Interview Transcript from Illawarra Stories Wollongong City Libraries Oral History Project – Graeme Morrison

Interviewer: Jo Oliver

Interview date: Unknown

Jo:  I’m talking now with Graeme Morrison. So Graeme tell me, what’s your involvement in the festival?

Graeme:  I’m Secretary of the Illawarra Folk Club and have been for longer than I should be, Um, I got involved through Dave De Santi in 1998 and I’ve been involved in the festival ever since.

Jo:  Mm. And what does that involvement involve. I imagine it’s quite a job.

Graeme:  Well, now I’m now on the selection committee for the artists. I’m also the licensee for the bar and have been for 20 years. Um, I do pack down, pack up and regularly meet during the year to ascertain what direction the festival is going.

Jo:  Mm-hm. So when you say people, people apply, there’s, there’s criteria for their involvement, how. how does that process work?

Graeme:  We have about 530 applicants a year and they’ve got to be culled down to 150.

Jo:  Really.

Graeme:  And then we’ve got criteria inside that we’re we try to keep minimum 30% local.

Jo:  Okay.

Graeme:  And then we’ve got to be careful that we don’t keep running over the, running with the same acts, ah, year after year. So we try to present new materials as much we can. And then we’ve got to work it all into a budget, so that’s the hardest bit.

Jo:  Yeah, it would be. So does that mean the performers get paid?

Graeme:  Yeah, our budget probably about $100,000 for performers only. And obviously there’s different rates for different people and all that.

Jo:  Yeah, okay. You sound like you’re the man with all the figures, so I’ll ask you some more questions. Just about, roughly, how many people would come each year to the festival?

Graeme:  Over the four days we end up with about 12,000. It’s a bigger festival than most people realise.

Jo:  Mm-hm.

Graeme:  Ah, we get a little bit tired, in that we, we spend money on advertising we spend money, and, and there’ll be people who buy it who say, “I didn’t know there was a festival there.” And they don’t realise, they think it’s one stage or two stages. We’ve got 11, 12 stages throughout the whole complex. And it’s pretty big undertaking.

Jo:  And do you try to have, um, a variety of different sorts of folk music and..?

Graeme:  Well, that’s the beauty that’s the beauty about folk, it’s such a broad church.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  You can, you can, um, we, we can go from punk folk, heavy metal folk down to beautiful acoustic folk. There’s a band here at the moment called Faustus who’s come from England, there’s three amazing players, just fantastic. And we’ve also got Elephant Sessions from overseas and you wouldn’t believe the contrast between the two. One’s right up in your face really, really powerful, you know, music and the other one is thre-, three boys on st-, oh, not boys, three men on stage singing the most beautiful English lyrics. Just fantastic. So that’s the variety we have.

Jo:  Huge range. Yes, yes and has it changed over time? How, how would you describe changes, how it’s changed?

Graeme:  Ahh, well it’s changed over time. I mean the Illawarra Folk Club originally when it started was very traditional, um, and, as folk was in those days. Er, you had a lot of Australian music and things like that. And I think people have just realised that folk is more than just, ‘Click Goes the Shears’ and ‘Off to Botany Bay’. You know, so it has, it’s evolved incredibly.

Jo:  Into um, other traditions, or how, how would you..?

Graeme:  Well it’s embraced more I think, um, it’s hard to give an example, but here we have, say, Appalachian American music, Sydney Harrison’s band, it’s fantastic music. We’ll have, um, Scottish Celtic music’s embraced. As I mentioned before, um, heavy metal folk. Um, then we’ve got your traditional folk artists, then you’ve got your Indie performers, world music. Yeah, so it’s quite broad.

Jo:  Mm and um, Is there a particular um, demographic as far as age, of people that come?

Graeme:  I think it’s, I think it’s fair to say that the demographics is a, would probably appeal to an older, um, group, say probably 45 and over. We’re trying to change that and that’s why we’re bringing in younger bands. And it’s great to see people like Kay Proudlove and being and what not, coming and getting involved with us [coughs]. Because you gotta involved in the festival for the festival to continue.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  Like I’ve just turned 67. I’ve been running the bar for over 20 years; I don’t know how many more years I’ve got to run the bar.

