Founding members Jake Doyle and Dean Whitby recall being so broke last year that they spent an hour trying to sneak into the St Jerome's Laneway Festival in Footscray, eventually giving up and sitting next to a fence to listen to the music.

Just 12 months on, the Drunk Mums are playing at the festival after winning The Very West 2011 competition last December, which hands local unsigned bands a Willy Wonka-esque ticket on the line-up.

"As corny as it sounds, it's like a dream come true," says frontman Doyle, 24, who sings vocals and plays guitar in the band.

"We're hoping to take this opportunity and just ride it and keep it rolling. Because if we don't keep it rolling noone's gonna notice us."

Originally from Cairns, the Drunk Mums moved to Melbourne three years ago with their brand of breezy '70s-inspired garage/surf rock.

Unashamedly dismissive of their home town, they cut their teeth at the iconic Johnos Blues Bar, now defunct, where their name was born from drunk old ladies in the crowd grabbing their cheeks and trying to seduce them. "There's nothing going on in Cairns. There was nothing going on in Cairns and there's still nothing going on in Cairns," Doyle says about its music scene. "Melbourne's way too good. Just the amount of things happening here. Every night just blows our minds. It's ridiculous."

Down south, the band's five members ended up in Yarraville, three of them living at a house in Francis Street, which has turned into a hub for friends and musicians, the remaining two not more than a block away.

"This is the Francis Street house, which is becoming a bit of a legend on its own, but it was the Draper Street house up there," says 22-year-old Whitby. "We'd have parties Friday, Saturday nights; it was a network of all our friends."

Whitby

says the band is playing as much as possible and finally starting to get serious about its music. "We've been doing it for years, living the lifestyle of a musician without sort of doing it properly," he says when asked about living the dream. "We've always wanted to and we've always played music and I think we always just bummed around too much."

Doyle hopes the Laneway spot will kickstart the band's rise, with surf-inspired music soaring in recent years. "It's skyrocketing and this is definitely our time to make shit happen."

The St Jerome's Laneway Festival is on Saturday at the Footscray Community Arts Centre. Drunk Mums are on stage from 11.50am-12.20pm.

Details: lanewayfestival.com.au