The Point Live is bringing Australian heavyweights and local acts to ease you out of the pandemic.
“I think on the other side, people need that live aspect. They want to get together and have a dance and listen to songs they know.”
Just over an hour out of Melbourne, at the edge of Port Phillip Bay at the Point Nepean Reserve is Victoria’s newest festival—a guiding light to bring us into 2022. The Point Live is taking place on Boon-Wurrung land and will host Australian heavyweights: Daryl Braithwaite, Australian Rock Collective (featuring members of Powderfinger, Spiderbait, Jet, and You am I), Joe Camilleri and the Black Sorrows, Russell Morris, The Badloves, Darlinghurst, Vaudeville Smash, King Canyon, and absolutely everybody’s favourite, Vanessa Amorosi.
Keep up with the latest music news, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
The festival organisers, Brett Davies and Alex Bialocki, have decades of experience in the entertainment industry. The choice to open a music festival in one of the most tumultuous periods isn’t driven by opportunity, but by a love for the music itself.
“It was a near-death of the music industry,’ Bialocki says. “Brett and I are really close to the music industry, and we want it to not only survive, but we want it to thrive. I think on the other side, people need live music in their lives. They want to get together and have a dance and listen to songs they know.
“Nostalgia in music is really big at the moment because when you have a really challenging time, nostalgia is a nice place to go to, to think about simpler times when you’re growing up as a kid, or a teenager, or wherever the music takes you back to.
Davies and Bialocki are committed to not only a good day out but a socially respectful and responsible one. As part of the day’s festivities, the Boon-Wurrung land council has been invited to open the festival with dance, music and storytelling. On top of respecting and celebrating the cultural heritage of the spot, Davies and Bialocki are working on maintaining it.
“Brett and I genuinely want to leave that land as it was when we arrived,” Bialocki says. “It is pristine clean and that’s how we want to leave it.”
On the list of initiatives are readily distributed eco-friendly garbage bags, discounted sustainable Tupperware water bottles and a ban on beverages sold with bottle tops: “We’re trying to look at every single aspect of sustainability, primarily waste management.”
The event will also be partnered with Co-Ground: an organisation formed in the wake of a devastating cyclone that hit Vanuatu in 2015. Co-Ground has spent 2021 working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and now $2 of every alcoholic beverage sold at The Point Live will go towards supporting them and youth training.
Both Bialocki and Davies are “amateur musos” themselves — Bialocki played in a band called ARC until he was 21 — and empathises with the struggles of the modern music landscape.
“My first gig at 14 was at a church hall, which is just a few streets from where I’m living now. I drive past and I still think of those days,” he says. “I feel bad for young musicians and young bands, because I just think that I feel I had a great musical opportunity to play live a lot. And there just doesn’t seem to be that same opportunity in Melbourne anymore.
“We are giving young talented bands the chance to perform in a festival environment with their own stage in a large circus tent,” Bialocki says, adding “and the main bar is in there as well.” A feature that will no doubt drive traffic.
The Point Live will be taking place on Saturday March 19 in Portsea. Head to their website for more information or grab tickets here.
