Moderated by Stu Harvey (presenter of short.fast.loud on Triple J), the workshop will include speakers Matt Young (King Parrot), Phoebe Pinnock (Heaven The Axe), Chris O’Brien (general manager of the Soundwave Festival), Cael Johnston (national events manager of Destroy All Lines), Guy Palermo (publican of the Bendigo Hotel) and lawyer Andrew Fuller.
“I think it’s an excellent cross-section of people involved in the industry” says Harvey. I hate calling it an industry but that’s what it is. You’ve got Phoebe and Youngy who are out there doing the hard yards at different levels of success and going through different channels. Chris has got an incredible history through Soundwave and everything he’s done before that – 2IC for the biggest touring festival in the country.
“Cael’s got some incredible experience from a different angle with the Destroy All Lines club nights which come at things from a different angle, giving young bands a captured audience to cut their teeth in front of, and a good place to break new bands”, Harvey convinces. Guy is at the front line of the Bendy so he’s done some incredible stuff. That venue has been a great supporter for heavy music and has picked up a lot of slack from the Arthouse. And Andrew, I’ve worked with him for many years at Shock. He’s worked on deals like Thy Art Is Murder and Bring Me The Horizon. He’ll bring a different perspective because he’s not living and breathing rock, metal, punk and hardcore but he knows the ins and outs. He’s very actively involved in the industry so he can take a look at it from one step back.
“And I’ve done a couple of things over the years. Hopefully I can steer the conversation in different directions. Whenever I do a panel I like to think about the people who paid their hard-earned to come in. It’s easy for these kinds of panels to turn into a circle jerk but I want some kid to walk up to us afterwards and say, ‘I learned something from this.’ When you’re working on the inside you forget that it can be pretty complex at times and it’s hard to know the best way around and inside it.”
King Parrot are rapidly climbing the ladder in the Australian and international heavy music scenes, going from local shows to touring the United States, hanging with Mr. Phil Anselmo and generally causing good old fashioned mayhem wherever they go. But the band have built their success on a solid foundation of planning, foresight and clever decisions, as frontman Matt Young explains.
“I’m in my 30s now and I’ve been in bands since I was 15,” he says. “You learn a lot along the way. More than anything I’ve learned from making mistakes. I’ve made heaps of those. A lot of people really don’t want to get involved in the business side of the band. They think they’ll just get picked up and someone will take care of them but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Unless you go out and get it you’ll just be left in the jam room. A lot of bands don’t get much further than that because they haven’t wrapped their head around it, that if you want to tour and you want to do all those cool things with a band, you’ve really got to go out and make your own life. And talk to people! Don’t be afraid.
“I guess that’s where the whole ego thing comes into it as well”, young suggests. “People don’t want to seem like they’re uncool for asking someone for advice, but I don’t mind people asking me, and a lot of people I’ve asked in the past for advice have always been cool. I like talking about the industry. You’ve got to ditch the whole ego thing and have no fear around trying to get to where you want to be with it.”
Phoebe Pinnock and her Heaven The Axe bandmates have very cleverly worked the social media and networking angles to place their music in front of the right people at the right time and in the right way. Nothing the band does feels contrived. Rather, it all feels like part of a unified whole, a lifestyle you’d want to belong to or a party you’d like to go to. And that’s a natural instinct for the band.
“People who are in the music industry or similar bands to us, we’ve been able to make connections forged on mutual respect for the music,” she says. “We’re very friendly, open people and we’ve built great friendships built on mutual appreciation and passion for what we do. That’s how things such as the Regional Roulette tour came about last year, because we were friends with the guys from Deadnaught, Frankenbok and King Parrot, because that’s what we naturally talk about.”
Pinnock says she finds it important to visualise goals and place herself in a good mental, emotional and spiritual place to achieve them. “Visualisation is so important to me. I find that if I get up in the morning and go and exercise, my whole day is sorted because I’ve had time to think about what I’m going to create, and that helps me to manifest what I want to do throughout the day. It shakes out any sort of negative mindset. You’ve got to be unstoppable and you’ve got to put aside financial rewards in the short term or earn money elsewhere so that you can put in the groundwork to give you the possibility to be able to go and tour and promote yourself so the band can put money into paying for itself.”
BY PETER HODGSON
