4. Lock, Hillstock, Tay Tay and Coldplay

The Second I got behind the desk at KCR, I wanted to put on a fundraising concert for the station. Not just to raise money, but also to raise the profile of the station. There are people in Kalamunda, who have never heard of Kalamunda Community Radio, and I felt the station could do with a profile boost in the wider Perth muso community. I had to let myself bed in as a volunteer/presenter before I pitched the idea to the station committee. I didn’t want to be that guy who walked in the door and immediately tried to re-invent the wheel. I was unsure how the stalwarts of the KCR Committee would take the idea, so I set about sussing out the lay of the land.

Less than a year into my time at KCR, I decided the time was right to pitch my idea at the monthly Comm meeting. Such was my eagerness to get things underway, I’d already sussed out a venue and found 3 bands willing to play the event before the KCR Comm had even heard about the idea!

It was with a huge sense of joy that I received the news that I’d got the green light, and all involved with KCR were excited and enthused by the idea.

I’ve managed young bands before and organised their live shows (A bit like trying to train chimps)

Nu-Metal "sensations" Safehouse Theory after playing to 8 people at The Hope & Anchor, Islington

I’ve never put on an event of my own though. I was absolutely buzzing to get started on putting on my first gig.

I knew nothing of the local music scene, who was who, good venues, bad venues etc. I needed some inside local knowledge. I was lucky enough to rope in Shaun from Kalamunda band Clandestine, who I’d already spoken to about playing Hillstock. He was so full of good advice, helping me suss out who’s who in the zoo, suggesting venues etc. It was him that mentioned The Kalamunda Club, and after a meeting with Cass the Manager, I could see it ticked almost all the boxes: Local to Kalamunda, Cheap, Licenced. Capacity wise, at 270, it was slightly bigger than I was looking for. I’d initially thought 200 was as big as I’d like to try and fill, but the pro’s outweighed the cons and so that was the venue locked in.

I’d had heaps of local bands on the podcast and radio show, so musically I had a pretty clear sense of who and what I wanted for Hillstock. I applied the exact same criteria to it as I do with bands on the radio show and podcast, I need to like your music. That’s it, my one and only pre-requisite for playing your music on my show and having you as a guest on the podcast.

Some were unavailable and I secretly hope they’ll kick themselves when they see how awesome Hillstock was and sign on for the sequel (if there is one).

I’d originally thought that 5 bands/artists would be a good number for an evening event, and I had 4 who were keen. That became 5 one night in October 2023, when I attended a Sofar Sounds show. Opening up that night was Clare Perrott, an artist so new, she hadn’t even recorded anything yet. I sat there, as did the rest of the room, utterly captivated by her performance for 30 minutes. Clare is a very striking young woman, and I always feel so awkward approaching female artists in these situations. In that situation, to her I imagine I’m just a crusty old Geezer hitting her up after her set, asking if she’ll come onto my radio show and podcast, and play my fundraising event. I don’t know why I always feel so weird, I’m a radio presenter, and they have such solid reputations………..

Fortunately, the event organiser Paul, knew me from the Podcast, and he introduced us, and Clare was stoked that I’d asked, and agreed straight away.

Unfortunately, one of the other bands dropped out, I say they dropped out, they basically stopped replying to my emails, and as I’d set out in my early correspondences with the bands, that’s the one thing I won’t tolerate.

So, my line-up was back down to 4. I’m a planner by nature and in my day job, and I always look for contingencies in case things were to go sideways, I felt that 5 was a good number, but 4 probably wouldn’t be enough, what if someone dropped out?

I decided to line-up 6 bands, with the expectation that one would drop out, leaving me with the magic number of 5. I felt that I needed some more local Perth Hills representation, as only 2 of my current line-up were local acts. I put a post up on the Perth Music Network Facebook page (A page I’ve been subsequently banned from, with absolutely no clue why!) looking for acts, and I was absolutely in-undated with responses from all over WA it was overwhelming!

Brandon Poletti was one of those who responded, I really liked his stuff, and better than that, he was Perth Hills based, so I locked him in straight away.

I was busily working my way through all the submissions, when I received a reply to my post, in the form of a DM.

I’d originally thought it would be nice to have a bigger name/headline act but as the weeks went on and some of the bigger Perth based names I’d approached either hadn’t bothered to respond or declined, (again I hope they see the social media clips and kick themselves, hard) I kind of went off the idea.

Matty T Wall is a Bluesman I’ve seen a couple of times in Perth, he’s an electrifying performer, very much in the style of George Thorogood, with a backing band as tight as they come. I’ve bought his vinyl and downloaded his music to play on the show, he’s Perth based but internationally known. I was BUZZING when he messaged me and offered to play Hillstock with his band, and better than that he’s also a Perth Hills artist having grown up in Darlington.

As the excitement of Matty being on the bill subsided I realised that this represented, with all due respect to the other bands playing the event, a real step up, and I’d need to raise my game to make sure that the quality of the event matched that of the line-up.

