The Northern Rivers music scene was on show to a crowd of adoring fans Saturday night at Bay FM’s inaugural Air Waves live and local gig celebration in Bangalow.
The region has long been famous for its thriving community of creatives and a host of internationally acclaimed artists either coming from or moving to the area but with some of the bigger music festivals having ended their reigns of glory and chaos in headlines, any recent fall-out for the local music industry has been less clear.
‘Putting on a live event is very expensive,’ Air Waves organiser Ange Kent said bluntly, two days after hosting six bands plus DJs on behalf of Byron’s Bay FM Community Radio at the Bangalow Bowlo.
As well as organising Air Waves, a feat pulled off with the help of local musician and Bay FM volunteer Yasmin Morris, Ange Kent is longtime Bay FM volunteer presenter and host of Friday afternoon drive time program Northern Rivers Music Box, a round up of local musicians in the contemporary scene.
‘My dream was always to put on music,’ Ms Kent said, ‘during the pandemic, I did put on three gigs at the Brunswick Picture House with local musicians that were obviously locked-in, in our area and it was within all the government requirements.’
‘But this one was more like putting on something bigger,’ she said.
Ms Morris said she’d been involved with bigger festivals as a team but helping organise Air Waves was the first time she ‘got to call the shots’.
‘It was very exciting to be able to choose high quality acts that got the crowd engaged,’ Ms Morris said.
‘I would love to do this more in the future alongside my own music career.’
Ms Kent said the pair could not have pulled off the event ‘without the grant’.
Funding bodies target community radio to ‘revitalise’ live music
Bay FM had been successful in competing for event funding, Ms Kent said, and was selected alongside five other regional NSW stations for a program co-funded through Sound NSW, Australian Music Radio Airplay Project and the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia.
The three bodies had joined forces, she said, ‘to target regional community radio stations to revitalise live music in their area with local musicians’.
‘This is about showcasing the incredible talent that we have here right in our region, and showcasing different genres we have,’ Ms Kent said.
‘Musicians are actually moving here because there’s a radio station that plays their music and now there are venues and promoters that are going to really support local music,’ she said.
‘So just watch this space, it’s really exciting where we’re sitting at the moment.’
An ‘unforgiving’ performance: Kirin J Callinan’s grand closure
Saturday night’s effort in the north of the state featured new, emerging and established artists, with artiste extraordinaire Kirin J Callinan closing the show in sensational style complete with screeching guitar, writhing, by then, half-naked body, echoing vocal crescendos, soothing synths, perfect percussion and a dynamic set list that offered the audience everything from a gentle ballad to industrial soundscape and dance bangers, including his surprisingly faithful cover of 1985’s pop hit, The Whole of the Moon.
‘Unforgiving,’ was how Ms Kent later described the headline act, who at one point sauntered through the crowd before returning to the stage to finish where he’d started.
Earlier in the night, local favourites Loose Content and Versace Boys had punters jostling, jiving and jumping on the dance floor and in the case of the latter, the lead singer took a surf break of the crowd variety in true dedication to the band’s retro influences.
Loose Content brought a dramatic change of energy from dance grooves to indie rock, while earlier in the afternoon sounds of reggae, rock, blues, funk and alt-country featured thanks to Thirst Trap, Casey May and the Lovers and StayLucky.
‘Our audience had heard them on the radio and wanted to catch more of it,’ Ms Kent said, describing how patrons had come in waves to catch various acts.
Community radio gig creates new regional music fans
‘Casey May and the Lovers and StayLucky have never played to a crowd that big before,’ she said, ‘so it was a break for them and they got it and they stepped up to it’.
‘They did gold star performances and they stepped up to the plate and I was so happy for them,’ she said.
‘Definitely, the likes of StayLucky, Thirst Trap, and Casey May and the Lovers, they got new fans.’
Thirst Trap had been around a couple of years, Ms Kent said, playing ‘a lot’ and with management.
‘So I would call them sort of emerging,’ she said, ‘Versace Boys, they’re all very established musicians and they’re on the festival run at the moment’.
‘Loose Content definitely have got their stride now, based in Melbourne, and doing gigs in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, touring.’
Audience shuts up for Loose Content’s MiLLa
Any rock lover who hasn’t seen Loose Content’s MiLLa live on stage needs to make catching the powerful performance a priority, especially while the thrill of seeing someone apparently destined for Big Things, as other Byron music legends would have it, is still available.
Loose Content are a deceptively tight three-piece, relishing in the best indie with a dash of glam has to offer and with none of the associated bad attitude, unless you count asking the audience to shut the f**k up before launching into a compelling full-bodied rock ballad, which no one there seemed to.
‘I know Loose Content and Kirin J Callinan sold vinyl, people were coming out and buying their records after their sets,’ Ms Kent said.
Could sing: live and local lives up to the hype
The ‘prolific’ songwriter, as Ms Kent described Kirin J Callinan, last year released If I Could Sing and somehow managed to reproduce the album’s enormous sound and dark humour from the confines of the bowlo’s humble hall turned band venue, along with the soft yet, as he sings, heavy melody that is the title track.
‘When you have spent your whole life watching music and seeing live music, to see an artist like Kirin J Callinan perform, it’s refreshing, it’s exciting, it’s challenging,’ said Ms Kent.
‘I loved every minute of it,’ she said.
‘All the crew, they all got new fans, and Versace Boys, I mean, Versace Boys? Just fun!’
‘Everyone in the crowd was just having a great time.’
As for future Air Waves, organisers are already seeking funds to keep the new frequency for at least a second year.
‘It was very grassroots and I was really impressed with the turnout,’ Ms Kent said, ‘build it and they will come, so yeah, the plan is, let’s do another one’.
Anyone interested in helping sponsor or donate towards event costs could contact Bay FM, Ms Kent said.
Mia Armitage is also a Bay FM member and produces the station’s Community Newsroom but did not otherwise benefit from Air Waves, assist in organising the event, or receive free admission.
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