Rogers downplays the direness that his previous comment implies.

“That was just a day when I couldn’t pay the bills,” he says. “It’d be great to sell more records, but really, we’re doing OK. When we were at our most successful in Australia, we’d spend three quarters of the year playing overseas because we wanted to play in France and go see rural Normandy. If we had a more intelligent sense of ourselves, we would have said ‘no’ to a lot more, but saying ‘yes’ put you in more ridiculous situations, and so we went for that.

“We have our friends who are more successful and have boats and houses and things, but I don’t think we’re a group who ever thought that we would have all that. We’re a medium-sized deal to a small group of people, but really that’s where our aspirations were. It’s just the times when you’re feeling a bit grubby and sweaty and smelly and you think, ‘Jeez it’d be nice to get a better class of drug or a sandwich with mayonnaise instead of margarine’.”

Although an artist who’s dedicated his life to the joy of creating as both a solo act and a team player – he’s also the frontman for punk rock band Hard-Ons and The Ferguson Rogers Process with The Bamboos’ Lance Ferguson – Rogers is also frank about the down times and the mental health struggles he’s faced in the past.

“When [You Am I] started playing, there was no talk at all about such things, and there was a bravado. If you [didn’t have that], the vulnerability had to be mixed with a performative style,” says Rogers. “But whether you’re a musician or not, everybody wants to be heard and wants their troubles to be given recognition and to try and find some solutions.”

In terms of what can be done to assist musicians in crisis, Rogers is doubtful that institutions helping is the way forward for the music community.

“I’m very happy to be proven otherwise, it’s just that I noticed during the virus times that some of the big touring agencies did a lot of public social media about such matters, and then it seemed to be all an advertisement for their upcoming big tours,” says Rogers. “On a smaller level, I just hang out in band rooms a lot and try and to be available if there’s someone who wants a yak. If someone can recognise themselves in my own very small experiences and can feel some sort of kinship, that’s great. Onward, brave human.”

Although this year entails some looking in the rearview mirror – landmark You Am I album Hourly, Daily is celebrating its 30th anniversary, and the upcoming Strung Up tour will see the band play songs from across its catalogue with a string quartet – Rogers’ current focus is writing new material.

“I’ve probably got 40 or 50 new songs on the boil. Whether it’s for The Bamboos or Hard-Ons or You Am I or a couple of different other musical theatre projects, I like flipping them between different groups and different performance styles and writing just for the hell of it,” he says.

Rogers observes that “very few people are interested in new things” when they come to see him play live, but new material will be written and road-tested regardless.

“It’s condescending to an audience to just presume that all they want to hear is older material, even if the majority do – 92.5 per cent apparently, according to the latest statistics. We can still do that, sure,” he says.

“[We’ll turn up and] there’ll be a drinks rider and maybe someone will have party drugs and those who are interested can go along with that. Or I can have a cup of tea and a panini at 3am – or a lot of whisky; whatever’s going on that day.”

Even though Rogers clearly has an affinity for the stage, he admits that, like any job, touring has its share of lulls. The best way out of them, he says, is simply realising “what you love about it”.

“If I’m having a bad spot in the tour, my wife will often ask me, ‘what do you really like about being a musician?’,” says Rogers. “I’ll think, ‘yeah, that’s good, that’s good, and the sex and the drugs and the rock ‘n’ roll are great’, but it’s definitely the writing. Even if no one gets to hear it, flexing that muscle and sitting down and working on tunes, I couldn’t be happier. As long as there’s a pad and a pencil, I’m happy as Larry’s live-in lover.”

You Am I – Strung Up, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, October 18; The Tivoli, Brisbane, October 22 and 23; Melbourne Recital Centre, November 5 and 6.

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