NEWS

I live in a town of 185,000 people. Sounds like a decent sized population, doesn’t it. Penrith is a city, by definition. A comparable city in the U.S is Salt Lake City . Yes, I know that SLC’s metro area extends to incorporate around 1.2 million people, but that’s still well below Sydney’s metro area of 4.5 million, of which Penrith is a part of. In fact, for those who don’t know, Penrith is only 50kms away from the CBD of Sydney. Based on those numbers, you’d expect that Penrith is a thriving, cosmopolitan place to live with Art galleries, Theatre companies and a killer music scene. Well, two out of three ain’t bad, I guess. Well, that’d be okay if I wasn’t a musician. But I am. Let me go back a couple of steps in the story.

I grew up in this town, my dad is also a musician. I used to delight in giving him a hand with packing his gear into the car, watching him drive off to a venue somewhere to rock the socks off the people he played for. As I got older, I’d spend the time learning a new riff on guitar to show him when he returned at some stupid hour past midnight, until eventually I got to share the stage with him as well. When I think about it, it was a real rite of passage. When I turned 20, I left home, travelled North about 800kms and went to university in a little town called, Lismore. It was there that my musical osmosis really began. Lismore is in the middle of nowhere (from a big city perspective) with numerous pubs and a university. A university that just happened to boast one of the most exciting Music departments in the country at the time. So I guess it was a given that if you throw a heap of musicians in a place miles from anywhere, with a stack of pubs, a thriving music scene would germinate. I remember Lismore at the time (early-mid 90s) being called the Seattle of Australia. If you look at some of the amazing artists that were cutting their teeth at the time, you’d see that it’s true. Sam Hawksley, Darren Hanlon, the members of Grinspoon, Kieran Glasgow, Martha Baartz, Adam O’Connor, Rebecca Henry, The Simpletons, Cartoon, The Hottentots, Skunkhour and to be honest, a stack of others I can’t think of right now. Never mind that our lecturers were the members of Crossfire and so catching Jim Kelly giving Friday night guitar lessons from a stage as he accompanied whatever international act was passing through town. I vividly remember (surprisingly, it was a big night) a John “King” Cleary gig out at Byron Bay. Superb. But I digress. The point is, we would roll out of one pub and into another, and another, and another, and be treated to top quality musicians playing an eclectic range of genres. Seriously, you’d catch a mate’s Jazz Fusion set, hop across the road and watch another mate’s Metal set, walk out of that pub and check out the Funk band playing next door. Yes, Lismore is university town. But wait, Penrith is home to a university too.

After my Lismore experience, I headed further north to Brisbane. Now, while the Brisbane couldn’t match the Lismore experience, it still has a vibrant live original music scene. From what I’m told, this wasn’t always the case . From my understanding, before the 90s, the school of thought in Brisbane was that you headed down to Sydney or Melbourne if you were to make it big. This began to change when bands like Regurgitator, Custard and Powderfinger decided that they wanted to base themselves in their hometown rather than uproot their whole life to the Big Smokes (Sydney and Melbourne) down south. I guess it was a case of a critical mass of Brisbane acts being noticed by the industry and collectively (either deliberately or coincidentally) deciding that they’d play the game on their terms, from their place. Whatever happened, I can tell you that there are plenty of successful Brisbane acts who are succeeding on the world stage and doing it from their home town. Can you see where I’m going with this?

The Western suburbs of Sydney, I’m talking from Parramatta westward, are home to many talented songwriters and performers that cover the gamut of genres (I know there are even a few small record labels out this way too.) And yet, if we want to connect with people in a live performance setting, build our fanbase, we have to travel into the city. Now, I don’t have an issue with travelling into town to play at some of the great venues in there, but here’s the catch. The way things are at the moment, an act has to bring its own audience. In days gone by an act would play it’s best to win over a venue’s clientele, but very few venues have a regular clientele to win over these days and so, in order to have a successful gig, the pressure falls on the act to supply the audience. And boy, there is pressure. I can tell you that many bands play to 10 people or less at many gigs. Now, combine that pressure with having to drag your audience 50kms away from their couch. You get my drift? There are 185,000 people in this town, they shouldn’t have to always drive for an hour to see a good band. Now, I know many bigger acts on larger promoters’ books play Panthers, but Chuggy won’t have a bar of me yet and so unless I hire out  the Evan Theatre myself, the chances of me playing there anytime soon are slim. Besides, one venue doesn’t make a live scene. As the song goes, “From Little Things, Big Things Grow”, so we’re going to start small. Every 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month I’m going to be playing from 11.30am- 1.30pm down at Pep’s Coffee Bar, a local cafe who are big supporters of original music (and of course big fans of mine). As we go along, I’ll be bringing along some other very talented artists to share the gig and introduce them to my home town and vice versa.

Next step, find a local venue for my 11 piece band to play in