Musos band together in world’s biggest support act

GANGgajang’s Mark Callaghan talks about how he went about assembling the world’s “biggest” band EveryOneBand.

Sydney drummers record for EveryOneBand.

WHEN former bandmate Chris Bailey’s death was followed with news of Bailey’s son being diagnosed with brain cancer, Mark Callaghan knew he had to do more to help his fellow musicians.

“On a personal level, it was at the back of my mind, when we lost Chris. GANGgajang had been the same five guys for 32 years when Chris passed away. It was like losing a brother, and then, in a completely unrelated thing, to discover his son Ollie had brain cancer two years later was just, oh my God, what are the odds. The poor family’s been through heaps, but at each of those points, Support Act was there to help them,” Callaghan said.

As a director of Support Act, a charity that provides assistance to people working in music who are struggling with a crisis, Callaghan came up with a novel idea to set up the “biggest” band in the world to help raise funds.

“I had this idea, if you can’t be in the biggest band in the world, as in Coldplay, maybe at least you can be in the biggest, with the most people in it,” he said.

He wrote a song and went about recruiting industry mates and put a call out to all musicians to join and record a hit single. The result was EveryOneBand producing the single Stand By You, featuring nine-year-old Ollie Bailey-O’Reilly playing ukulele and fronting the video and a who’s who of the Australian music industry including Paul Kelly, Jimmy Barnes, Peter Garrett, Steve Kilbey, Ian Moss, Suzi DeMarchi, Ross Wilson, Diesel, Katie Noonan, Richard Clapton and Kate Miller-Heidke.

“I basically just ran around like a stamp collector,” Callaghan said.

“Some people of course I knew from all the years around the tracks like Jimmy Barnes, I just go ‘Jim come over for lunch mate, you’ll have to sing on this song for me but … A lot of people were like that, I just rang them, you know, Mossy (Ian Moss) come over to my place and throw a bit of guitar on this.

“Or it was ‘I’ll come to you, I’ve got my recording studio in my backpack’. And these people are so wonderfully talented. They have two or three listens to the song and then they do three takes. They were there half an hour. It’s been great like that. People have been very generous.”

GANGgajang and The Riptides frontman Mark Callaghan, founder of EveryOneBand.

Then it was the task of mixing thousands of submitted audio files from the band — now 2500 strong — with the help of producer David Nicholas.

“That was the hard slog,” Callaghan said.

“We worked with at least 1600 audio files at least, which equals over 2000 people in the recording.”

“We submixed all of that down. We got all the acoustic guitars and got a nice acoustic guitars mix, electric guitars, weird stuff, theremin, mandolin, dobro and we still ended up with 45 stereo mixes and 70 mono mixes in the final mix session.”

Kelvin Grove singer/songwriter Sean Sennett was among the Brisbane artists performing on the single along with groups such as ukulele group BUMS and Emma Dean’s choir Cheep Trill.

“We recorded my guitar in a hotel in Spring Hill. Mark (“Cal” Callaghan) had a portable studio set up,” he said.

“He taught me the chords and 10 minutes later I was part of the ‘biggest band’ around. When we recorded the guitar track he had Jimmy Barnes singing the lead vocal ... it was a real surprise to hear so many other iconic voices on it when the song was released. It’s a terrific initiative raising money for a worthy cause.”

Brisbane ukulele group BUMS and Emma Dean’s choir Cheep Trill are featured heavily in the acoustic mix of the song.

Dean said it was an honour to be involved in a project with “so much heart”.

“Fundraising for such a worthy cause was an absolute pleasure,” she said.

“A large part of my work is dedicated to bringing people together and nurturing community through music and creativity.

“It felt so wonderful that my choir, Cheep Trill, and I could be part of an even larger community of musicians with different levels of experience and styles. It was such a buzz.”

* Stand By You is available to download from iTunes and online at everyone band.com. Profits go to Support Act.