Tell us about your involvement in the 2014 Australasian Worldwide Music Expo.
We are Finding Albert, a band from Scotland, and this will be our debut show in Australia. Active Events in Scotland were asked to nominate two acts to represent Scotland at AWME this year, and so to be selected is a great privilege for us. We’ll have two shows as part of AWME, as well as attending as many of the events as we can physically manage.
AWME endorses business-related concepts of the music industry such as bookings, marketing, distribution, licensing and networking. How important have these concepts been in the development of your career as a musician?
A good understanding of the business-related concepts of the music industry is now fairly essential to any musician. We’ve each been involved in various music projects before and we’ve collated a decent appreciation of how the overall industry works – in particular, publishing and live shows in our case. This has really been vital to the momentum we’ve been able to build over the last year, both in terms of being able to take on and understand aspects of independent releases, but also in terms of knowing who we need to be working with to further ourselves, and for what purposes.
How do you hope to benefit from the 2014 AWME in regards to your career in the music industry?
Most importantly, we want to introduce our live show to an Australian audience and make a good impression. After that, we’re excited about the networking opportunities available at AWME. We’ve scheduled out the talks and speakers we’re keen on seeing, including some old faces and friends we’ve met elsewhere, and new people we’re keen to meet with for the first time. Really, we just want to make an impression with our music, and hopefully the people we play to and meet would want to stay involved in that.
What’s your number one unmissable AWME event this year?
There are so many great shows on, so we’ll be splitting up to catch as many as we can. I’m excited to see Mojo Juju, who I discovered is playing the same show as us on Friday Novemebr 14. Ross Ainsley & Jarlath Henderson are also playing that night – another Scottish act selected for AWME. I’ve heard them before, and they’re fantastic, so that should be a really good night. The Melbourne Ska Orchestra on the closing night also looks like a great show.
FINDING ALBERT will play at Ding Dong as part of AWME on Friday November 14.
