with Daniel Merriweather, Sam Lawrence
8pm, Enmore Theatre, NSW,
$49.92 (+ bf)

MAY 17

ALL AGES

12pm Saturday June 2
The Annandale

To be in with a chance for both these awesome opportunities you just need tou pload your tracks on the triple J Unearthed site before Sunday midnight June 24th. If you’re a local band make sure you have ‘North Coast” selected as your region so they can find you! If you already have tracks uploaded to triple J Unearthed, guess what? You are already in the running!

For more information head here.

The workshop will be held at Customs House Library on Thursday 17th May from 2pm to 4pm.

It’s 100% free but bookings are essential. Head here to reserve your spot!

Opening act Bahamas warmed up the crowd with his delicate, folky tunes. Eschewing a full band format for a stripped back, solo approach, sole member Afie Jurvanen certainly impressed on his first visit to Australia. Creating a full sound with a single guitar is never simple, however Bahamas pulled it off with ease. With a rough, soul-laden voice, he plowed through his debut album Barchords like a man possessed, only stopping to deal with a tweeting heckler in the front row and mumble the occasional, slightly embarrassed thank you. However, he soon won over the responsive crowd and found himself in a comfortable place halfway through the set. The obvious skill and finesse the man put into his music shone through. How many musicians, with all sincerity, could pull off a song called ‘Hockey Teeth’, and make it a highlight of their set? As his set came to a close with an absolutely face-melting solo, the cheer for Bahamas made the audience’s approval clear.

And then, it happened. It sounds cliché, but a hush honestly fell over the crowd as the band kicked in to a groove-laden ‘We Found Each Other In The Dark’. Making use of a pedal steel player, with crowd favourite Bahamas backing up and on resident Guitar Hero duties, City and Colour created a full sound that seemed to shake The Enmore from the floor to the ceiling. An early highlight was ‘The Grand Optimist’, the track’s haunting organ line being so intense it felt like being punched in the face. However, after a glorious ‘Weightless’, the band disappeared, leaving only Green to play the show’s acoustic mid-section. Starting with an evocative ‘Day Old Hate’, the acoustic section only highlighted Green’s dazzling high vocals. Surprising the crowd further with a heartfelt cover of Kimbra’s ‘Settle Down’, I can guarantee there was no one left unsatisfied by this brief interlude. As the full band came back for a triumphant sing-along of ‘The Girl’, with the pedal steel only adding to the song’s yearning feel, it wasn’t an uncommon sight to see grown men crying in this crowd. With so many highlights, it’s hard to mention them all- The fragile, stunning harmonies on ‘Little Hell’, the audience participation section of ‘What Makes A Man’ and the intense, almost psychedelic conclusion of ‘Sorrowing Man’ being stretched to almost ten minutes long.

Green came out for the encore alone, leading the whole crowd to denounce Lincoln, Nebraska during the obvious favourite ‘Coming Home’. When he mentioned Sydney in this song, the screams of the crowd completely drowned him out for a brief moment, creating beautiful noise to accompany the tender song. The band came back out to finish for a glorious ‘Hope For Now’, with most members of the crowd yelling “Keep Playing,” as though the show was so brilliant they wanted to keep Green and his talented band on forever. And you know what? Having seen this show, I don’t blame them.

V.O.K formed in early 2009 and have been playing gigs all around the Central Coast, occassionally venturing south to play gigs around Sydney.

Valley of Kings uses a lot of non-mainstream instruments like mandolins and banjos. Did you bring those instruments in specifically to get the sound you wanted or have your members always played those?

We’ve all seemed to like the idea of using unconventional instruments in our music, like bands such as Boy & Bear and Mumford & Sons. Though our banjo and mandolin player had been playing and learning these instruments long before we formed the band. These instruments really helped us create the sound and style we play now.

Does the band model itself on other artists and their sounds?

We’ve all grown up listening to all sorts of genres of music and we think the sound we have is definately influenced by those artists we listen to, but we try hard to keep our sound unique.

You recently won Sydney’s YouthRock 2012 competition. Tell us how the band went from its origins to winning first place in a competition like YouthRock.

YouthRock was a massive surprise for all of us. Almost as soon as we arrived at Sutherland for soundcheck, it was obvious we were the “different” ones. Firstly, we were the only band with an acoustic guitar, banjo and mandolin, and our overall image was far from any of the other bands.

After performing in the semi final, we actually thought we had no chance whatsoever of continuing into the final because some of the bands were just so good.

The win was just completely unexpected, but we were all absolutely stoked with the result.

Have events like YouthRock aimed at younger bands and all-ages audiences changed the path of Valley of Kings? Would your progress have been very different without them?

The win at YouthRock probably couldn’t have come at a better time for us. We have been trying to scrape together all the money and experience we can over the last few months so that we could begin playing around with our music in the studio and hopefully play a few bigger shows to a wider audience, and YouthRock gave us almost everything we needed to do that. We also had an amazing response from some of the audience at YouthRock and hopefully earned ourselves a few new fans.

If you could play at any music festival in the world, which one would you play?

Glastonbury, hands down. We’ve watched countless videos of some of our favourite bands playing there and it would be an amazing festival to go to, let alone play at.

What’s coming up for Valley of Kings? Is the plan to do some recording or focus on live shows?

At the moment, we’re really focused on getting a whole new bunch of songs together and playing them live as much as possible. We plan to play as many live shows as we can, testing out new material on live audiences and then hopefully tweek our songs enough so that we are happy to begin the recording process. Really just trying to get our name and music out there aswell

This years lineup will feature:

Imandan
Die Rude
Tim Stokes
Velvet Sand
Adam Scriven
Minnie Marks
Reilly Fitzalan
Haven and Loki Hough
Annie Plummer
Frankie Stone
SPAGHETTI CIRCUS
With more amazing acts TBA

Vibadelix is a drug and alcohol free event.

Rock The YAC Productions is an on-going Byron Youth Service Enterprise initiative conceptualised by Links2Learning Events Management Course participants.

For more information head HERE. 

26th May 2012
2pm – 12 midnight
Byron YAC Amphitheatre
1 Gilmore Crescent, Byron bay

This years lineup will feature:

Imandan
Die Rude
Tim Stokes
Velvet Sand
Adam Scriven
Minnie Marks
Reilly Fitzalan
Haven and Loki Hough
Annie Plummer
Frankie Stone
SPAGHETTI CIRCUS
With more amazing acts TBA

Vibadelix is a drug and alcohol free event.

Rock The YAC Productions is an on-going Byron Youth Service Enterprise initiative conceptualised by Links2Learning Events Management Course participants.

For more information head here. 

26th May 2012
2pm – 12 midnight
Byron YAC Amphitheatre
1 Gilmore Crescent, Byron bay

To take advantage of special music industry offers, particularly; the Virgin Australia baggage deal for musicians, QANTAS’ recent announcement of a similar program, and preferred registration for MusicNSW workshops as part of Vivid Ideas Exchange, all you need to do is sign up to our Newsletter and get in touch with us to get your unique Community Member Number.

Please contact us on INFO@MUSICNSW.COM with your name and email address and we will reply as soon as possible with your unique number.

MusicNSW is pleased to offer a variety of deals that we will be announcing via our newsletter and Facebook throughout the year.

$20

All Ages