It’s only a matter of days until the
Rainbow Serpent festival slithers in between the western Victoria country towns of Lexton and Beaufort and sets up camp.
Sometimes overshadowed by the commotion of the Big Day Out, Rainbow offers an alternative to the mainstream. It’s like a well-kept secret that has been steadily growing out in the wilderness of country Victoria, attracting thousands of people each year from around Australia and abroad with its eclectic mix of music, art and hippy-trippy activities.
Ahead of Rainbow’s 15th anniversary, we caught up with festival organiser Tim Harvey to shine a light on this unique event that still remains an enigma to a lot of people.
Jack Pilven: So what’s been on the cards today?
Tim Harvey: Today, I’m getting media passes out to people, dealing with last minute precious DJs… and six months worth of GST got thrown into the mix. So yeah, it’s all fun and games.
JP: Is this a full-time job for you?
TH: For seven months of the year it is, and at the moment it’s 14 hour days pretty much. I go to sleep at about 1 – 2 am and it’s the last thing I think about, and I wake up at about 7:30 – 8 and it’s right back into it. It’s chaotic.
JP: Can you step us through a regular day organising the festival? What kind of things are you doing?
TH: Well, I’m the marketing director but I also do a lot of the music stuff as well and bleed over into other areas. So wherever something’s not happening or someone needs to be connected to someone else, then I’m generally the person people come to.
JP: How did Rainbow Serpent start?
TH: It started 15 years ago when a couple of guys that had been doing indoor events in Melbourne decided they would try their hand at an outdoor party. The first Rainbow Serpent Festival happened up near Trentham, just out of Melbourne. From memory it had about 800 to 900 people, which is still pretty impressive considering it was the first event held over a single night. I think back then it was called something else… it was called like the Rainbow Serpent Gathering or something like that. So that was the very first one and then it moved down into the Pyrenees Shire for the second one and became the Rainbow Serpent Festival. It’s been through a few sites and it’s grown since then, and each time we outgrow a site we need to find a new one. The one that we have now we’re hoping to remain at for at least 10 years. It has plenty of room for growth and it’s beautiful, so it’s definitely our best site yet.
JP: Apart from it moving from site to site, what else has changed about the festival over the past 15 years?
TH: Well, obviously at the start it was predominantly about music, and at the very, very start it was about trance music. So in terms of the diversification of its music styles, the changes have been massive. Especially in the past five years we’ve taken on a lot of gypsy and swing bands, which are fantastic. It’s interesting… it’s almost like as we’ve grown older and our musical tastes have broadened, we’ve brought a little bit of that into the festival as well. It’s almost as though we’ve been growing with our patrons together. While we still have a lot of music that young kids get into, there’s also a lot of music that the older ones can sit back and enjoy now as well.
"In terms of the diversification of its music styles, the changes have been massive ... It’s interesting because we have a lot of people say to us that there’s not enough trance anymore, you know?"
JP: Rainbow Serpent has a reputation for being a trance and techno orientated festival. So is it fair to say you’re trying to expand the line-up outside of these genres?
TH: I think it is now. It’s interesting because we have a lot of people say to us that there’s not enough trance anymore, you know? And then we have other people say to us that there’s too much trance and then others that say there’s too much techno, or not enough techno… so you’re never going to fully satisfy everyone. I think it’s a case of striking a good balance between emerging new styles like glitch-hop, which has become pretty big in Australia and over in the States over the last three or four years. Now we’ve got a good contingent of glitch-hop artists on the Monday on the Sunset stage at Rainbow this year. Previously we’ve had guys like Tipper, and again he’s coming back this year alongside Opiuo and Spoonbill who are performing on the Market stage. I think the styles have definitely broadened and anyone who can objectively sit there and look at our line-up will say that we’ve probably got one of the most diverse musical line-ups out of any festival in Australia.
JP: Given it’s such an eclectic mix, how do you decide the line-up?
TH: In terms of our internationals, there are three of us who throw in a wish list every year and that’s followed by a period of negotiations and arguments that we go through (laughs). The three of us that decide on the main international line-up each year… it’s just one of those things where if you have a good team and the dynamics work well within that team, then the end result will be a good result. The three of us have been organising the music at Rainbow for years now. I mean, this is my eighth year of involvement and I played before I was working for them. I’ve always had an interest in music. I wrote music and performed before I actually worked for Rainbow. So yeah, it’s an interesting process that takes about four months to go from the very beginning where we all throw our suggestions in, through to a process of elimination and to eventually what is the finished line-up. Again, this year I’m confident that we’ve got some really good set times and we’ve got some really good artists and really good blocks of different styles and I think everyone is going to have a really good time.
JP: Do the three of you always agree when it comes to booking one artist over another?
TH: Oh no, not at all. Absolutely not. This year wasn’t too bad. There’s been other years where there’s been heated exchanges, I’m not going to lie. But it’s good because we’re all passionate… and it’s generally not over artists it’s usually more over styles and when a style should occur and when it should stop and when it needs to merge into a different genre. We’ve been doing this for years and even though it does get heated, we never lose it. We never storm out on one another. It’s always a case of compromising in the end and I think all of us compromise to some extent through the process at different times. It’s great to be able to build a line-up of artists that you love and think will do well and to then see it come to fruition at the end of it.
JP: Rainbow Serpent seems to be quite independent. Do you have any ties with the other major music festivals?
TH: What exactly do you mean?
