Interviews

Three Bangalow Creatives, Lyn McCaRthy, Christian Pazzaglia, and Ben Alcock have created the Bangalow Film Festival – with indoor and outdoor screenings planned throughout January. There’s even a drive-in!

Austentayshus is one of our fiercest satiricists. Speaking the unspeakable, the unflappable self-confessed provocateur is back for three shows in the New Year. 

One of the great unexpected gifts of COVID-19 is that it grounded so many incredible artists. People who would usually be overseas working or touring nationally. Many of them have had to reimagine their creative outputs in a much smaller setting. One such person is Michael Cormick.

This December Solstice marks one whole year of witching by musician Áine Tyrrell and comedian Mandy Nolan who came together on a whim last year to create the Country Witches Association.

The obscenely intelligent, beautifully filthy, and rib-crackingly funny, cabaret superstar Reuben Kaye is the only way to bring in 2021. He spoke with the Echo ahead of his NYE show at the Bruns Picture House.

Musician and all round powerhouse Lisa Hunt decided that it was an opportunity to innovate the way musicians present, and so she’s come up with a dynamic program for Byron Bay – Summerstage in Byron.

It occurred to Nolan and Briggs that maybe the audiences that love their female take on life would love a man’s take on it too – but those men have to come from the same frame as the Women Like Us show. So, Men Like Us was born – a comedy show that features the comedic musings of the very Aussie Lindsay Webb, and UK comedian Dan Willis.

The Change is Coming... William Crighton’s latest release My Country speaks to environmental degradation in the pursuit of profit. It’s a subject close to his heart....

Join Byron Writers Festival for an evening with Nardi Simpson; Yuwaalaraay writer and founding member of Indigenous folk duo Stiff Gins, when she speaks about her debut novel Song of the Crocodile with Bundjalung writer, editor and Byron Writers Festival board member Grace Lucas-Pennington, on Tuesday at the Mullumbimby Civic Hall.

Indie artist Lisa Richards has just released her seventh album. It was something she started thinking about after she went to the Farwest Folk Alliance in LA. Her album, I Got a Story grew out of the conference. For a woman who didn’t pick up a guitar until she was 30, who believed her life would amount to nothing, she has made massive changes. She sings because it liberates her. She spoke with The Echo ahead of her show at Lismore City Hall.

Byron Youth Theatre’s latest original production How on Earth (Part 2) is funded by Regional Arts NSW Country Arts Support Program, Northern Rivers Community Foundation, and NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, and is supported by Arts Northern Rivers, the Joyality Project, and the Brunswick Picture House. How on Earth (Part 2) takes the audience on an intriguing journey exploring some hard to face questions!

It’s no surprise Trent Dalton is one of the most in-demand writers on the circuit. He’s wonderfully humble, he’s funny and open and insightful. He has this contagious positivity about life that permeates not just his writing, but his general disposition. The author of the best selling and award winning Boy Swallows Universe is back with All Our Shimmering Skies, an epic odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue skies.

For 18-year-old artist Budjerah Slabb, making music was an inevitability. Raised in a home filled with instruments, by a family whose time was split between playing in family bands and leading worship services in the local church, Budjerah has crafted a sound that melds the formative elements of gospel and soul with contemporary pop and R’n’B references.

The Bleach Festival shows a very different Gold Coast This year’s Gold Coast Bleach Festival gives hope to artists and creative practitioners that we are...

Gold Logie winning Tom Gleeson is truly one of the smartest of the southern comedians – he has enjoyed his covid lockdown in Byron Bay. Ironically he had a go at us on his Go Away with The Weekly – but here he is! (It’s a fabulously funny segment btw).

This has been the most unexpected year. The pandemic has brought the music industry to its knees. With musicians just starting to leave the cocoon of the covid sabbatical, Tim Freedman is one of the acts playing venues again thanks to the Great Southern Nights initiative, although Tim believes the government support has been slow and tempered with a bias.

In a world that’s not built for you, can you dare to dream of life, love and a rightful place within it all? Choreographer Michael Hennessy spoke with The Echo about the upcoming show Oh How I Dreamt of Things Impossible at NORPA this week.

The Byron Bay Film Festival is one of the first major events to make its way back onto the social calendar, opening on Friday at The Palace with a sold out session of Firestarter. There will be other screenings over the festival, as it is a film that everyone should see. Director Wayne Blair shared some of his story with The Echo.

Mark Trevorrow at the Brunswick Picture House Mark Trevorrow is one of Australia’ most legendary performers. Know his name but can’t place him? That’s...

With COVID restrictions slowly starting to ease and event numbers now at 50 per cent of capacity, Festival Director Peter Noble is feeling positive about Bluesfest 2021, stating ‘this is what a great Australian lineup looks like!’ Just this week Bluesfest Central released their lineup, which takes into account that, although acts like Patti Smith and George Benson said they will return after this year’s cancellation, it’s unlikely.

Playing it Safe with Simon & Gyan It’s been 30 years since musician Gyan released her debut self-titled studio album Gyan that saw her take...

Local band The Loveys have been rehearsing their newest and most ambitious show to date – Loveys Actually; Stories and Confessions. Taking a step from one-off gigs to a more theatrically styled show is something the band has been contemplating for a while, but have never really had time to develop.  And then came the strange era of COVID-19. With all gigs cancelled, like every other performer, the band now had some time to work on new ideas, songs and stories. Jennifer Parenteau spoke with Seven…

In-Side-Out is a pop-up exhibition, a shopfront lightbox in the Ocean Shores Village car park, next to Target. The event, held over this coming weekend, is a public exhibition of digital art and screen culture.

Aines new song and the clip will be released 14 August and the launch will be celebrated with music, dance, art, visual projections and fire ceremony at the Brunswick Picture House with Áine Tyrrell and the Bunyarra Culture Collective on 21  August. Doors open 7pm.

For a lot of musicians the COVID-19 lockdown has been devastating. With their live gigs cancelled many were looking down the barrel of a year with very little certainty. Tex Perkins was about to head off on a European tour with The Beasts of Bourbon, and he had a new album with Matt Walker to tour but that had to get put on hold. But Perko has been making magic in them there hills, with the creation of a unique live show, called The Show, shot in a rustic shed on the family property. What he and his crew have created is an intimate, yet rowdy evening of music, with a special guest each month, familiar faces, and new discoveries. While everyone was going on Zoom streaming from the couch, Tex was making good TV.