How Dark Mofo & Vivid Helped MMVAF Shape Itself As A Bona Fide Destination Event

By Zac Abroms' own admission, the Maroochy Music & Arts Festival wasn't always for everyone. Returning for its third year running this month, the event made its debut in 2015, when it attracted a much narrower crowd than is expected to roll up to the Old Horton Park Gold Course for this year's festivities, set to be headlined by a double serve of delight in Alison Wonderland and The Presets.

But cast an eye further down the line-up, and its ever-broadening appeal becomes apparent quickly, with artists from Horrorshow, Bernard Fanning and Northeast Party House to OKBADLANDS, Mallrat and Skegss populating the bill, which, he says, is as much by design as it is a natural development of the interest surrounding the festival.

"I think maybe, in the first year, the audience that the festival attracted really was pretty young and as we've grown that's kind of expanded," Abroms, the event's talent co-ordinator, reflects. "And, when we're presenting things like your Bernard Fannings and even The Presets, we're really tapping into a 30+, 40+ market as well, which goes kind of hand-in-hand with other aspects of the festival, like the Arts Park and the boutique food vendors and those sorts of things that are a little classier than your average music festival, certainly in the regional Queensland market."

It's not hard to see that the festival has grown year-on-year. Its first event attracted about 5000 punters — a remarkable turnout for a fledgling event — and looks to welcome about 8000 this year, Abroms says. But that expansion of size and scope is not just the result of the ever-widening demographic rolling through the grounds, but the group behind the scenes.

"That's a reflection of the team behind the festival as well — I mean, I'm in my early 30s now, and for me to be presenting stuff like Bernard Fanning…" he trails off in wonder. "Internationalist was undoubtedly one of my most rinsed records — Powderfinger in general throughout my teens — and The Presets, I mean, that was just a coming-of-age record for me, around the I Go Hard, I Go Home through to My People era.

As the line-up begins to take shape, the one thing that I always have in mind is that I want to keep things as diverse as possible in every respect.

"So you've got these legends of Australian music, and, you know, I'm still an active music listener and I'm still seeking out new things online constantly, and we've got stuff at the other end of the scale. The likes of Billy Davis & The Good Lords, who are only two singles deep but shaping up to be just one of the smoothest, most credible jazz-influenced urban outfits out of Melbourne, and even young Mallrat, who is an absolute favourite of ours around the office, who just looks absolutely predestined for international stardom, doing such a fresh sound — and she's only a teenager herself, so it really is a pretty wide gamut of artists we're running."

Putting together a festival of any size is no small feat, much less one that's undergoing such a rapid and meteoric ascent among the admittedly pretty full Australian events calendar. In fact, Abroms says, the process of putting together the kind of line-up they want to see takes the better part of the full year in the run-up to the next festival.

"It usually starts a few weeks out from the previous year's event; the text message chain starts going between myself and the festival director and a few of the influential heads behind the scenes," he explains. "We're just all die-hard music lovers, first and foremost, and we basically start by sharing tracks by artists that we've discovered and fallen in love with. Then, as we put out enquiries on those artists, the line-up begins to take shape — and certainly, as the line-up begins to take shape, the one thing that I always have in mind is that I want to keep things as diverse as possible in every respect. I want to make sure that we're catering to lots of different genres in equal measure. If I feel like we've met our quota of rock'n'roll bands, I'll go, 'OK, we're gonna look elsewhere,' and make sure that we have something for our hip hop heads.

"We like to turn everything into a dance party after the sun goes down, and in the first year that was Flight Facilities and Hermitude who did the honours, and last year it was Peking Duk and Client Liaison," he continues. "This year, I think we've outdone ourselves on the dance party quota with The Presets and Alison Wonderland to close the Amphitheatre, which I'm equal parts and excited and a little bit afraid how big that party's going to be! It felt like a very guilty pleasure booking and popping them back to back, because yeah, that's gonna be… I might be too old to last the double set. We'll see."

In years gone by, our punters have got a really big kick out of some of the larger-than-life installations and bits and pieces that we've had strewn around the golf course.

