Big Pineapple Festival Returns

After two years away, Big Pineapple Music Festival is set to return to the Sunshine Coast this October.

Taking to LinkedIn this week, Joshua Taylor-Anderson, CEO and founder of music marketing company Call And Response (and Artist Manager at Combined Management), confirmed that the festival would return this year.

“As our industry faces its biggest challenges to date, it's refreshing to be able to share some positive news from the festival landscape with our confirmation of the Big Pineapple Festival making its return this October,” Taylor-Anderson wrote.

Discussing the festival’s impact on the local community, Taylor-Anderson reminded followers that Big Pineapple Music Festival “has maintained a no-nonsense relationship with its beloved community, and this year will be no exception,” with Taylor-Anderson vowing to educate punters on “the importance of early support, not just for Big Piney, but for all their favourite artists and festival brands.

“While this is just one of the many contributing factors to the broader issues facing live music and the overall support of Australian artists, it's a narrative I encourage other event organisers to embrace,” Taylor-Anderson continued. “Upholding our cultural values of authenticity over trendiness is vital... now is the time to ‘keep it real’ instead of ‘keeping it cool’.”

Speaking of keeping it real, festival director Mark Pico told ABC there’s “panic all throughout the industry” and perhaps revealed that it hasn’t been easy to book this year’s line-up following the cancellation of fellow Sunshine Coast event, Caloundra Music Festival.

“Many bands we've spoken to that are from overseas are too scared to come over for this year,” Pico said. “Economics is one thing, but then there are all these other parts that make a festival come together that are not lining up at the moment. There's a ripple effect.”

Pico added, “We have to move with the environment and expect maybe a few less numbers, but we've got time.”

Big Pineapple Music Festival last took place in 2021 for its seventh edition after the 2020 event was postponed due to Covid-19 restrictions.

The 2021 festival booked the likes of G Flip, Winston Surfshirt, Peking Duk, Alison Wonderland, Bliss N Eso, The Amity Affliction, A Swayze And The Ghost, Thelma Plum, Slowly Slowly, Kingswood, thatboykwame, and many more.

Previous iterations of the festival have boasted line-ups including PNAU, Karnivool, Confidence Man, Tkay Maidza, Stand Atlantic, Mallrat, Hatchie, Vera Blue, and stacks more—and that’s just in 2019.

In The Music’s review of the event in 2019, writer Carley Hall declared that “Big Pineapple Festival feels like it’s found a solid place on the festival circuit, enjoying sold-out success due to big-name line-ups and a small but fuss-free set-up north of Brisbane.”