Missy Higgins on the unique desert thrill of playing 2022 Big Red Bash music festival
‘Everyone was letting loose and really intensely enjoying themselves, like you’d had a massive bottle of champagne after an ultra-marathon,’ says Missy Higgins.
Out toward the centre of Australia each winter, a pop-up city of about 11,000 happy campers springs from the red sand at the far western edge of Queensland for three days in July.
In the shadow of a giant dune named Big Red, a large stage and booming speaker system pumps live music out into the vast interior, with nightly concerts wrapping up at about 8pm before the desert chill truly descends.
Pop singer-songwriter Missy Higgins is a return performer at the Big Red Bash, which concluded on Thursday night near the small town of Birdsville, and she rates its unique locale as one of her favourite places to perform.
“I think that this location is one of the most amazing I’ve been to; it actually reminds me a bit of the Burning Man (arts festival), which I’ve been to a couple of times in America,” she told The Australian. “It’s a real journey, physically and probably emotionally, to get there, which I think just makes it a bit more of an event.”
For attendees – including plenty of parents with young kids – half the fun is the story of getting there, and Higgins sensed the crowd’s shared joy during her sunset show on Wednesday.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere together, and it felt like everybody in the audience had had a really big, life-changing adventure to get to the show,” she said. “Everyone was letting loose and really intensely enjoying themselves, like you’d had a massive bottle of champagne after an ultra-marathon.”
The singer’s next desert gig is the Mundi Mundi Bash, a sister event to be held near the far western NSW city of Broken Hill, which runs from August 18-20 and will be headlined by rock acts Midnight Oil and Jimmy Barnes.
“I love the intimacy of performing in theatres, but there’s a cinematic ‘epicness’ to these ones that are out in nature,” she said.
On the personal front, Higgins was humbled by the warm embrace she received from her online followers last month after sharing news of her painful separation from husband Dan Lee, with whom she has two children.
“I workshopped that statement with Dan for a few hours that night before posting it, because I wanted him to be okay with it,” she said.
“I got so much support from everybody, both in public and in private, and that just moved me so much, including from women who just needed a sense that they weren’t alone,” said Higgins.
“That’s why you do those things: so you can feel like you’re sharing your story to help others.”
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