JP: Well, some of the other festivals share touring musicians, artists, venues and even sponsors… but you’re not really part of that…
TH: Oh yeah, well we have a relationship with the Earth Frequency festival which happens up north of Brisbane each year, so some of our artists are shared there. But we don’t have a huge relationship with the commercial events because the vast majority of our artists are not commercial, so there’s no interest from those bigger events. A lot of people will say that Rainbow is mainstream these days, but if you look at the line-up objectively, I don’t think that you could really say that we’re hosting commercially successful recording artists, certainly not the huge names that you get at some of the mainstream, commercial festivals. Rainbow has always been a niche festival and I think that’s a good thing; we stand out there on our own. We have a huge lifestyle and arts program and we put a lot of money and a lot of effort into growing those each year and I think that sets us apart from some of those other festivals as well. Rainbow is not just a music festival and it’s not just a lifestyle festival and it’s not just an arts festival: it’s the sum of all of its components.
JP: Aside from the music, what can someone who’s never been to Rainbow before expect to encounter?
TH: It’s very much a carnival kind of feel. They can expect to experience roaming artistic performances, some fantastic guest speakers and workshops on a variety of different topics. There’s fantastic music across five stages, ranging from techno to psy-trance to dub to glitch-hop to chill to gypsy, folk and swing. There’s fantastic food. Our market place is absolutely unbelievable; we have cuisines from eight or nine different countries from around the world and some of the best food that you would probably eat throughout the year… I always eat better at Rainbow than I do when I’m at home (laughs).
JP: No Dagwood dogs and three day old hamburgers on the menu then… moving on, I’ve heard the festival attracted around 12,000 people last year. Where is it held and how do you accommodate this many people?
TH: It’s held just south of Lexton. It’s in between two country western Victorian towns, Lexton and Beaufort. We accommodate 10,000 to 12,000 people each year with full facilities and to do that we basically create the infrastructure of a small town or small city and it’s a huge undertaking. Nothing exists there, there’s no electricity to the site, there’s no water to the site, there’s no gas or anything like that so it’s literally generators and showers and composting toilets, which all have to be maintained and looked after throughout the duration of the festival. So it’s a massive logistical undertaking and it takes a very passionate team and a very competent team to put it on each year. We’re very lucky that we have so many people that bust their guts every year to make Rainbow a success.
JP: Given how big it is, what’s Rainbow’s relationship like with the surrounding local communities?
TH: We have a great relationship with the local community out there. We’ve been out in that area now for pretty much the whole 15 years, bar the first one I think, and over those years we’ve assisted the Raglan CFA by buying new pumper trucks for them and the Beaufort pool by renovating their change rooms. We estimate that we put around one million dollars back into the local community by having Rainbow happen there each year. We have a great relationship with the council and the locals… they love us. Each year we go back there’s always signs welcoming Rainbow people back into the community and the town, which is just great. It’s a really nice example of how rural and urban people can actually find great common ground and have a mutually beneficial relationship where the community benefits by having the festival there and the festival benefits by being welcomed back into the community each year.
JP: Does the indigenous community play a role in the event?
TH: Yeah, absolutely. They have a growing role. Over the last few years we’ve established some opening ceremonies and an opening blessing that is done by our indigenous family. Regulars, aunty Mona and uncle Phil, they come every year and they hold the opening ceremony on the main stage at dusk on Saturday night. Aunty Mona gets up there and she reminds us of what’s important in life, tells us about the indigenous culture of this country and performs the welcome to country ceremony and it sets the tone for the rest of the festival. It’s a beautiful time to be at Rainbow. I would encourage anyone who’s heading up for their first time to get down there on the Saturday evening and experience it because it definitely sets the mood for the rest of the weekend.
JP: Do you have a festival highlight from the past 15 years?
TH: Oh… um… wow… (pauses to think)… there’s been some very funny moments. A few years ago a producer called Matthew Jonson actually set one of the speakers on fire on the market stage and we jokingly said that it must have been because he was playing such a smokin’ set that the speakers just couldn’t handle it and caught fire (laughs). Every year there’s things that you can pull out of the festival and say were amazing, and sometimes it’s performance art. Last year there was this amazing, gigantic, multi-coloured polar bear that had two people inside it and a little Bo Peep that was leading it around at night time. It was lit up from inside and I just remember seeing it at one stage making its way across the festival ground from a distance and it really did look like a giant polar bear walking around the festival site! (laughs) It’s moments like those when you just sit there and smile and happily know that there’s all this wonderful stuff happening and people are loving it.
JP: Just to wrap things up, broadly speaking, do you think the music festival market is oversaturated at the moment?
TH: You know, I’m a big believer in demand and supply and I think it will find its own natural base eventually. I don’t think it’s oversaturated… is it oversaturated? I think it’s at saturation. I don’t think you can really oversaturate the amount of festivals because there’s such a risk… it doesn’t take long for them to be unsuccessful. So I think it will find its own natural course. I think it’s great that there’s so much choice out there for people. I think it’s also very indicative of the fact that a lot of live music venues have been closing in Melbourne, and I imagine in Sydney as well, so they suffer the same problem. Nowadays it’s pretty much one of the few chances that some people get to see a lot of bands all together in one shot. I certainly don’t mind it… I enjoy getting out to musical festivals besides the one that I work on. The more the merrier I say.
2012 Rainbow Serpent Festival runs from the 27 – 30 January
WORDS: Jack Pilven