Feel the Rhythm
McDonald’s and cheap tents bring Rhythm and Vines punters into the New Year. But what has kept this festival going for 16 years? Glenn McConnell reports.
Half the people here don’t know who’s playing, or at least they didn’t when they bought their tickets. Rhythm and Vines is unusual that way. It’s a music festival, sure. With four stages and three nights of music, the festival plays host to hundreds of artists and support staff.
But the festival’s own event manager says he, and his patrons, ‘‘don’t really think this is about the music’’. So what does keep it going?
This 16-year-old New Year’s gathering sells its vibe and reputation, which is possibly more important than its lineup. Reputation, the festival directors say, is the only reason it’s able to sell half its tickets each year before the lineup is even released.
It started with fewer than 2000 people, at a rolling vineyard north of Gisborne. The vineyard stayed, the crowd grew tenfold, and the music has changed a lot.
Festival founder Hamish Pinkham remembers when he started it with friend, as a festival for mates who liked reggae. Most of the artists these days are DJs or hip-hop artists. Pinkham says his goal for the festival is to stay ‘‘on trend’’ with its target market of 18- to 25-year-olds.
‘‘It’s a certain type of audience who come to a festival like this. They’re a young, dynamic, disposable-income kind of crowd,’’ he says.
For the festival to succeed, and stay into the future, he wants it to be a ‘‘rite of passage’’ for New Zealanders.
It’s a rite of passage that attracts 21,000 people a year, effectively takes over an entire town, and has a reputation as a loose, anything-goes New Year’s party.
With thousands of school leavers, job starters and students making what are fairly expensive trips for the three- to five-day festival, it’s no surprise things can get crazy for the punters and tough for those organising it.
The reputation keeps people coming back but has also increased the pressure on security teams working to keep drugs and home-brought alcohol out of the festival.
That’s a reputation that event manager
Dan Turner and chief executive Kieran Spillane are fired up about.
When festival security seizes what appears to be ecstasy tablets but is actually pesticide-laced antibiotics, the district health board decides to issue a public health warning. The warning is carried as breaking news through channels such as Stuff and Rhythm and Vine’s own app, and within minutes Turner said his team was fielding calls from worried parents.
He’s angry and worried for the brand of Rhythm and Vines, which – as the most infamous festival in New Zealand – has come under heavy national scrutiny. Last year the festival made all the wrong headlines, around the world, when a man groped a woman on camera.
At a press standup, Turner refuses to be filmed saying he has to act ‘‘in the best interests of the company’’ and ‘‘wants the story dead by tomorrow’’. Spillane positions himself between a television news team and Turner, but does not comment on the safety warning.
A rite of passage
It all starts on January 28. That’s ‘‘set-up’’ day, the day 14,000 festival campers will be allowed on site.
The earlybirds have arrived at ridiculous hours, lining up before the gates and bag checks are open. There’s not a lot happening. No musicians will play until the following day.
But, as the festival directors say, it’s not just the music that keeps people coming back.
The festival has invested into the Rhythm Roadie idea, in the past hiring social media influencers and bringing radio stations on board to lighten up the road trip beforehand.
For those slower off the starting line, the drive to Gisborne is probably unlike any other.
Cars, packed to the brim, flood into Gisborne from all over the North Island. A few roofs get dented, as excitable young men, who can’t seem to stop jumping, whip off their shirts and start funnelling booze off cars parked on the side of highways.
Their cars will typically have some borderline message or ‘‘R&V Roadie’’ painted on the side.
When they arrive at the festival, however, they best have drunk those beers. Two security checks greet patrons each time they enter the site, first for their cars then for their gear at the gate.
It’s all part of the move to change Rhythm and Vines from its bring-your-own days.
‘‘We were on our knees and we struggled,’’ Turner says of those years.
‘‘We delivered the site under great strain, and it was horrible,’’ he says. Moving campers on site, without alcohol, meant pre-drinking was less of an issue, he says.
In Gisborne itself, the town is chocka regardless.
Mayor Meng Foon says locals bug out for the few days Rhythm and Vines is on, but they enjoy having a yearly influx of youth and cash.
Cafe waits will exceed an hour in the mornings, but the supermarkets, The Warehouse and bottle shops are always well stocked.
When it’s over
The town is awash with old glitter most days, as festival goers look to escape the campsite, explore or simply get McDonald’s.
Considering the population of Gisborne is 37,000, and there are 21,000 people at Rhythm and Vines, the town does an impressive job hosting the hordes each year.
On the last day, New Year’s Day, McDonald’s has deployed its own traffic warden. It’s standing room only in the restaurant and behind the counter, where they’ve brought in all the reinforcements they can find, but still, the line for food is relentless.
The queues at the drive-through are so long, they risk blocking traffic. It’s been like this since 6am, staff say.
Inside, it’s as if a rave’s going on. People are crammed in like it’s a mosh pit, waiting for their grub.
Down the back, getting a welcome reprieve from the heat under an air conditioner, is a young couple who are not afraid to show how exhausted everyone feels on the inside.
The party didn’t finish until 6am on New Year’s. After that, it seems everyone headed down here. The couple sit, head in hands. She’s pulling out fake eyelashes as they wait for what will probably be a disappointing hangover cure.
Although the festival’s over, the work is far from done.
Back on site, hundreds of cheap tents are left ownerless under the Waiohika Estate vines.
Event manager Turner says they’ve been trying to get campers to invest in better tents, so they’ll reuse them.
‘‘But The Warehouse doesn’t help,’’ he says. ‘‘Those $20 tents, they’re not waterproof and they just get left behind. It’s such an issue, we really want those kids to spend a bit more money and take the tent.’’
The remaining tents and camping gear will end up going to schools and clubs that want them.
Although most of the major jobs are done from Auckland, about 700 people are employed from Gisborne. Turner says Rhythm and Vines is pumping more than $700,000 in wages into Gisborne. In the end, it’s that buy-in from locals that is important.
The mayor supports the festival, even if he doesn’t like its music, because of the money that flows to community groups from it.
A lot of the staff work the festival to give money to their marae during their Christmas holidays, he says.
Turner says he’s employing staff to clean up nearby roads so the neighbours stay happy.
‘‘Without the people of Gisborne, we just couldn’t do it,’’ he says.
Rhythm and Vines would not have lasted without that carefully guarded reputation – the one Turner and Spillane confront journalists to protect – and the legend of the summer pilgrimage to R&V: the roadie, the tales and the ‘‘festival experience’’. The music? That’s an added extra.