Sticky Fingers removed from Byron Bay Bluesfest 2023 following sustained pressure
The chart-topping Sydney indie rock band is ‘stepping off’ its upcoming Bluesfest booking, two weeks after it was announced as part of the Byron Bay festival’s line-up.
Sydney indie rock band Sticky Fingers on Thursday was removed from its upcoming performance at Byron Bay Bluesfest, following sustained social media pressure two weeks after it was announced as part of the festival’s line-up.
In a statement on Thursday, Bluesfest director Peter Noble said, “We are sad to announce that Bluesfest has decided that Sticky Fingers is to step off the Bluesfest 2023 line-up. Bluesfest cannot, sadly, continue to support Sticky Fingers by having them play our 2023 edition and we apologise to those artists, sponsors and any others we involved in this matter through our mistaken belief that forgiveness and redemption are the rock on which our society is built.”
Touted by Noble as “the bad boys of Australian music” on February 15, the five-piece band’s booking at the annual Easter long weekend camping festival has caused nothing but headaches for all involved.
Formed in 2008 and fronted by singer Dylan Frost, who has been diagnosed with bipolar schizophrenia, Sticky Fingers has been a lightning rod for controversy since allegations about the band’s offstage behaviour surfaced in 2016, the same year its third album Westway (The Glitter & the Slums) debuted at No.1 on the ARIA album chart.
It appears the mounting pressure on the group’s first major Australian festival performance in several years was too great to withstand.
Said Noble: “The narrative that they continue to deserve to be cancelled, as well as anyone who publicly supports them, is difficult to accept, wherein a portion of society and media passes eternal judgment toward those, in this case, a diagnosed mentally ill person whom we feel doesn’t deserve the continued public scrutiny he’s being given.”
“We thank everyone who has contacted us and advised their support in this matter, especially those suffering from a mental illness who feel that they cannot have their illness supported in a manner whereby they feel included in society,” said the festival director.
“Sticky Fingers has done so many good deeds that have never been reported including building and funding recording studios and music education programs in disadvantaged regional communities. We will now move on, put this behind us and continue to plan and present our best-ever edition of Bluesfest… proudly.”
The band’s inclusion on the Bluesfest line-up last month resulted in the swift withdrawal of Melbourne rock act King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, which has a large following here and abroad.
On February 20, without naming Sticky Fingers, King Gizzard said in a statement: “As a band and as human beings, we stand against misogyny, racism, transphobia and violence. [We are] surprised and saddened to see Bluesfest commit to presenting content that is in complete opposition to these values.”
“Given this decision by the festival, we have decided to cancel our appearance at Bluesfest,” wrote King Gizzard. “We are deeply disappointed to be in this position but sometimes you need to be willing to make sacrifices to stand up for your values. This is, unfortunately, one of those moments.”
Sticky Fingers responded to the King Gizzard statement with a playful taunt by sharing a photo of the band on Instagram, superimposed with an image of South Park’s ‘PC Principal’, an antagonistic character dedicated to bringing a more politically correct agenda to the animated cartoon’s titular town.
On February 21, Peter Noble defended his decision to book the band, writing in a statement, “I believe an attempt to victimise this man [Frost] and his band in the circumstances is cruel and unforgiving. This cruelty and lack of compassion are foreign to my values, as is the attempt to suppress the band’s artistic expression. I was and remain proud to give the band a chance at rehabilitation.”
The next day, Zambian hip-hop artist Sampa The Great followed suit by confirming that she would not perform at Bluesfest.
The ARIA Award-winning artist born Sampa Tembo had been announced on the same day as Sticky Fingers, but after learning that the Sydney group was booked, her team tried – unsuccessfully – to have her removed from the sixth artist announcement.
In a statement released on February 22, Tembo’s team said, “We then delivered final confirmation to Bluesfest at 7.36pm AEDT on Tuesday 14 February that Sampa was coming off the line-up, in the hopes they would remove her from all materials before they announced the following day.”
Headlined by Gang of Youths, The Doobie Brothers, Paolo Nutini, Tash Sultana, and Bonnie Raitt, Bluesfest has this year encountered sluggish ticket sales, mirroring recent crowd shortfalls at other major events, as household budgets tighten.
Asked prior to the Sticky Fingers booking if he was worried for the future of his event, to be held from April 6-10, director Peter Noble told The Australian, “Worried about the industry in general. Bluesfest will get through. We can deliver the event this year – but it’s going forward that I fear.”
The issues surrounding Sticky Fingers’ artistic career, meanwhile, are complex, murky and enduring.
Since forming in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Newtown, its sound has included aspects of reggae, pop, indie rock, soul and psychedelia; its fifth album Lekkerboy was released independently last year.
Its global popularity is considerable: last month, it completed a sold-out tour of big venues in Europe and Britain, including selling 10,000 tickets to its performance at London venue Alexandra Palace.
As well, the band’s music has 2.4 million monthly listeners on streaming platform Spotify, yet the musicians have become outsiders of the Australian music sector out of necessity, having been effectively black-listed from most traditional channels following allegations that arose in 2016.
For now, the band’s only other Australian appearance is booked at Bass in the Domain in Hobart next Saturday, March 11. It’s an all-ages festival, and Sticky Fingers is the headline act.
In a 4000 word cover story published in The Weekend Australian Magazine in 2018, writer Richard Guilliatt observed, “Today the radio station that helped launch Sticky Fingers, the ABC’s Triple J, barely plays their music, and the call to boycott them has been joined by a swelling chorus of activists and music industry figures […] Music festivals that hire them face protests, petitions and cancellation threats from other artists.”
Five years later, little has changed.
Bluesfest director Noble referred to Guilliatt’s article in his statement on Thursday, writing, “For those that wish to know more, there is a carefully researched article in The Australian in 2018 that took the trouble to examine the facts, unlike a lot of the current published material.”
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