One of the small but very real joys about Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival is that, rather than obscure themselves behind fancy wordplay or clever titles, the event's name just straight-up tells you what you're going to get, and where you're going to get it. Indeed, Abroms says, the visual arts component of the festival is as carefully curated as the musical side, and even enjoys a somewhat symbiotic relationship in terms of helping to give the event its distinctive allure.

"I think one of the really unique aspects of the visual arts side of the festival is that we, as the festival, actually commission a lot of the work to be created, so it's not just about seeking out artists and acquiring interesting pieces that can be on-site but actually co-conspiring and collaborating with artists, some of whom are local, some of whom are international, to create one-off pieces," Abroms explains. "So, I guess by that process, they organically kind of complement the feel of the venue itself and the vibe and flavour of the party that we're trying to present.

"There's been some cool instances in which it has crossed over a little bit — though she's never performed at the festival, Bertie Blackman was kind enough to design all of our big scrims that hung either side of the festival main stage last year, and I guess all of us, we're music fans but we're also art lovers as well, and there's no reason why the two can't co-exist and co-mingle. That's something that, I guess, when we set out to start this festival, we wanted to do something special for the region that hadn't been done before.

"While other music festivals have existed for a long time in regional Queensland and on the Sunshine Coast, we really looked at the MONA FOMA, Dark Mofo, Vivid kind of model of a modern music festival and saw that, you know, that's multidisciplinary. And I think creating that visual art experience is a really unique aspect of coming to Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival and, certainly, in years gone by, our punters have got a really big kick out of some of the larger-than-life installations and bits and pieces that we've had strewn around the golf course."

But it's not just about creating attractions in order to establish the event as one worth hopping in a car and venturing out to go and experience, Abroms says — it's about capitalising on the natural beauty that already exists in the Sunshine Coast region itself.

"The Sunshine Coast is a really interesting place, because it's naturally so stunning and beautiful, and very pristine, and a little less developed than the Gold Coast as well," he tells. "But you've got a lot of kids there, and it's really close to Brisbane as well — we're just over an hour's commute from Brisbane's CBD — and it just felt like the perfect place to provide a getaway from the city to Brisbane punters who want to come and spend a weekend on the coast, and also just to give young people, in particular, new experiences.

I think we may sort of begin to become one of those true destination festivals that people will flock to from wherever in Australia.

"You know, we book a long way out, and each year we've managed to train-spot young artists who've gone on to much bigger things. I think we presented one of Gang Of Youths' first festivals in our first year, we certainly presented Vera Blue's first festival last year, and also to bring kooky stuff that never really would've toured the Sunshine Coast organically — the likes of Haitus Kaiyote or, this year, Billy Davis & The Good Lords, and we really feel like we're contributing to the development and exposure of world-class music and culture in a part of the world that maybe hasn't had the benefit of so much of it in the past.

"But the Sunshine Coast itself is undergoing a pretty massive redevelopment at the moment, and each year, because I book from down in Melbourne, I have the privilege of coming up a couple times a year sporadically and witnessing that this part of Australia is really growing in leaps and bounds in terms of all aspects of culture, whether it's bars and restaurants or barber shops or clothing labels, and it feels as though the festival is a big driving force in that movement. And also because we source all of our food and stalls and everything from local vendors, we get to give back and contribute to the growth and exposure and those things as well."

Indeed, such is the strength of the festival's natural surroundings, Abroms believes there truly is room for Maroochy to follow in the footsteps of events such as Tasmania's MONA FOMA and Dark Mofo, to become a shindig that people will come from not just Brisbane but further and further abroad to be a part of.

"It's interesting to look at the ticket sales and see that, increasingly, we're pulling more people from Brisbane, more people from Sydney, the Gold Coast, even, surprisingly, all the way down from Melbourne, to come up to the festival and experience this part of the world and experience something different," he reveals. "And I think, moving forward, as we get to grow and flex as a festival — you know, this year we're bringing our first international artist out, with Anna Of The North, from Norway — and I think we may sort of begin to become one of those true destination festivals that people will flock to from wherever in Australia because of its uniqueness and the overall experience that we're able to deliver.

