Wine festival postponed, other events forge ahead this weekend
The resilient Huon Valley community is preparing for an exciting local food and wine festival after bushfires, hail storms and coronavirus wreacked havoc last year. DATES + TICKETS >>
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The resilient Huon Valley community has something to celebrate after hail storms devastated crops, bushfires destroyed properties and coronavirus hampered businesses.
Committee members have unanimously decided to forge ahead with A Taste of the Huon.
President Rosemary Bennett was relieved, aware that other events had been stifled amid Omicron.
“A lot of the businesses are suffering down here,” she said.
Ms Bennett said her venture Home Hill Winery had lost two thirds of its crop from a hailstorm in December.
Several other orchards and vineyards were decimated, both from the storm and 2019’s bushfire.
“It’s been three years of drama that’s getting really difficult to cope with,” Ms Bennett said.
“I grew up in the Valley and I want everyone to have a great time here again.”
Festival entertainment will feature a mix of blues and rock, and a mystery performer will be announced a fortnight before the festival.
Renowned Tassie favourite Masaaki’s Sushi will returnand patrons can quench their thirst with Willie Smith’s Apple Cider, Kate Hill wines and newcomer Mountain River Brewing.
“We ask the stallholders to have a little blackboard at the front of the stall and they have to put on the blackboard what produce they have used from the Huon Valley,” Ms Bennett said.
She said A Taste of the Huon had been growing up until 2020, when coronavirus dashed patronage by a third.
A Taste of the Huon will welcome visitors at Ranelagh Recreation Grounds from 10am-7pm March 13 and 10am-4pm March 14.
Tickets are $12 via atasteofthehuon.com.au/events
Vino no-go: Summer wine event holds off for an extra month
A wine and culinary celebration in the sun has been postponed by a month to give the event the best chance at success.
Tasmanian Wine Festival was set to land at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens this month, but organisers have rescheduled it for March 18-20.
“Some of the stakeholders were concerned about the timing of the events in relation to
current health concerns,” organisers said.
“This move will ensure that we still have over 25 vineyards and all the foodies.”
The festival promised a “bespoke celebration” of premium wine for its third iteration.
Covid chaos has seen some summer events crumble, and others triumph since borders reopened in December.
The Taste of Summer forged ahead after facing a test to get off the ground at council.
A downsized Mona Foma bathed the sky with green lasers and filled venues with surreal and seductive performance art in recent weeks.
But Day on the Lawn announced this week they could not bet on the pandemic odds being in their favour and chose to cancel their March festival featuring national artists.
Falls Festival devastated locals with the news the Marion Bay New Year’s tradition would not return.
Luke Schlenner said on behalf of Tas Wine Fest small and upcoming vineyards whose drops might be hard to come by would be on offer in March.
Joseph Burton from Joseph Burton Wines was looking forward to joining the line-up alongside Nocton Wines and food stalls like Bruny Island Oysters.
“It’s always a great event and provides the opportunity to share some of our state’s best wines, food and live music,” he said.
Entertainment will feature interstate and Tassie live acts which are yet to be released.
Sessions across the three days will be Friday 4.30-10.30pm, Saturday 12-4pm and 5.30-10pm, and Sunday 12-5.30pm.
The Friday and Saturday night sessions will be 18+ only.
Tickets are $37 general admission, $47 tasting ticket and $117 VIP at taswinefest.com.au/tickets
WA rockers reunite at Hobart Airport before SummerSalt festival
Birds of Tokyo have done it all, from playing the AFL Grand Final to topping the ARIA Album Chart, but recently they’ve been kept apart by Covid and relegated to performing smaller shows in their home state.
That’s all changed this week, with keyboard player and guitarist Glenn Sarangapany chatting to the Mercury from Hobart International Airport as he waited to be reunited with his scattered bandmates.
“We’re losing our minds with excitement,” he said.
“The entire band hasn’t been in the same room for such a long time. Our drummer lives in Brisbane and our guitarist lives in Sydney.
“We’ve just been in WA and nowhere else for a fair while.”
Birds of Tokyo have drawn a large following for heartfelt alternative rock singles like Lanterns, Plans and Two of Us.
Sarangapany said their footy grand final performance in September was a nervous whirlwind and “probably a top moment of my life”.
“We’ve done a bit of a regional run back to basics playing a few theatres in seated venues, which is still fun, it was awesome,” he said.
“But it was nice to be able to play a full rock show and knowing the entire country was watching on TV gave a bit of an extra zing.”
The five-piece found jamming over Zoom calls creatively stifling, but Sarangapany said things were looking up amid their upcoming appearance at SummerSalt in the Royal Tasmanian
Botanical Gardens this Saturday and Sunday.
“We’re going to take the opportunity to write as much as we can,” he said.
“I have started nearly preferring the festival (format).
“We get to play singles, everything from when the band started all the way through.”
