Philadelphia Grand Jury
Philadelphia Grand Jury, also known as The Philly Jays, are a Sydney, Australia-based band that mixes indie rock, punk and soul. The core duo are Joel Beeson (bass/keys/guitar, vocals) and Simon Berckelman (lead vocals/guitar), who performed as MC Bad Genius and Berkfinger. They played with several drummers, most recently Dave Jenkins Jr.
The band formed in 2008 after Beeson and Berckelman came from other projects and started their indie label. They signed with Boomtown Records in 2009. In June 2009 they released Going to the Casino (Tomorrow Night), which gained strong airplay on Triple J and appeared in Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities and its soundtrack. Their debut album, Hope Is for Hopers, arrived on 25 September 2009 and reached No. 34 on the ARIA Albums Chart. Dan Williams left in September 2009, with Ivan Lisyak temporarily filling in before American drummer Calvin Welch joined.
Philadelphia Grand Jury won the AIR Award for Best Independent Single or EP in 2009 for Going to the Casino. In October 2010 Welch left the band due to touring demands, and Sullivan Patten joined for the UK/US/Australia tour, finishing with the band in January 2011.
In March 2011 the band paused work on a follow-up to Hope Is for Hopers and later said they were on hiatus. On 2 November 2011 they announced they had split. Beeson moved into production as Boyhood, while Berckelman moved to Berlin to work on a solo project called Feelings, which released Be Kind Unwind in October 2013. Berckelman later invited Beeson and Williams to join Feelings on tour in 2013, sparking rumors of a Philly Grand Jury reunion. A midnight show at BIGSOUND in Brisbane in 2013 confirmed the reunion, and they announced a December 2013 tour mixing Feelings and Philadelphia Grand Jury material.
In 2014–2015 they went to Berlin to record new material, producing a second studio album that would become Summer of Doom. A new single, Crashing and Burning, Pt. II, was released in August 2015, and the album Summer of Doom came out in October 2015. The band toured infrequently through the late 2010s, releasing standalone singles "$10K" in 2019 and "Nervous Breakdown" in 2020. They entered a second hiatus due to COVID-19, but announced a reunion in 2024 to celebrate the 15-year anniversary of Hope Is for Hopers, with shows planned from November 2024 to March 2025.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 13:08 (CET).