Remembering the Music of Easterfest
By: Justin Rouillon
If you’ve been around Christian music for a while, you’ll no doubt remember the era of Easterfest.
Originally named the Australian Gospel Music Festival for its first nine years, Easterfest was a Christian music festival that ran in Toowoomba, from 1999 until 2015.
This year marks a decade since the last ever Easterfest event, and a series of interviews in the brand-new podcast, The Rise and Fall of Easterfest, explores the incredible Easterfest story.
Over the course of 17 years, thousands of artists graced the stages of the Australian Gospel Music Festival and Easterfest.
Some were just finding their feet and trying to establish a following, while some of the international artists were huge, both in the Christian and mainstream music scenes. Bands like Switchfoot and Naturally 7 had huge crossover appeal.
In the early days, the Australian Gospel Music Festival reflected very much what the name said, with the overwhelming number of acts being Australian.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, Australia’s independent Christian artists were thriving, with healthy scenes active along the eastern seaboard as well as Adelaide and Perth. Melbourne, Brisbane and northern New South Wales in particular were producing artists of an extremely high calibre.
In Victoria, acts like the Paul Colman Trio, Antiskeptic, Claire Hazzard, Sons of Korah and Compliments of Gus were leading the charge.
New South Wales ska band The Frugals had amassed a solid following in Brisbane and Sydney following epic performances at Brisbane’s Groundswell festival, and Sydney’s Black Stump.
Meanwhile in Brisbane, groups such as Beanbag, Battered Fish (later Leo Nine), Rhubarb, Dumpster, Tonjip and Elementary Penguin had banded together under the banner of Toupee Records, which had been started by the three members of Battered Fish – Jeremy Bennett, Caleb James and Matthew Gray.
Other Queensland-based groups were prolific in that time as well, including Alabaster Box, Soulframe and Rookie.
“Not only did you have Easterfest and Sonfest, you also had festivals like Groundswell that were another opportunity for bands like us to play at,” said Nathaniel McManus (aka Macca) from the band Rookie.
“People went to shows, people loved going to see live music, and I think the bands in Brisbane connected in a way that people wanted to come and see them. It was an amazing, healthy music scene with some incredible bands.”
As the festival grew through the early 2000s, organizers were now able to book higher-profile acts including Guy Sebastian, Rebecca St James, Pillar, Superchick and Newsboys.
Booking the international contingent of Easterfest and AGMF was always the most challenging component for festival organisers, with some acts taking many years to get across the line.
“At times that was an eighteen month to two-year process in terms of booking artists, not for the next festival, but for the one after,” former event director Dave Schenk said on the podcast.
“In some cases, it was more like a seven-year process. The year we finally got Michael W. Smith, it was like, ‘I’ve only been trying to do this for seven years!’ He was very involved in his local church, so trying to get him to come to Australia on the Easter weekend was difficult. We had this challenge with a few artists who were very committed to their churches that and would say, sorry, it’s Easter, I’m at home.”
The AGMF and Easterfest festivals weren’t just a haven for the typical pop/rock fare; over the years genres like jazz, metal and worship were important elements of the event’s programming, too.
Brisbane jazz four-piece Scat were festival mainstays for well over a decade, when in 2014 and 2015 they set up their own jazz club – The Up Beat – which ran for the entirety of the Easter weekend.
Over the years, worship artists as diverse as Robin Mark (Northern Ireland), Ascend the Hill (Florida, USA), Rueben Morgan and Darlene Zschech (both of Australia) were featured, while in 2013 and 2014, there was 72 hours of non-stop worship music.
You can hear some of the stories of Easterfest’s music in the 2nd episode of The Rise & Fall of Easterfest, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, Omny, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Article supplied with thanks to 96five.
Feature image: Easterfest, by Trent Rouillon