Sarangapany said Birds would unveil a new song on stage this weekend.
The musician has switched keys for guitar strings while working on yet-to-be released material.
“We’ve very much gone back to what we were doing early on with Universes and even back to Day One – loud grungy guitars, the music we’ve all loved growing up.”
Birds of Tokyo will be joined by festival circuit veterans and prolific artists in their own right John Butler, Pete Murray, Missy Higgins and Xavier Rudd.
SummerSalt will run 1-10pm Saturday and 12-9pm Sunday, with remaining tickets only available for the Saturday session at $179.90 premium, $139.90 general admission, and $79.90 for three-17-year-olds via summersaltmusic.com.au
Attendees must bring a high back fold up chair.
Rock royalty: Icehouse headlines festival new to Tassie
An internationally acclaimed Aussie treasure, Icehouse is heading up a tidal wave of mainland talent performing in the state this weekend.
The stage is set for two colossal music festivals at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens in Hobart; newcomer By the C on Friday and annual favourite SummerSalt on Saturday and Sunday.
Iconic Icehouse frontman Iva Davies has toured with David Bowie, penned unofficial national anthem Great Southern Land and gone multi-platinum with his band spanning some 40 years.
Davies can’t wait to perform slick, cold 1980s synth rock hits like Hey Little Girl, Electric Blue and We Can Get Together in the new Great Southern Land 2022 concert series at By the C, an annual Australian festival coming to Tasmania for the first time.
But the frontman has remained tight-lipped about which memorable records will and won’t be played.
“We’re in the position, which is incredibly fortunate, of having too many songs that people want to hear,” Davies said.
“It also provides us with a bit of a dilemma, in so much as we know we’re going to leave out something that someone really dearly wants to hear.”
Davies has promised “a bunch of songs we haven’t done for a very long time”, classic crowd-pleasers, and a couple of covers.
“It’s where I started with the whole rock and roll thing is getting together with other 20-year-olds and just playing songs we loved of other people’s,” he said.
They’ve come a long way from early pub rock and mean mullets, but the band’s eagerness to perform hasn’t dimmed.
“I can look out at an audience and find it completely confounding, but at the same time incredibly inspiring, to see three generations of fans,” he said.
“It makes me internally smile.”
He said a stalwart tribe of at least 20 crew members were right there with him after Covid-19 cast a bleak dampener on live music.
“Many of these people in the crew go back as far as I do, our model engineer started with the Divinyls in the 1980s,” Davies said.
“I got to the point where I couldn’t keep asking ‘how are you going paying the rent?’
“I just couldn’t ask that question. I still don’t really know, but I can tell you how much enthusiasm is there to be out and working again.”
Davies was “incredibly happy” to play the festival alongside Australian Crawl’s gritty vocalist
James Reyne and high energy rockers of Mascara and Weir fame, Killing Heidi.
Local soul and funk artist Jay Jerome will open the show.
By the C will run 4.45-10pm this Friday at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, Hobart.
Gates open at 4pm and attendees must bring a high back fold up chair.
Tickets are $189.90 premium, $129.90 general admission, and $79.90 for three-17-year-olds via bythec.com.au
‘So many good people have left our industry’: Major festival canned
From must-see New Year’s rite of passage Falls Festival to eclectic arts celebration A Festival Called Panama, live music events are dropping like flies.
Now the popular Day on the Lawn has joined the club.
The annual festival run by Tasmania’s own Vandemonian Touring was scheduled for March 19, but heavy-hitting Aussie acts like DMA’s, Courtney Barnett and Winston Surfshirt won’t be playing to Tassie crowds this time.
Vandemonian managing director Brendan Self said there was no guarantee they would have enough hands on deck to go through with the event.
“What we are experiencing with just small events is last minute call-ins from staff and sometimes key roles to say ‘cannot come in tonight, got a positive Covid test’ or ‘my partner has tested positive and I need to also isolate’ or ‘I am a close contact, cannot work’.
“It would be irresponsible of us to run an event for 4000+ people, knowing we could get caught out at last minute.”
Mr Self said tickets were selling well, but sales slowed down shortly after borders reopened.
He said the return to school next week would cause even more uncertainty.
“We love Day on the Lawn. It’s one of our favourite events, but it takes a little village to get it right,” he said.
“We are disappointed for everyone involved from staff, contractors, production, artists, sponsors and especially the ticket holders.”
The broader economy was suffering from the onslaught of cancelled events, Mr Self said.
“The unfortunate reality of events like this being cancelled is that it hurts the people who work in the events industry,” he said.
“So many good people have left our industry over the last two years to find jobs that provide security.”
Mr self applauded “resilient” event organisers who were postponing, rescheduling or downsizing.
“We did not want this for Day on the Lawn, but look forward to March 18, 2023 at the Gardens, when we will have our biggest ever headliner.”
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