Paul Dempsey Discusses The 'Real Cultural Shift' & Cost Of Living Crisis Impacting Live Music
“I really feel for young artists trying to connect with people because it's really hard to make people know they exist,” Dempsey said.
The Music Sessions with Fanning Dempsey National Park & Richard Kingsmill (Credit: Darcy Goss Media)
The inaugural The Music Sessions with Fanning Dempsey National Park and Richard Kingsmill has continued to deliver golden moments.
Paul Dempsey’s (Something For Kate) thoughts on how the ongoing cost of living crisis and the examined “cultural shift” of a younger generation embracing albums and live music in a different way is no exception.
After 150 fans heard the debut album from Fanning Dempsey National Park, The Deluge, in its entirety last week (1 August)—a day before the album’s release date—it was up to the fans to host a Q&A. They could ask Bernard Fanning (Powderfinger) and Paul Dempsey anything.
What better opportunity to ask the big questions than at The Music Sessions?
Towards the end of the night, a fan returned to a subject Fanning and Dempsey had alluded to earlier and spoke of the cost of living’s impacts on the music industry.
The fan asked if the duo saw anything the music industry should be doing to bring back live music to Australia after the cancellation of Splendour In The Grass and Groovin The Moo this year. The fan quizzed the band about how we can reach the pinnacle of live music in Australia again. A simple question with a simple answer, right?
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“There is a lot that can be done, but it's also just cultural change,” Dempsey said, referencing the number of things competing for our attention right in our pockets. As he noted, a Netflix or Spotify subscription costs far less than a beer, let alone a concert ticket. And with Spotify, you have access to the history of recorded music on your phone.
“There are so many things now that going out to see a live band used to be a social event, a musical event, a potentially romantic event, and it sort of ticked all these boxes,” Dempsey continued. “You saw your friends, you met new people, you heard some amazing music. You had a night out, you had a few drinks, and now that all is really fucking expensive.
“For 12 bucks, you can listen to anything you want, watch anything you want, and there’s all these other options. There's that as well. That's completely aside from the cost-of-living pressures and the corporatization of live music—[that’s] a tricky one as well. The ecosystem of venues, booking agencies, and ticketing companies is making things trickier as well.
“We had a global pandemic, and there was a couple of years there where people who left high school might have gone out and discovered that whole world of live music and hanging with your friends and seeing a band didn't happen for a couple of years, and maybe they missed that.”
Discussing the “cultural shift” of a younger generation that maybe missed out on the rite of passage of regular gig-going or attending music festivals, Dempsey added that if some people aren’t doing it, then neither are their friends or younger siblings. “That hurt, and it's still hurting a lot,” he said.
Acknowledging how “incredibly fortunate” he and Fanning are to have enjoyed long careers in the music industry and how different things were when they first started, Dempsey expressed his empathy for artists trying to break into the industry in 2024.
“I really feel for young artists who are starting out right now and trying to find an audience and trying to connect with people because it's really hard to make people know they exist,” Dempsey stated. “The social media landscape is just so vast – how do you even connect with someone across that?
“So, you've got a gig to play. How do you get people there? And then, there's absolutely no money in it. You're going to lose money doing it, trying to connect with an audience. If I was an 18-year-old starting a band, it just seems like an impossibility, like [it’s] unattainable.”
Kingsmill, agreeing with Dempsey, pointed out the irony that there’s brilliant music being made and released by Australian artists every day, but it’s very hard to push said music from Australia.
“That's the thing!” Dempsey exclaimed. “When you are an artist or a creative person, you are compelled to do it. Nothing's going to stop you. You're happy to lose all your money doing it because you just can't not do it. That's the drive. That's the creative drive.”
Adding that the creative drive will always exist, Dempsey said that the “beautiful thing” about creativity is that it can’t be stopped. However, the mechanisms of connecting artists with people and getting punters to gigs are still hugely challenging.
Dempsey concluded his points with some hope, “All I can say to people is, just go see live music and go and see something new. Maybe just once a month, try to get out and see something you haven't seen before.”
To learn more about the band, read The Music’s cover story about Fanning Dempsey National Park here. You can watch the Fanning Dempsey National Park interview with Richard Kingsmill below.
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