Local Collective “Farmhouse” (originally started by Coby Raybould and Sam Finlay) will be staging a gig this Saturday night the 17th of March that is bound to leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside. I caught up with Farmhouse insider, and bass player for the Zephyrbees, Kyle Murray to find out about how the they came to stage indie rock gigs at a venue more often frequented by seniors of the community having a shandy and playing lawn bowls..
“We were at the stratford pub, and there was probably about 20 plus of us sitting on the smoking deck playing a drinking car called red car blue car, you know like you pick a colour car and if that colour car drives past you have to skull your beer also if a buss drives past and or train. So after not too long we were getting pretty roudy and louder and louder. Directly across the road was the bowls club and the patrons of the bowls club were playing bowls, as they do and then the Stratford bar staff came out and told us we have to stop being so loud and stop swearing because the bowls club had just rang up and made a noise complaint. We didn’t take much notice… we kinda got louder and laughed about it, then we decided to call up the bowls club and give them a noise complaint.”
“Then maybe half an hour passed, and they had finished playing bowls and gone into the club house to drink and then we decided were going to go over there and see what the go is. So we all got up and walked in the big group like all spread out across the road straight across to the bowls club, where they were thinking ohhh no, what have we done? They are all coming over to give us a hard time and cause trouble because I guess we’re not the most welcoming looking bunch covered in tattoos and what not. So we all went inside introduced ourselves at about 5 o’clock and we didn’t leave till after 12, and I’m pretty sure we drank them out of most of their beers! We became great mates with a lot of the patrons from that day and also a large majority of us became members that night.”
“They tell this story at their christmas parties about the day we came over and saved the pub from going broke”
“The stratford Summer sets was made by myself and the help of members of other bands when I found out that the Stratford bowls club was on the brink of closing due to lack of patrons and no new members, and I thought a good way to bring people in was with live music.”
“What i would really like to achieve is to make a music and arts hub (all scenes:- Blues, Rock, soul , electronic, spoken word, Acoustic, Brass, Poetry, solo artist ect.) I want to help get more members into the club to bring life back for the club members who put their heart and soul into the club with little to no reward, and bring young people along so they can experience lawns bowls and possibly take it up as a sport (my mates actually play proper tournaments, and came runners up in the cairns competition and represent cairns in away tournaments!) I want to get a big enough following so I can get the money to organise bands from down south interstate etc to come up to a great venue.”
Sounds like a great thing to us here at NQ Music Press
This Saturday night from 12pm to 12am you can catch a veritble cornucopia of local original bands including:- Meat Bikini (Who are about to head off on tour with the Cosmic Psychos), Tropic Roots, World Gone Mad, The Zephyrbeez, The Huckleberries (feat Members of Machine Machine) and The Citrus Seeds.
Entry is by donation, and drinks are cheap, so get along and support a great cause and catch some great original music.
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