Interview: GREAT SOUNDS GREAT 2024 Festival - Eyegum Music Collective

Sprawling across six Pōneke central city venues (and seven stages) on 31st August, this year's GREAT SOUNDS GREAT festival hosts a whopping thirty acts from throughout Aotearoa. Eyegum Music Collective co-curator Joel Cosgrove gave us the skinny on what to look forward to at the fest, Eyegum's current ongoing fundraising drive, current challenges facing our live music community, the nitty gritty on how the collective actually make events happen (including their popular free Eyegum Wednesdays at San Fran), and nationwide projects for the near future. Read below and definitely check out the sizzling hot new dance banger from Tāmaki's Grecco Romank 'Sidetracked' (featuring Australia's Our Carlson) — catch them moving the crowd at GREAT SOUNDS GREAT...

GREAT SOUNDS GREAT 2024
Saturday 31st August - San Fran, Meow, Valhalla, Rogue & Vagabond, Bedlam & Squalor, Hotel Bristol (2 stages), Wellington (5pm onwards)

Featuring... Afterparty, Alphabethead, Benny Salvador, Bleeding Star, Castlecliff Lights, Class War on the Dancefloor, Clear Path Ensemble, Dateline, Death and the Maiden, Ebony Lamb, Erny Belle, EUG, Fur Patrol, Grecco Romank, Half Hexagon, Hera Lindsay Bird, Jackson McCarthy, Jujulipps, Khadro Mohamed, Koizilla, Maiden Name, Michael Logie, Miss Leading, Motte, Pony Baby, Scran, Sleeping Village, Spectre Collective, Trinity Roots, Womb

Tickets on sale now at eyegum.co.nz
Ticket holders will receive a wristband that will give them access to each of the participating venues throughout the event. Information on how to pick up wristbands will be provided to ticket holders closer to the time.

Chris Cudby: This will be GREAT SOUNDS GREAT's third year, how has the festival evolved over that time? Do you have any specific guiding principles / aims in mind when inviting guests to play at GREAT SOUNDS GREAT?

Joel Cosgrove: It's kind of hard to tell from within the weeds how it's changed over time, but each year we've gotten more confident with our booking and scheduling, everyone says this, but we do reckon this is our strongest lineup. Like our other events, we hope that people trust in our curation, come along for the acts you know and be blown away by the acts you didn't know would be your new favourite thing. At Rogue & Vagabond the four acts playing are an indie rock band, live electronic, jazz and live hip-hop, that kinda reflects our wider ethos. We love seeing an eclectic and awesome lineup, it's so fun bouncing between venues and acts for one night, we are unapologetic about tipping our hats to The Other's Way, it is definitely an inspiration for us. We've also added a new venue / two new stages since the first year, and we hope to continue to grow to include additional venues and spaces in the area going forward.

You're expanding GREAT SOUNDS GREAT with a poetry component this year?

We've had poetry (and other non-music art forms) as part of the programme for our other festival Welcome To Nowhere for the past few years, so bringing it into GREAT SOUNDS GREAT only makes sense. Obviously Hera (Lindsay Bird) is amazing, but people not familiar with it will be surprised by the poetry, I think. We have some really great poets on the lineup. It's definitely something we hope punters go check it out, and plan to continue to cross-pollinate art forms and audiences in future years.

Without mentioning every single artist (there's a lot!) — any suggested acts for attendees to definitely check out at GREAT SOUNDS GREAT this year? Any acts that you've been keen to get on board for a while, but it hasn't worked out until now?

As proud Wellingtonians we're so stoked to have legends like Fur Patrol and Trinity Roots on board. In terms of other acts, we're really excited about Death and the Maiden, Koizilla and Grecco Romank, all bands we've been fans of for years and all of whom are amazing live. We're also big promoters of up and coming local artists so Afterparty (featuring Te Kura Huia), Maiden Name, EUG, Sleeping Village, Bleeding Star and Class War on the Dancefloor are all acts you might not have heard of but will blow you away. But choosing acts is like choosing your favourite child, our lineup is stacked this year and is a great reflection of the creative strength of the music scene in Aotearoa.

How are you organised as a collective and how are decisions made? Is there a core team / board who get wheels turning to make things happen?

Eyegum has been going for 10 years now, so people have come and gone in that time, it's always nice when someone goes overseas or steps back for a while and comes back. We have members who've been involved since we started and members who've come on board this year. It's really important to keep the collective vital and active.

We meet each fortnight to go over our plans / events. We generally work to consensus, our main points of debate and discussion come around lineups, where we often will run internal polls to see what acts have the broadest support within the crew. We generally try to balance this all out through a few layers of discussion to settle lineups. Overtime we have members with areas of expertise, so we take that into consideration as well.

We have a bit of a pyramid of activity within Eyegum. There's around 12-15 active members at the moment, with wider layers of supporters or crew who come on board when we have bigger events, but don't necessarily want to come to regular meetings. For our Welcome to Nowhere festival we expanded to 80 odd people, that's probably us at our biggest.

Eyegum recently announced a fundraising drive — what is the current situation and how can readers help? What are Eyegum's main ongoing projects / initiatives?

The last two years have been pretty tough for the industry as a whole. At the end of last year, we decided that running Nowhere was unsustainable in its existing format and in the current environment. A friend of the collective covered our debt with their mortgage, which allowed us to pay all our artists who played Nowhere. But the debt is still there. We have fundraisers scheduled for Pōneke and Tāmaki Makaurau, but right now the best thing people can do to help is buy tickets (as early as possible) not just to our shows, but all the other awesome independent promoters and bands doing their amazing mahi across the motu. Also, if anyone wants to help us organise a fundraiser, we're welcome to any offers of help. We have a very ambitious lineup of events and tours coming up over the next year, which we're super excited about and will be announcing over the coming months.

Any specific challenges you see our live music community facing, in our current moment?

The music industry has been in recession whether the rest of the country has or hasn't been. Money is tight. The music is out there, but times are tough and going out to a gig is the first thing people pull back on when things get tight. Great Sounds Great is a celebration of our local venues as much as it is about how amazing the music is, it's only getting tougher to run a venue in the current climate. So ongoing pressure on acts, punters and venues. It's a triple-threat that affects us all.

Any thoughts around bringing the Scenic Tours back?

The next one will be announced in the next few weeks, the lineup makes no sense, but is totally awesome.

What's on the horizon for Eyegum?

We've got our next Scenic Tour we'll be taking round the motu, we have an epic 10th anniversary gig in November as well as a Xmas party / fundraiser in December, we'll definitely be cracking out the BBQ and a beer at that point. At some point we'll have a Tāmaki based fundraiser — shout out to the Auckland, and particularly Whammy, whānau for supporting us with this and everything else.