BIGSOUND: Danny Rogers And Jerome Borazio On Laneway Festival

If there is any guiding philosophy behind the venerated St Jerome's Laneway Festival, it's that there are no headliners — just an incredibly strong line-up across the board from year to year.

That's the message at the core of BIGSOUND's interview panel with festival co-founder Danny Rogers and his longtime collaborator and friend Jerome Borazio, for whom, along with a now-closed Borazio-owned bar, the event is named.

In a comprehensive retrospective chat, Rogers and Borazio detailed the seeds of their friendship, when their parents mutually decided it would be best for the pair to perhaps not spend so much time with each other — "When I was 18, Jerome introduced me to the nightlife … I was supposed to play footy the next day, and he'd given me my first acid tab," Rogers recounts — and the frantic, blind flight of the event's first year, a party since which the pair of promoters have "evolved in a big way".

"I definitely fucked up — I was sure Cut Copy would be playing, but I hadn't actually asked them," Rogers laughs, recounting a retrospectively hilarious (but at the time, probably awful) phone conversation he'd had with the band's agent after they had seen posters go up advertising them for a festival they had no idea they were even supposed to be on.

The crowd at that first show was a humble 1365 — which Borazio and Rogers were honestly stoked with — but nonetheless seems so surreal from the standpoint of 2014, when Laneway has successfully crossed over into not just other states, but other countries, including Singapore and the United States.

Borazio says he is "proud" of Singapore's event, but it is the festival's iteration in Detroit for which the pair hold the brightest candle.

"We felt like we could make a difference there," Rogers says, adding that as soon as they landed in the city, they fell in love with the people and their support for the little Aussie festival that could.

It's not been a ride without hiccups and learning curves, of course, with 2009's infamous Melbourne festival (at which there were several issues with accessibility for ticket-holders and myriad other problems) standing out for the promoters as a black mark from which there is — and should not be — any hiding.

"It was a total fuck-up," Rogers says. "By about three o'clock in the afternoon, I was like, 'This is a total disaster.'"

"We go out every year and just try and improve the show … that was a real good kick in the arse for us," Borazio agrees.

There are other less obvious regrets, too — Rogers mentions disappointment over missing Big Scary on last year's festival bill, for example — but there are also no plans to pull back on their involvement with the festival in the near future ("it's too much fun," Borazio says) — despite Rogers' lamentations at being hitting the big 4-0.

The festival never intentionally set out to be a tastemaker or book breaking acts, regardless of its uncannily successful record of doing so, and remains unpretentious in its booking plans, Borazio says.

Rogers agrees: "We're just regular people; we're not expert programmers or whatever that is … we like what we like."

Rounding out with the heartwarming revelation that next year's festival will feature a special guest emcee in the form of Mac De Marco's mother, Agnes — Rogers reads out the email she sent accepting the gig and everything, before raising his arm in the air and yelling triumphantly, "AGNES!" — it's clear that this partnership, for all its tumult and apparent intermittent imbalances, is one that works, has always worked, and will continue working for a long time to come.

"I wouldn't think the friendship has been compromised at all," Borazio muses of the duo's journey together with Laneway over the past eight years.

"I think it just grows stronger every day."