Return To Nowhere
Welcome To Nowhere returned this year for a soggy soirée in the countryside, filled with music, mud and iconic moments.
Guitar Bands!
It’s true, I’m deep in heavy guitar cravings at the moment, and the Welcome To Nowhere 2023 line-up certainly delivered.
It was surreal to see Ty Segall & The Freedom Band in the middle of rural New Zealand absolutely shredding it up. The band was loud, tight and incredibly playful on stage, often trading solo’s and knowing grins. Bucket list stuff for me.
Soft Bait gave a top-tier performance of their desert post-rock, blowing away many first time listeners and fans like myself alike. Break-out band of the festival hands down.
They also provided a personally iconic moment as Will from The Spectre Collective and I, who both had tried to remember which of their tunes had a Queens Of The Stone Age type riff, spotted each other instantly from opposite sides of the crowd in shared excitement as the band played the riff later in the set.
Dale Kerrigan delivered the annual ‘Dunedin band blows the socks off everyone’ set that Night Lunch had filled the previous edition of the festival. It was an incredible experience, in what had become merciless rainfall, to be battered by guitarist / vocalist Shlee Nicholls screams as an entire festival audience stood transfixed and soaking wet #dunedinsupremecy
Koizilla, School Fair, Wurld Series, Earth Tongue & Goya all proved over and over again that NZ produces some of the best, most inventive guitar music there is, and I was happiest (usually side of stage for the view) letting the noise wash over me.
Recitals
I don’t know if Recitals is a guitar band. Im not sure what kind of band they are honestly. All I know is that they delivered the standout set of the festival.
Apparently they were missing a member, but still delivered a performance that swung between explosive and driving, to ethereal and hypnotic, seemingly effortlessly. The entire band looked offensively young for how good they all were.
I really enjoyed their debut album Orbit I (out now on Flying Nun Records) but had never been able to see them live. I’ll be attending every gig I possibly can from now on, and you should too.
Mud
It had rained leading up to the weekend. It rained on the Friday we arrived. The mud was endless.
No amount of gravel could stop it. No fresh path could be found. It was you vs the mud to see the next band. Some took it slowly, some decided speed was the way to go. Some had gumboots, others went for bare feet.
It created an us, a shared experience for the entire festival as we traversed up and down from the main stage to the camp stage. It was a fair fight until the Sunday night rain broke the camels back and the entire field became a swamp, hunting its next victim and dragging all of us one at a time back into the earth.
It felt like a real festival.
Live Interviews
I was lucky enough to get up on stage each day and present a shorter version of my live podcast / interview series with Ben Woods on the Saturday, and Vera Ellen on the Sunday.
In many ways, the Ben Woods show was harder due to having already interviewed him (for the Hahko FM podcast) and getting to know him over the last year.
This endangers the conversation by making it easy to slip into in-jokes or tangents that leave the audience behind, and is something I have to be aware of as we chat away, keeping the conversation both accessible to the audience, and authentic for Ben and myself.
Having only met Vera Ellen the day previous, despite being a big fan of her latest release ‘It’s Your Birthday’ (also out on Flying Nun Records), this was not an issue and I was able to dive headfirst into all the questions at the top of my mind, which automatically keeps me more in line with the audience and makes the show far less work.
Im spending all my energy on listening intently to the guests and therefore I usually have no perspective on whether the show went good or not, so I really appreciate all the kind people who said such nice things afterwards. It feels good to know music fans enjoy experiencing artists in a slightly different context just as much as I do.
Stand-out moments from the two shows were Ben’s theatrical and relaxed pouring of a spritzer as the entire festival looked on in anticipation, his answering of ‘do you consider yourself to be romantic’ and Vera’s memory of her very first song, as well as the ‘pranking’ of herself by playing older, half-remembered material to the adoring audience.
Thanks to both artists for saying yes and to the kind and engaged audience for coming along, I can’t wait to do more this year.
Vibes
The vibes were immaculate. The sun was out (mostly), the crowd was kind and positive, respectful of each others space and experience, and collectively met every challenge together without much a huff at all.
The organisers and volunteers all did such an incredible job, leaving myself as both an artist and audience, with a smooth and enjoyable experience of the entire weekend, and allowing the music itself to be help up and enjoyed above all else. A special thanks to Ben Jones for all the comms and organising artist side.
Support the Eyegum Collective and come along to the next Welcome To Nowhere, I highly recommend it.
H.