A music festival for those typically overwhelmed by music festivals? The boutique Fairgrounds Festival, returning next month to picturesque Berry on the South Coast, is just that. "This is not your usual festival experience," says co-founder Colin Daniels.
"It's kind of like we wrote our bucket list of everything that we'd dreamed we would love to have at a festival and we've tried not to compromise on any of it."
Fairgrounds is "a personal passion" for Daniels, CEO of the Inertia Group - which entails presenting Handsome Tours. He and Inertia director Ashley Sellers sought to create a camping fest in NSW suitable for families. "With the exception of Bluesfest and one or two others, the festival experience that's generally on offer is targeted at a much younger audience than our age," Daniels explains. "We have different needs and wants. We basically designed a festival that we'd be happy with - whatever we want. We want lots of space. We wanna be able to see the stage from almost anywhere on the site. We wanna have incredibly amazing handpicked, curated drinks. We wanna have our families around us. We want to have it be a really comfortable vibe. So it's kind of like we wrote our bucket list of everything that we'd dreamed we would love to have at a festival and we've tried not to compromise on any of it." Fairgrounds has capped numbers. "If there's no room for you to throw a blanket down and see the main stage, then there's too many people at the festival." Symbolically, Fairgrounds doesn't have a VIP area - everyone potentially accessing the same facilities, like the on-site swimming pool.
Yet Fairgrounds remains cross-generational - down to its upfront, international music programming. This year's performers include Sugar Man himself, Rodriguez, Angel Olsen and Big Scary. Daniels is excited to catch Memphis singer/songwriter Julien Baker. "There is a market out there of people over the age of 25 who still love contemporary music. They probably still listen to triple j. They wanna hear great new music. That's why we called [Fairgrounds] 'a carnival of music and discovery', because what we're saying is that you're not going to see 25 old acts that you've known for 15 years. Half of the line-up, most people have probably never seen live - and a lot of them never heard of the acts. What we're trying to do is build trust with our audience that, 'Hey, you're gonna love this.'" Fairgrounds even has a record fair.
Another draw is the "artisan" food and drink, with "a strong focus on local [produce]". "We went through 250, 000 oysters last year," Daniels laughs. "It was incredible watching a whole lot of people just devouring oysters and Young Henrys beer going, 'I can't believe we're at a music festival!'" Look out for the Paperbark Camp pop-up restaurant.
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Daniels is content to be part of a burgeoning Australian festival industry. "It gives people choice - there never used to be choice. Big Day Out was like the only restaurant in a big country town and everyone had to eat there - whether or not you wanted Italian food or Chinese food. That was your only choice. It's great that it's filtered down into just really great boutique festivals that suit you."
