Meadow Music Festival returns for its seventh year in April 2021. Located in the gorgeous rolling hills of Bambra, Victoria. The much anticipated soldout multi-day camping festival will take place over the ANZAC Day long weekend (Friday 23rd - 25th of April). Festival headliners include King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard and Angie McMahon, who lead an all-Australian lineup. Hazy Days Music had the privilege of catching with the festival founder, Cam Wade, and I can't thank Cam enough for taking the time out and having a chat.

How did Meadow Music Festival start and grow to where it is now? Everyone talks about the special community this event has, what has it taken to create that experience?

We have been running Meadow Music Festival for a little while now. This year would've been our eighth festival, but because of last year's cancellation. We are calling this one our seventh and a half. It all started ten years ago before Meadow was even an idea. For my 21st birthday, we threw a big festival style party, and the year after that, it was my brother's 21st, so we ran it again. The following year we had no more siblings turning 21, and that's when it turned into an event where we would start to charge people to attend. For the first four or five years, it was pretty casual. A lot of mates bands were playing, and friends of friends were coming down. We have been pretty serious about what we were doing over the last four festivals, we have learned a lot over the years, and you can see how it has grown. 

My parents were happy for us to throw these events at their house when it was just 21st parties, but the first time that we wanted to call it a festival and charge people to buy tickets, our parents were like, "yeah, you'll have to find somewhere else to hold these events haha". One of our close friends suggested this little town just off the surf coast of Victoria called Bambra. It's a unique location. It's bushy, has rolling hills, amazing views, and is an incredible region with talented producers that make fantastic beer and wines. His family have lived in this area their whole life on this beautiful property called The Retreat. We have grown a lot since those days and have moved to a slightly larger property. One thing that has been really important to us that we keep everything representative of this gorgeous region. Our stalls are all local vendors, and the delicious beer and wine is all produced from this region. It's something that we have really latched onto and is unique to our festival.

We are proud of the people that come to our event. Building that special community is something that we have focused on, but not incidentally. We have checked out a lot of different types of festivals over the years, and you tend to see it happen at some of these smaller boutique events. You have this chance to create this family feel, not a family as in a mum and dad way. But in the way, it feels like you get to know everyone around the site over the weekend. You build this little bit of a one-weekend only community. It's something that we have honed in on, and it's something that we have been working on specialising.

It must have been devastating when you found out last year's festival was cancelled 11 days before the event. Could you run us through what those days were like?

It was a pretty surreal time. We were exceptionally busy leading up to the festival. We were trying to play catch up and sort everything out because we were away in January. Two weeks before the festival, we had a friends' wedding up in Sydney, we were working crazy hours trying to get everything ordered and set on a schedule, so we could get away for a few days. That Saturday morning, as I was about to board the plane, everyone was crowded around the TVs. The announcements had just come on saying this virus is more serious than first speculated, and these steps are likely going to happen in the next few days. I think we were halfway through the wedding when they announced all of Australia is going into lockdown. All events are now cancelled! There was nothing we could do, and the festival was not going to run this year. 

We got back to Melbourne Monday morning and started putting together our announcements on the festival's cancellation. We really had to feel our way through it. It's something none of us had ever experienced before. Compared to now, it's very different, you see events get cancelled today, and everyone understands the risk is still here, and cancellation is still a chance of happening. There is a lot more understanding today. Back then, we didn't know what to think, and I think it was the same for everyone who was excited to be coming to our festival. No one knew what to think, what to expect, what anyone owed, or anything.

We are very grateful to have the type of people that come to our event. They are very understanding, and when we were conversing back and forth about what they expected and an outcome we all would be happy with. In the end, I think we came up with a good solution to transfer the tickets to this year's festival, which 99% of the people were all too happy to do. This experience made us very proud of the event we have, and the type of people that come to our festival.

That is a very distilled version of what happened. We had countless emails and phone calls between agents/managers, and nobody had any idea of what was going on. Back then, there was still this mindset that the virus will all be over in 2 or 3 months. It was a weird time, trying to work out what was going on. Talking with artist managers about if they should be refunding any cash or holding onto their fees. A lot of people were thinking the festival will be back up and running pretty soon. In hindsight, we all didn't know it would take a full 12 months to get the music industry up and running again, despite football managing to get a run almost straight away. 

We have been joking that we need to put a game of footy on in the middle of the festival or get Patrick Dangerfield working the gate.

Were you able to receive any of the government grant funding?

It was a good six months into the pandemic before we saw any help at all come for the music industry. At times you would see various people popping up in the media asking - "What the hell is going on with the music industry? How are we going to support these people?" Those initiatives like Job Seeker and Job Keeper didn't help events with sporadic turnovers that happen once a year. That not something you can protect. 

For us and our immediate position was we lost everything that we did last year and would have a significant amount of debt to carry over into this year's event. 

