Drawing Music Fans To Sydney's North

A new concert is popping up in the North Shore of Sydney, called Party In The Park.

Bringing a much-needed live music boost into the area, the inaugural event’s all-local line-up consists of The Cat Empire and The Jezabels co-headlining, plus indie folk acts Little May, Husky and Sons Of The East.

“We’re not from Sydney originally, so we sort of became aware of the whole north-south divide in the city, but I think that North Sydney Council had something to do with [organising the event],” says The Jezabels guitarist Sam Lockwood. “They’re trying to get something going there during this time of the year.

“It’s a great place for music, like it’s right in the centre of North Sydney so it’s near all the suburbs that maybe don’t get that much live music and it’s close to the Northern Beaches... Sydney’s a weird city because it’s kind of hard to get around because there’s so much water… and the public transport is not so good in some places so it’s good to do festivals that aren’t just in the normal places like in the city or in the Inner West or wherever. The festival’s not that far from the centre, it’s just north of the beach – but it’s that whole thing, like, people north of the beach tend to stay north of the beach and people south of the beach tend to stay south of the beach.”

Party In The Park might be the thing to entice southsiders to cross over to the other side for a night. The music will be kicking off at 5pm and all bands are playing on the one stage, which will be located beside the famous fig tree. There’ll be party hubs and bars all around the venue with roving entertainers making their way through the crowd. “These kinds of festivals tend to be the best ones when there’s just one stage; I guess the crowd is more chilled out because they don’t have much on their mind except the one thing they have to watch... You don’t have to move around,” says Lockwood.

Speaking of moving around, The Jezabels have stopped doing too much of that recently, after a “lucky sort of run” of festival appearances. “We did Festival Of The Sun, Port Macquarie and also Queenscliff Music Festival, so we’ve had enough shows to keep us happy! That’s the best part of being in a band, doing festivals.”

For now, they’re taking a moment for a breather and just “enjoying life”. “We’ve just been spending the last month or so writing, taking it easy. It’s been really good actually, we’ve had a nice break and took a step back for a while, feeling good and getting excited about recording again. This upcoming show is gonna be really good because we’re probably gonna try maybe a new song or two; we’ll see what happens. We’re at sort of that stage – I guess bands work in cycles – we’re sort of at the relaxed stage of the wave so it’s pretty cool."