Jo:  Right.

Graeme:  Um, and we need some more direction and younger people to come in and tell us what they’re, what’s happening.

Jo:  Mm-hm.

Graeme:  I think that will change.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  It, it, you can see that in England that, or Great Britain at the moment, there’s younger and younger people going to Glas-, Glastonbury and what not.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  And that will happen here.

Jo:  Yeah. [sound of pipers in background].

Graeme:  With folk music we’ve got pipes.

Jo:  Yeah… And any particular challenges or little stories or incidents you can remember over the years?

Graeme:  The whole, the whole thing is finance.

Jo:  Okay.

Graeme:  You know, to run the festival it’s 400,000 odd dollars, which for a volunteer group and we get minimal support from anywhere. Um, and it gets harder and harder each year to, like we had the bush fires last week and we didn’t even know if we were gonna have the festival.

Jo:  No.

Graeme:  And because a lot of our volunteers were out fighting fires and temperatures were in the high 30s and low and behold, we end up with floods.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  You can’t win.

Jo:  You never know with Australia, do you?

Graeme:  That’s right.

Jo:  No.

Graeme:  But that makes it, I suppose, the festival challenging.

Jo:  Mm. So what would you see as being, this particular festival, Illawarra Folk Festival’s strengths?

Graeme:  I think it’s got the runs on the board. It’s 35 years old now. It’s a nice niche festival, I think it’s the largest in New South Wales. It’s, um, it’s got a reputation where people like performing in the Illawarra. They come here and they have a good time. Um, it’s strength is it’s diversity, it just doesn’t cater to one particular genre. Um, the camping helps. But quite frankly Wollongong is just, it’s really sad the situation in Wollongong with regard to venues. I don’t know what Council’s done, but they just don’t, they don’t, whether they don’t care or there’s, there’s no commitment but we’ve tried for years and years and years to get decent venue sites. So this place is old and power goes off not just because it’s at Bulli.

Jo:  No.

Graeme:  But the power goes off the amenities are, when we first came here they were disgusting. We get minimal support from Council and State government. So that’s the hard thing. Against that, we’re determined to keep going, so we’ll see how we go. The weather hasn’t been kind, so that’s going to affect our budget. We’ve run the last two at a loss, so we don’t know how long we can keep going.

Jo:  Oh, well I hope this, um, things turn around this festival. It’s not, I mean we did need the rain, but it’s settled down now.

Graeme:  We can’t complain about the rain but this festival won’t turn around because of the rain.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  It’s gonna stop people.

Jo:  Yeah yeah.

Graeme:  But, I don’t know, you know, we bring a large amount of people, tourists to this area.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  And it’s well established on the map now so. Local community’s great, they support us, you know, and we like it up here.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  But we’ve met with the Mayor, we’ve met with others and all that and you don’t get much response.

Jo:  Mm.

Graeme:  Maybe we’re not political enough.

Jo:  Maybe. Well thank you, is there anything else you’d like to, to add.

Graeme:  It’s still a great festival. It’s good fun.

Jo:  Good.

Graeme:  And we’re still happy, happy and cheery but um, yeah, I mean, I, I, I don’t think people really are aware of the hours that goes into producing and running a festival. I mean there’s countless meetings, countless hours to do it. And, um, when it turns out it’s great.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  When it doesn’t well you try and work out what went wrong and bounce again next year.

Jo:  Well you know more than most about the background but, um, yeah, the overall feel I get from people is, is the fun of it.

Graeme:  Oh, yeah. It’s well regarded, it’s like, it’s a family thing.

Jo:  Yeah.

Graeme:  You know, we’ve got kids events out there we’ve got, you know, it’s a safe festival. And, um, it goes to the wee small hours, but we get on well with, ah, our neighbours sound-wise and everything like that, so yeah, no, but, it’s, it’s good fun. I enjoy it.

Jo:  Good, good. Oh, well thank you so much for talking today.

Graeme:  No worries.

Jo:  It’s been really interesting.

Graeme:  I’ll go back to my bar.