I think it wasn't until August or September we saw The RISE Fund announced. And at the time, we thought they were meant for events much bigger than us. Looking at the outcome of that, I guess you could see those big festivals like Splendor, Groovin The Moo and others all copped 1.5 Million dollar grants. We were lucky enough to get some funding from that initiative. We were very grateful that our small application was recognised amongst those big ones. We also had a little bit of luck in the Creative Victoria one as well. In the end, we have secured enough grant funding that if things fall over this year, we have some contingency plans in place. Thanks to those levels of support from the government agencies, we are able to run a virtual festival this year too. 

From the outside, it’s easy to look at some of these grants that are going around to events and wondering how is it actually going to benefit all the people at the working level? I can see now behind our festival. All our funding is trickling down to bands, suppliers, and service providers involved in our event. It is definitely a blessing not only for us to be able to run. But to ensure all these people are getting at least that one festival back on their schedules this year.

When did you find out you could run the festival this year and what has the planning been like? Could it still run if Melbourne was in lockdown?

Before we received the funding from those government grants/initiatives, it would have been challenging to run anything this year. Luckily we scored some of that funding, which put us back to square one. Otherwise, we probably would have run a very, very small event on no budget to try and recover.

For a long time, we thought we would be running the festival in November 2021. It wasn't until we received the guidelines for a covid safe event framework in December 2020 that we could finally understand whether or not the festival could run back in our original time frame. I think it was the very beginning of January when we finally got some correspondence back on some emails we were having with the DHHS. So it wasn't until the start of January when we knew we could start working.

I think this is one of the reasons our event is great for our area and the community of Bambra. It draws all these people from Melbourne that come down and are keen to explore. We do our bit by showing off what Bambra has to offer, and that is a key facet of our festival. It means that even if we were out of restrictions and Melbourne were still in them. Meadow wouldn't sell enough tickets to make the event viable.

What are the pros and cons of carrying the tickets over from last year?

With the carry-over tickets, it is somewhat beneficial to carry those tickets into the new event. However, you have already spent all the money from those tickets you allocated on advertising last year. That money is allocated to setting up our publicity, setting up our website, and all the admin work that allows this event to happen. When you carry those tickets over, that portion of the ticket price has already been spent. That's money out of the budget you don't get back for next year's festival. You would have to make next year's event happen with a lot less budget. That's why we were looking to run a small event this year if we hadn't received that support. 

It is a blessing still. Have all these people there ready to go, not having to worry as much about advertising, because you already have 300 people there. But just in terms of the budget, it takes a lot to run a festival, and you have lost a big chunk of it.

How has it been since starting to work on this year's event? Have you had to reduce the capacity at all?

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind start to the year. Since the beginning of January, we have been working on the festival from 6 in the morning, going to our day jobs, and working until 10:30 at night. It has been a lot, but we have managed to put quite a lot together in those first six weeks. Getting the lineup announcements out was a lot of effort. We are all very happy with the lineup this year, just like every year. 

Our capacity will be reduced, capping it at around 1,000 tickets.

Tickets are scarce this year, and as you saw with that first limited release, they sold out in about 30 minutes. I think it will be the same again if we manage to get the general release on sale. I think people are just itching to get back out to a camping festival.

What new precautions have been implemented to make the festival Covid safe?

We have spent so much time figuring out how to create a festival where people can socially distance, but where if we have big rock bands playing, we still can keep the crowd safe if they might have had a few too many drinks. 

We have split the amphitheatre into what we are calling viewing zones. 

Because we had that big chunk of tickets already sold, we weren't able to segregate the festival off into zones and sell tickets at different prices, having the front more expensive than watching from the back.

What we have come up with is a rotating viewing zone schedule.

We are giving people coloured wristbands, and each viewing zone will have a coloured sign on the gate. We will rotate the sections two times throughout the festival. Giving everyone the chance to stand up the front, stand in the middle and stand at the back. Despite the social distancing and capacity restrictions, we want to make sure everyone gets the same experience, and I think it is good we are not letting people pay more for the front row. I like the idea that everyone is getting the same experience and everyone is paying the same money. 

It’s split up into Friday, Saturday day, and Saturday Night.

We have a sunset hour between Saturday day, and night, which provides the perfect spot to break the festival up and swap everyone around. 

So you could be up the front Friday, in the middle Saturday day, and up the back on Saturday night. Or vice versa. It’s all-new.

Could you tell us a little bit about the virtual ticket?

The virtual tickets are going to be on sale up until the event day. Hutch Collective and Baked (formerly Baked Goods) are coming down and filming that for us. The audio is also being professionally mixed and available online a fortnight after the festival.

Second lineup announcement

A second and final lineup has just been announced, along with a limited number of tickets and glamping! Be quick, as they are sure to sell out fast! Head over to the Meadow website now to find all the events information.

The second lineup includes - Private Function, Prequel, King Stingray, Mindy Meng Wang 王萌 x Tim Shiel, and The Seven Ups.

If you’d love to help out at this amazing festival, you can find all the volunteering information here.

Stay up to date with Meadow Music Festival on Facebook and Instagram.

Posted on the 24th of March by Jake Taylor.