All Tomorrow's Parties, the 'boutique' music festival where a prominent artist hand-picks the line-up, is making its first ever appearance Down Under in January 2009 with Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds curating the festivities. We talk to violinist Warren Ellis, who has been playing with Cave in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman, and whose other band the Dirty Three are firm festival favourites themselves.
yourGigs (YG): With the forthcoming All Tomorrow's Parties festival, are you excited that you are involved in bringing the concept to Australia?
Warren Ellis (WE): I am always excited about coming to Australia whether it is for touring or whatever. It is nice to present the Bad Seeds to Australia in a different way than just a series of concerts in the regular cities with one or two support acts. This seems an interesting way to do a tour of Australia with a lot more bands and under the banner of the ATP Festival.
YG: Is it refreshing to have that choice of who you get to play there on the bill with you?
WE: It is a wonderful opportunity and a very unique opportunity, I can't think of another festival like it that actually hands the curation over to you - to a band. It genuinely feels like each festival is a unique and a one-off event. They've been doing it for 10 years now in England and it genuinely feels like each show is really a one-off event because no two curators are the same and you are getting a bunch of people together to play music who like music, picking who they really love to have playing on a festival.
You are bound to come up with a much different approach than a bunch of promoters sitting around scratching their brains trying to figure out who they want on. It's got a feeling that each one is a one-off and that's exciting. If I was going to a concert, that is what I would like to see.
YG: Festivals in general seem to take a bit away from the artist in terms of the sound not always being that great, but this one does seem to give that bit back to the musicians. Do you like that aspect of it?
WE: The idea of this is not to fit as many people as you can into a football oval and sell as many cans of beer as you can; the idea is that they are making the effort to actually present a musical event and hopefully it will cover its costs. It's not a handout or anything either; it has to function, but in a dignified way.
YG: Throughout your career you have played everywhere from your more intimate venues right up to the large-scale. How has that affected the way you play and present your music?
WE: I've played pretty much the smallest venues to some of the biggest venues that exist and I've pretty much played the whole thing. To be honest I still really enjoy playing the more intimate venues and getting that contact with the audience - I still enjoy the intimacy of that.
But when the bigger ones get it right you can still get an interaction with the audience and they get onto it as well, it still works. If you are having a good show, it just seems to work anywhere. That's the bottom line: if you have a good show in a little venue, it's really great; if you have a crappy show in a little venue, it's really bad.
YG: The outdoor festivals throw out variables that people can never expect, such as the Dirty Three playing under a lightning storm at Meredith.
WE: Yes, Meredith is such a fantastic event and is such a great festival and it continues in the same spirit - I mean it's still on a farm and the guys that run it pick who they would like to see. I actually missed seeing the storm from the stage, but you couldn't get that inside. Everybody who was at that show and asked me about it really think it was so incredible and we didn't even know it was happening. We just thought we must've been doing some real cool stuff and then we found out there was a lightning storm going on.
That's a perfect example though: people got to experience something really special due to the external factors involved. When concerts really work it doesn't mean it's any less intimate because it's in a bigger place, if a concert works, it works wherever it is.
YG: Do you think this festival gives the opportunity to interact with more like-minded people and you can feed off that?
WE: For sure - this festival would attract a different crowd than Big Day Out. It's selected in a very different way, the music. I'm sure people there pick stuff that they like too but also they have the consideration of what is going to pull x amounts of people and what is popular - and that's cool, this festival just has a different agenda.
Each ATP festival is presented is a unique thing and really is a one-off line up for all intents and purposes can never happen again. I've done one of these with the Dirty Three in the UK and seeing other line-ups in the past, that's really what it seems like. You get these diverse, eclectic line-ups and you would never see that anywhere else.
YG: There seem to be a lot of bands touring Australia for the first time with ATP; and also, seemingly, a lot of bands that may not have been as appreciated at the time and even nowadays probably would not have attracted so much attention if it wasn't for the festival.
WE: This festival presents that opportunity to put groups in front of people who they probably would not see; or if they do know about them, they probably thought they would never see anyway, and that's what is generally thrilling to me.
YG: What do you think the best outcome for bringing the festival to Australia would be?
WE: Just that it's the first of many; it is such a great concept and idea and it really is a much-needed approach in the whole promotion of music. Hopefully there'll be more and this is the first of many for both the music lover and the musician - it's great!
The All Tomorrow's Parties Festival takes place in Mt Buller, Victoria January 9-10, in Brisbane with a series of events between January 12-16, and at Sydney's Cockatoo Island on January 17-18.
Andy Ryan
|
|