CMC Rocks QLD 2024: early bird festival campers tailgate ahead of Lainey Wilson concert
It takes a certain breed of country music fan to show up to a festival that doesn’t fully begin until two days later, as performers found at CMC Rocks QLD on Wednesday night.
It takes a certain breed of country music fan to show up on a Wednesday night for a festival that doesn’t fully begin until two days later.
But for the 2000 or so early-bird campers who pulled into Willowbank Raceway, 55km southwest of Brisbane, CMC Rocks QLD is such a hotly anticipated annual event that they didn’t want to miss a minute.
“In my opinion, they’re the most diehard; the people that want to get there from the first opportunity and stay there the longest,” said singer-songwriter Travis Collins, who was among the performers.
“It’s pretty impressive; there was a lot of horsepower there last night, and they didn’t really give too much concern to the fact that they had to do it for another four days,” he said with a laugh.
When CMC Rocks QLD gets underway with its three-stage set-up on Friday, about 23,000 fans will be on site until Sunday night.
Such is its hard-earned reputation for delivering a quality festival experience that its ticket allotment sold out almost immediately, as with previous editions.
With eight albums and nine Golden Guitar Awards under his belt, Collins is one of the genre’s established performers, and he has watched with pride as the event has grown in stature.
“This has become the country music fans’ Christmas, really,” he said. “CMC Rocks attracts hard-living, hardworking people from all over the place. Ten years ago, you were kind of the weird one, or the odd one out, if you listened to country – but now it’s such a major genre. In popularity, sales and concert attendance figures, it’s leading statistics around the world.”
Now in its 17th year, the festival has established a reputation for booking US artists before they break globally – most notably Taylor Swift, who made her Australian live debut at Thredbo in 2009.
Its audience is a remarkably thirsty one, too: at last year’s event, The Australian understands that, on the first night alone, bar staff sold 40,000 frozen cocktails at $15 a pop.
Joining Collins on Wednesday night was Melanie Dyer, who will also perform at the festival on Saturday, ahead of an exclusive songwriters’ show to feature headlining US artist Lainey Wilson.
For Dyer, who was raised near Inverell in NSW, the opportunity to perform alongside stars such as Wilson – who earned her first Grammy Award last month – is a key attraction.
“It’s amazing to be sharing the line-up alongside these global artists,” she said. “It widens the horizon for Australians, and it means that we can bridge that gap between our country and the rest of the world.”
“It feels like we’re all put under this spotlight together, which is really cool for Australians to step it up, match that energy, put on a great show and show them what we’ve got going on down here,” said Dyer.
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