Youth headline all-ages road tour
Towns in the Wimmera are set to be among destinations for a regional Victorian tour featuring nationally recognised musicians next month.
Allday, Mallrat, Ninajirachi, Smith Street Band, JK-47 and Alex Lahy will be hitting the road in September and October to join Wimmera artists at Goroke, Warracknabeal and Stawell.
Australian youth music organisation The Push has teamed up with youth development program FREEZA in each town to organise the All-ages Tour, which features 15 headline acts playing at 20 regional and outer-suburban locations.
Musicians from each town will also have an opportunity to open for headline acts, alongside a Triple J Unearthed artist.
Young people in the towns have been busy planning the event for the past three months and will help with all behind-the-scenes work as part of the shows.
Grampians Youth Events secretary Taia Hayter, who is leading a team of young people organising the Stawell event, said youth were gaining skills in events production, marketing and promotions and logistics.
“There’s a lot to do behind the scenes, both before and during the event,” she said.
“We have to cater to all of the artists we have coming and organise transportation for people in surrounding towns that might not be able to access the event.”
Taia said organising the event had given youth an opportunity to gain invaluable skills relevant to the events industry.
“We’ve learned how to use a mixing desk, which was a strange experience, but really cool, we’ve also had tours of the town hall and learned a lot about the music scene,” she said.
“There’s lots of communication skills you develop with calling people, emailing and learning to develop the right language to use in a professional way.”
Taia said she hoped excitement generated from the all-ages event would encourage Stawell community to organise more big-scale events in the future.
“It’s really difficult to get an event off the ground the first time around and it takes a lot of time and money, but having this event could be such a good catalyst to create bigger events, like a youth festival with a local focus,” she said.
The Push chief executive Kate Duncan said the events would attract thousands of young music fans to locations across the state, in what she tipped to be some of the ‘biggest and best’ all-ages events in the past 18 months.
“Obviously the live-performance sector has been overwhelmingly impacted over the past 18 months and this opportunity has really come from generous financial support from the State Government to start staging live-music events again in a COVIDSAFE way,” she said.
The organisation plans to build on a 2019 pilot tour, which featured Ruby Fields and Baker Boy who played to sold-out crowds across regional Victoria.
Other musicians to join the 2021 bill are The Chats, Dallas Woods, KIAN, MLBRN, Thelma Plum and Teenage Joans at events from Wodonga to Warrnambool and Healesville to Hoppers Crossing across seven spring weekends.
Wergaia singer-songwriter Alice Skye, who grew up in Horsham, will also join Sycco at events in Wodonga, Bruthen and Mornington.
Ms Duncan said a big motivation for the tour was showing artists it could be viable to tour in regional and rural Australia.
“More than 10 years ago, regional tours were something established headline artists would prioritise, but the sector has changed in terms of consumption and the way artists generate income in a digital age,” she said.
“It will be about educating the sector while international touring will be off the cards and looking at ways we can really push regional touring again.
“Large capacity shows don’t seem like they’re going to be back anytime soon, so doing lots of these smaller local shows definitely seems like the safest way to plan a career in the music industry.”
Tickets can be purchased through Moshtix.
People can visit thepush.com.au to find out more details about the tour. online