This month Beth caught up with Kelly Wright – head of Homegrown PR – about festivals, gender diversity and our NZ music family.

Homegrown 2021 - Wellington Waterfront
Photo credit: Brady Dyer

Could you give us a quick synopsis of Homegrown and what it means to you?

It means a lot to me in short. It was originally my husband's idea, he made it happen while I was midwife for 12 years. And then we sold it to two people who had been working with us for 18 years and I kept a bit for myself - my husbands out of it now. So yeah, it means a lot it, definitely feels like my baby. It was interesting right back at the start a lot of people didn’t think that an all-kiwi music line-up would work, including lots of the kiwi artists. Back then they were really just opening acts for internationals and otherwise just small pub stuff but not the big festival stages. So that was really interesting in terms of the resistance from the whole industry. Tiki Taane signed up first and then all the other artists were like “awh well, if Tiki’s doing it...” they got on board!

For me it’s just really important to showcase New Zealand music, to all lots of different genres there and tautoko the industry.

Since2008 is that right?

Yeah and that’s quite cool because there are a lot of people who came when they were in their early 20s and now they’re still coming in their 30s, some are even bringing their kids.

I guess you guys have been relatively lucky given that the whole premise of Homegrown is featuring NZ artists - but what have the effects of Covid-19 been on Homegrown?

Well, the first lockdown happened a week after we were due to run so we had built the whole festival and then were forced to take it down. So that was devastating on lots of fronts – financially and even just working towards something for a whole year and then it’s cancelled at that very last minute. Yeah it was huge for us, just surviving. Luckily, we were able to postpone and all the acts agreed to play the next year and also our fans – the audience all agreed to come back. Great to have that support from them. This year was great, the weather was even nice. It was great just to have it all done but even that was really nerve wracking because three weeks out Auckland went into a lockdown a lot of our acts are from Auckland. It was ridiculously stressful, it felt like we were playing Russian roulette a little bit.

The other thing is – since then, all the line-ups are kiwi line ups and so the competition to actually book artists is more and their prices have gone up because they are in such high demand. So that’s been an interesting addition to the equation. Great for the artists but yeah. Because we’re at the end of March we usually have quite a few bands finish their summer tour and then go overseas so we’ve always had that similar issue but now it’s the issue of them having lots of other festivals to play.

Have you spoken to many of the artists – what has been the impact on them?

It’s been huge. Especially at the moment like there’s so many tours that were supposed to happen November/December that just no one knows if they’re gonna happen. Luckily now everyone’s used to things being postponed and rolling with it. But it is massive, they’re really struggling with it. Even normal little pub gigs that are their bread and butter, can’t happen. It is a really tough time. For the whole industry too like production and lighting, stage people and the venues, all of that.

Homegrown 2021
Photo Credit: Joel McDowell