We’d arranged to borrow a PA for free from Blue Arts Fly, a local collective putting on live events around the Kalamunda and Hills area, but this wasn’t going to cope with Matty’s huge sound. I also needed a professional Sound Engineer; both came with a big expense.

Early in the planning stage I’d thrown out a kind of an informal questionnaire to the bands about their pet hates at gigs, and almost all of them came back with bad sound as their number 1.

I wanted this to be a quality event, but it is a fundraiser, and while everything else (stage hire, food, drinks, photography/videography, venue hire, merchandising) were all done as cheaply as possible, I did not want to scrimp on the sound. I asked Shaun for his best recommendation, and he put me onto Kyle from WA Sound Supplies who has been awesome and gave us a 33% discount on his services/PA and lighting hire.

Even with a huge discount, PA and Sound represents 45% of our total costs for Hillstock.

I felt with Matty locked in for the gig, I could increase ticket prices by $10 to cover the additional costs. Which I did, and later regretted.

I put a hell of a lot of thought into when and how to start selling tickets. Traditionally in WA its all very last minute, but with the extra capacity and now expense, I didn’t think I had anything to lose by going early. Tickets went on sale on Jan 7^th, and up until April 7^th 5 weeks out from the gig, we’d sold 43 tickets. For that entire time, I was hustling so so hard behind the scenes posting on every Facebook group I could think of, we had the bands playing on KCR with an advert for Hillstock 3-4 times per day. I didn't feel I could ask KCR for any more money, so I spent $300 of my own money running sponsored FB ads. We had 4000 flyers printed up which were very kindly delivered in the Hills area for free by the amazing team at Kalamunda Dominos over the course of a few weeks, I put posters up around Kalamunda. I was interviewed for X-Press Magazine. I kept waiting for sales to pick up and they just didn’t…….at all.

I’d thrown so much love, passion time and effort into this project, for months I’d neglected my kids, my relationship, and my day job. To see it failing so spectacularly was absolutely heartbreaking.

I had sleepless night after sleepless night, thinking of ways to promote it and sell some more tickets. We were obviously going to be nowhere near the estimate I'd given to KCR in terms of funds raised when I first pitched the idea, but at this point, I'd be happy just to break even. 

A week or two after Easter I was ready to pull the pin and cancel the event, no way could I put on a gig at a 270 Cap venue with 43 people, it’d be embarrassing, and the station would lose money on a supposed fundraiser.

I had a good long think about what to do, I considered switching up to a smaller venue, which, even if one were available, would be a hassle, and have even more costs associated with it.

I thought again about the Kalamunda Club. I remembered a curtain towards the back of the venue. I went there for a suss and realised you can close the curtain and reduce the size of the area by almost half. OK, now we are getting somewhere.

I went home, sat down and gave myself a good talking to about backing yourself, following through and I had a good long hard look at the tattoo on the inside of my right arm, I thought about why I first got it, and what it means to me.

I plucked up the courage to tell the station we needed to spend more money on promotion, which was a hard sell when we were already $1500 in the hole. To be fair they backed me in, all the way, and then slowly, very very slowly, things started to pick up.

Now here we are 3 days out from the event, and it doesn't look like we'll be needing that curtain, we will make money for the station. We’ll still have tickets on the door, which I didn’t want to do. I wanted a sell out and I wanted people who didn't go in early to be disappointed, so that when (and if) I put on Hillstock II there will be a bit more urgency around the ticket release and people will get on board earlier.

But as a great man once sang, you can't always get what you want.

Talking to local acts and promotors, local music scenes, not just in WA, but all over Australia, are dying, venues are closing, festivals are being cancelled and local acts are suffering.

Its nice to see major acts like Pink and Taylor Swift selling out arenas all over Australia, but I'll ask you to consider this, your $250 ticket to see Multi-Millionaire artists like that just once, represents 10 tickets to local gigs. Please, and I'm not for one second suggesting you boycott the Tay Tay's and Coldplay's, but if you take nothing else away from this Blog, consider spending at least some of your hard earned, limited disposable income on your local music scene, go to that gig, by a CD or a T shirt, it means so much more to the artist than you’d realise and you'll miss them when they're gone.

If you are coming to Hillstock, I’ll see you there. None of the bands dropped out in the end, so things are a little congested time wise! Doors are 6pm, and the mesmerising Clare Perrott will be on stage at 645pm, please come and say hello. I’m not that scary.

If you have read this far, (thanks!) and are thinking you'd like to support your local music scene and Community Radio Station, then tickets can be found here:

https://www.trybooking.com/CMZSZ

If you’re not coming to Hillstock, don’t worry, you’ll be seeing and hearing what an incredible night of music you missed out on, on our social media channels in the coming weeks.

I’ll be taking a break from things for a while, even the podcast. I’ll be taking some time to unscramble my brain, get some early nights, re-connect with my kids, attempt to re-build my relationship, and maybe give the day job a bit more focus too.

I'll see you in 2025 for Hillstock II............maybe.