Country music stars Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley save farm with intimate gigs
Faced with losing their family farm, country music stars Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley pivoted their business, turning it into a tourism bonanza. Now, they are booked out for nine years.
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Country music stars Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley had $400 left in their bank account and were staring down the very real threat of losing their farm on the NSW mid north coast.
Their Hang at the Wang bright idea born out of desperation not only saved their property and put them back into the black, but now has a nine-year waitlist.
When the pandemic shut down the live music industry in early 2020, the husband and wife duo lost almost 70 gigs, months in the planning, in a day; touring is the duo’s primary source of income.
As musicians, “there was no box to tick” for government support.
They hung onto the hope the world would return to normal sooner than later and they could get back out on the road.
But the months dragged on through 2020. They couldn’t afford to keep renting at the property near the farm in the tiny town of Wang Wauk, near Nabiac, so moved with their daughter Tiggy and son Elroy into a shed on their property.
“The bank called us in January 2021 after giving us a ‘holiday’ from our loan and were genuinely concerned. They said ‘We’re really worried for you guys because you’re both musicians. We know that you can’t go back to work.’ But they didn’t have a solution for us,” McClymont said.
Eckersley said it was the government restrictions limiting gatherings to 20 people in an outdoor setting which sparked their plan to stage Hang at the Wang, a weekend getaway and gig on their property.
They took the money they had saved to build their home and bought nine tipi tents to erect on their suitably socially distanced 40 hectares.
“It was really a gamble. I thought if we got one weekend out of it, great stuff, there’s two months worth of money coming in and then we’ll figure out the next bit,” McClymont said.
The couple announced their bush bash on their social media channels. They sold out nine weekends in six hours.
After two seasons with the tipis, they have now upgraded their set-up with 20 tiny sheds, toilet and shower blocks and the big shed where they hold the gig.
“We took another gamble and invested in upgrading to the huts instead of building our house and now we’ve got a nine-year wait list; I can’t keep up with the demand of people wanting to come,” McClymont said.
“People aren’t just coming once – they’re booking in to make it their yearly thing now.”
And why wouldn’t they? The country music couple are natural born entertainers. They sit around the fire at 2am getting to know the people who have invested in their music career for years and are now backing their tourism business.
And they were the first ones to hear the husband and wife trade verses and harmonies on the new stuff from McClymont and Eckersley’s second duo album, Up Down and Sideways.
Songs like the real talkin’ opening track Country Music, You and Beer; McClymont’s lyric “So I raise a glass to my fat ass” already features on a T-shirt which is a popular seller at the farm weekends.
Other tracks including Rock Bottom share the couple’s concerns about drinking too much during their pandemic stress. Now they limit themselves to sharing a drink with their guests on the weekend so they can stay on top of their business and health.
“We wrote that one when we were drinking too much,” Eckersley said. “That first line ‘A problem’s not a problem until it’s a problem’; you just don’t know until you’re in too deep.
“We are good with checking in with each other and we were conscious of not wanting to get too deep in that hole.
“So we don’t drink mid week at all now because every week we have a new group of people up here and they deserve the best of us, all of our energy.”
Up Down and Sideways is out now. For all upcoming tour dates, https://www.brookeandadam.com/
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Originally published as Country music stars Brooke McClymont and Adam Eckersley save farm with intimate gigs
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