The Aruba connection came about when McVernon was living in New Jersey in 2014, where he became mates with a guy named Ray Mikell. 

“Ray was the was the good will ambassador for Aruba and put on events in Aruba,” McVernon said. 

“He loved my music and asked ‘could you write me a song for Aruba?’”

“I said, ‘sure’. So, I wrote the song and they flew me to Aruba and had me on the radio.”

While in Aruba he also played shows and has returned three more times to perform there. He will head back to the tropics in April for a 10 day tour. 

He finally made a studio recording of the song, which is on his new solo album, Brien McVernon presents: The New Adventures of Captain Retro, to be released in April. 

“Aruba Tourism now want a copy of the song. They are interested in how they can use it to promote Aruba in America,” McVernon said. 

“So, we will see what happens with that. Like everything, you do it, throw it in the mix and see where it lands.” 

And it is probably this attitude that has kept the multi-instrumentalist afloat throughout a career that has spanned four decades and engaged with highs and lows. 

McVernon arrived in town fresh from Sydney to study music in the early-80s. 

He was soon playing bass in the Steve Hoy band, while also playing in a jazz outfit and working up his own punk band, Phantom Agents. 

The Phantom Agents were possibly the town’s first, and maybe even only, new romantic act. Or at least that’s how they dressed. 

“We just wanted to play raw rock’n’roll and punk,” McVernon said.

“We saw a Duran Duran clip and decided to dress more like that, like Adam and the Ants, because we thought the new romantic thing would get us more attention.”

They played at venues like the long-gone Nightmoves, where they held a residency, and opened for popular acts like The Johnnys and Sunnyboys. 

Phantom Agents morphed into Lipps System. The band had promise, touring with Pseudo Echo, Icehouse and The Church. They moved to Sydney, and then promptly fell apart. 

Not long after, in about 1986, came Raiding Party. It did well on the Newcastle music scene, recording and releasing a couple of singles until their singer was poached. 

“After Raiding Party I kinda’ went ‘this all sucks’” McVernon said. “I decided to put a band together where I was the singer.”

In 1991 Circus Life was born. It fused art rock with a pop sensibility and a good dose of heavy rock. The band quickly caught the attention of record labels, including PolyGram. 

“All of a sudden, I lost my guitar player,” McVernon said. “I tried a few more line-ups but it wasn’t really working out.”

It was the mid-90s and he was back to square one. In the meantime, he got a job working as the music director for Warner’s country acts.

“They said, ‘We’ve got these country singers but we want them to look more like they have a rock band around them, and you’ve got long hair, and we want Bon Jovi backing a country singer in a cowboy hat,’” he said. 

At the same time he was working in a ‘guns for hire’ country orchestra that did studio work with the likes of Troy Cassar-Dailey, Lee Kernaghan and Slim Dusty.  

A colleague at Warner encouraged him to start a rockabilly band. 

“He kept mentioning it to me. I was kind of like ‘I don’t see this’”, McVernon said.

“I started listening to more Stray Cats and getting more involved in 90s swing.”

He formed The Retro Rockets, a rockabilly swing act, in the early 2000s. They recorded five albums and toured internationally. 

In 2012, he established Brien and the Blackouts a New York based outfit. McVernon eventually moved to New York in 2014. 

McVernon returned to Australia in 2015, “for family reasons”. 

“I was trying to find what I really wanted to do, while also picking up gigs here and there,” he said. “I really wanted to do another solo album.”

McVernon had already squeezed in two solo albums, On The Road, 1998, and Days of Sun and Moon, in 2013. 

“Mark Tinson said ‘I think you are ready to do another retro album,’” he said. “I locked myself away and started writing everyday.” 

The result is the soon to be released 11 track  Brien McVernon presents The New Adventures of Captain Retro. 

The album will be launched first in Melbourne with a Newcastle launch at Lizottes on April 8. He will also tour the album to the US, New Zealand and, of course, Aruba.