Nic Dalton

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Nic Dalton is an Australian musician and record label owner, born Nicholas James Dalton on 14 November 1964 in Canberra. He plays guitar, bass, mandolin and other instruments and has been active since 1983. Dalton has been a member of several Australian bands, including The Plunderers (1984–95), Godstar (1991–95) and Sneeze (1991–present), and has also played with Ratcat and The Hummingbirds. He spent two years as the bass guitarist for the American band The Lemonheads in the early 1990s. He co-founded the Half a Cow record label in 1990, which grew out of a bookshop he and his friends ran.

Dalton’s early career began with Girls With Money and Get Set Go before forming The Plunderers in 1984. The band went through line-up changes as they moved between Melbourne, Sydney and other Australian cities. In 1989 he helped form Half a Cow Records after his bookshop became Half a Cow. In the early 1990s, Dalton filled in for The Hummingbirds on tour, which led to meeting Evan Dando of The Lemonheads. Dalton joined The Lemonheads as their bassist and contributed to the albums It’s a Shame About Ray (1992) and Come on Feel the Lemonheads (1993), even co-writing the song “Dawn Can’t Decide.” He left The Lemonheads in 1994 and returned to Australia.

In 2000 Dalton moved to a farm near Morongla, New South Wales, with writer Lucy Lehmann. He closed the Half a Cow bookshop in 1998 but kept running the record label. He released Home of the Big Regret (2004) with his folk-rock band the Gloomchasers, and followed with Play All Night in 2010. The Gloomchasers disbanded in November 2019. Back in Sydney, Dalton reassembled the Gloomchasers lineup and joined The Handlebars. In 2011 he formed The Sticker Club, a bubblegum band for kids, whose Scratch ’n Sniff album was released as a joint project with ABC Kids and Half a Cow. He has also released two albums under the name Chewee (2015 and 2017). A documentary about Dalton and Half a Cow, titled If It’s Catchy, It Means You Stole It, is in progress.