The Original Music Passion Café meets on Tuesday afternoons at three o’clock to discuss innovative ways of encouraging and nurturing original music in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia. The goal of the group is to support the recording, live performance, and creative promotion of new music from local musicians.
At the group’s inaugural meeting, a number of pertinent subjects were discussed, and a plan of action was created. This is as follows:
*PERFORMANCE*
A regularly-scheduled original music night will be organised in Bangalow. During this event, performers will be asked to showcase only original music, written by themselves (or by other area musicians) - strictly no "covers" of other material, as these tend to dominate all the other "jam nights" and open-mic sessions in the area.
This event requires a coordinator, and/or an emcee - position yet to be filled.
The idea of soliciting demo tapes from possible performers, (even in a rough format) was discussed, and deemed to only become necessary should the event prove highly popular, with more performers than time slots available.
The frequency of such a session was debated. The general opinion is that it would be ideal to hold the event weekly, but rotating to different villages week-by-week, as do the local markets.
Thursday nights were mooted as the optimal evening of the week to hold these concerts on a regular basis.
Promotion of the events could include local newspapers, plus local community radio stations such as BAY-FM and 2NCR.
Possible venues in the Bangalow area were discussed. These included the A&I Hall, the pub, church halls, the RSL Hall, the bowls club, and various cafes as potential sites. It was noted that the group has no budget, and no members are currently sufficiently flush with funds to pay for hall rental, PA hire, insurance, or publicity costs. Thus, a venue would need to be free of charge, and preferably have its own PA and insurance.
A suggestion was made to contact the North Coast Entertainment Industry Association in Lismore for advice and statistics. Networking with music students, music industry students, and audio engineering students at Southern Cross University in Lismore was also discussed.
*RECORDING*
It was unanimously agreed that local area original musicians most urgently require access to a professional quality recording studio. Ideally, this should be either free of charge, sweat-equity, barter-for-services, 100% L.E.T.S, or low-cost in any event. As there are no funds presently available personally from group members to fund this service, the idea of finding an umbrella organisation (such as the Byron Shire Arts Council, or the Byron Bay Community Centre) to assist with applying for arts grants was discussed. Possible sources of funding could include the Ministry for the Arts, the state arts council, the Australia Council community arts fund, rural initiatives funds, and private foundations, as well as corporate sponsorship.
It was decided that local recording studios should also be lobbied, once a proposal is in place. The group determined that at least six months of successful original performance nights should precede any recording-studio grant applications, with the understanding that the concerts should be well-documented (photos, press clippings, posters, etc.) in order to prepare adequate supporting material for the grant applications.
The first project to be initiated will be a compilation album, released on CD, featuring at least a dozen different original performers from the North Coast region.
*PROMOTION*
The Internet was the obvious first choice for promotion of this project, according to the group. It was decided that the minutes of the group’s meetings should be provided to local and national Australia Connects-related sites. It was also determined that an additional, independent, original-music-specific web site could be easily constructed before the Christmas holidays, at no cost to group members (one of the group’s participants is a web designer.) The local media would be contacted with a press release about the group’s next meeting, to be held Tuesday, 9 November, at the Get Stuffed Gourmet on Byron Street, Bangalow. The group identified the Byron Shire Echo, the Northern Rivers Echo, the Byron Shire News, the Northern Star, Bangalow’s Heartbeat, BAY-FM, 2-NCR, and ABC Regional Radio in Lismore as the primary information sources in the area, and a press release has now been sent out to these organisations.
It was determined that a different venue would be a better meeting place in future, as the management of the Get Stuffed Gourmet did not want music played during the Passion Café meeting (and the group unanimously decided that playing music was half the fun of getting together!) Therefore, a new meeting venue will be discussed at the November 9th meeting.
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Phoenix Productions