"You see that more and more — Hobart is such a massive cultural destination in Australia, and I think that MONA and Dark Mofo are no small part. They've contributed to the mythology of what a beautiful place Hobart is, and certainly that exists with regional music festivals like Meredith, where Meredith town is very much a part of the mythology of that festival, and that's part of the reasoning that went into the naming of the festival, and we toyed with catchy names but in the end we just wanted to name it after the place where it sits, and I would love it if we slowly start to earn that reputation as being, you know, it's a great time to visit the Sunshine Coast around the festival, because that's when Maroochydore's really on show for all the world to see."

The festival itself has a lovely, chilled vibe about it; you get to wander around and experience tangible art, and we have couches in the Amphitheatre … It's just a very casual affair.

Along with the physical attributes that make the festival so alluring, Abroms says that the inimitable cultural boons that hang thick — and laid-back — in the air is also an inextricable part of the festival's overall atmosphere and continued success.

"The Sunshine Coast has an effortlessly chill vibe, and it happens completely organically," he marvels. "It's impossible to come up there and not instantly feel relaxed, because that's what the organic culture is. So whilst we are a music festival and people do get loose and dance hard at the end of the night, the festival itself has a lovely, chilled vibe about it; you get to wander around and experience tangible art, and we have couches in the Amphitheatre that you kick back and relax and watch bands, or you can go in and jump around if you like, but it's all at your leisure. It's just a very casual affair, a very humble sort of place, and that for us really lends itself to presenting just a really high-quality music-and-art exhibition."

As much as the festival prides itself on diversity and discovery in all aspects, Abroms is willing to concede that there is at least one act he's willing to make an exception for, over and over again — even though it took him a little while to accept his own position on their repeat inclusion for year three.

"I ummed and ahhed ... but I feel as though we really made the right decision in the end: we are all shameless Gang Of Youths fans at Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival and, as I mentioned, we did have them at, I think, their first music festival — and our first music festival — back in 2015, and the guys happen to be in the cycle of a new record this year, and we couldn't look past them. I had to put them on again," he grins. "And now we have a running joke, that perhaps Gang Of Youths are going to play the festival every two years, and they're gonna slowly see them climb that poster as well because they certainly are a much bigger band in 2017 than they were when we first met them, so that's just a nice piece of a folklore.

"But also I like to think we really are earning a reputation for music discovery, and one of the big criticisms that I hear about music festivals in Australia is that line-ups are rehashed from festival to festival. And I admit, looking at different line-ups, I often do see a lot of the same stuff appearing, and I'm not surprised that punters get a little bit grumpy that there's not as much diversity and that's why I guess — even though from a ticket sales perspective, it's counter to us selling more tickets — I always make sure that we're digging deep and we're plucking bands out of obscurity and giving them a chance on the main stage. In the first year, that was WAAX and that was Gang Of Youths, both of whom have gone on to become much bigger bands in the aftermath, and last year that was certainly Vera Blue."

We try, we really do try, to keep things diverse and to keep presenting our punters with something that's new, that they haven't seen before.

That's not a tradition that's set to stop any time soon, either, with this year's line-up packed with more artists evidently set for big things just around the corner. At the risk of milking an old cliche, it really could prove that, for Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival, the third time truly is the charm.

"This year, the two artists who I'm just immensely proud of having booked are Mallrat — who as I previously mentioned is just on a meteoric rise to international success — and Skegss, whose songs I just fell in love with over the summer," Abroms beams. "I just thought that, you know, if there was one artist that typefied the vibe of attending Maroochy Music & Visual Arts Festival, it's the sunny fun but not-too-serious motif that Skegss are putting out there, and I'm so glad to put them on the festival and since we have booked them we've just been watching them absolutely kick goals left, right and centre and sell out shows all over the country. So, by the time those two artists roll into Maroochydore, I'm very excited to see the reception that they get from our punters.

"But I think that we try, we really do try, to keep things diverse and to keep presenting our punters with something that's new, that they haven't seen before, and for those artists to be able to walk away having gained new fans and seen a new part of the world themselves, that's something that we'll continue to do. Even with respect to Anna Of The North, this is her first Australian tour, this is our first international artist, and we're super-stoked to be presenting her, and we're certainly all backing her to be an international phenomenon as her debut album rolls out and collabs with Frank Ocean and Tyler, The Creator pop out of the woodwork, which we had no idea were in the pipeline. It's certainly feeling like the stars are aligning."