On episode two of Round the Ground, I interviewed Cooper Richards-Hancock from the Newcastle Music Show, a fantastic radio show and blog celebrating the vibrant and booming scene of the Steel City and Central Coast.
How did the Newcastle Music Show begin and has it changed much since its inception?
It began with myself and my best mate Campbell. During lockdown several years ago, we were doing our own little shows and we decided there’s no real on-air FM programs that are covering our local music — like an actual dedicated space outside of a handful of mainstream triple j artists — but nothing actually local.
We decided to start an internet radio show that was covering not just the indie music, but as many different genres as possible, from all corners of Newcastle, as well as the Central Coast, because I feel like Central Coast gets lumped into Sydney a bit too much.
I wouldn’t be able to name many Central Coast bands, unfortunately, which is a shame, and I feel like that’s the case for a lot of smaller coastal towns that are on the outskirts of larger cities.
Like, no one advertises themselves as being a Sutherland Shire band — it’s always, “we’re from Sydney.”
Oh yeah, I think I’d be able to name one Wollongong venue… Rad Bar?
We started [NMS] back in, gosh, 2021, and have been just doing it mostly independently now for three-and-a-half years. Every year, we do a Steel City 50 — dare I say it’s our own little Hottest 100 — where we get people to vote for like 10 tracks from local artists they like, and then we do a countdown on New Year’s Eve.
We just try to provide a community space for artists that aren’t big enough for the mainstream, or not trying to even go for that kind of audience.
It’s so fantastic that this initiative even exists. Like I can think of so many cities that wouldn’t have as dedicated of a channel as Newcastle does with this show, and it’s fantastic. What’s your favourite part of hosting and running the Newcastle Music Show?
Definitely just meeting new artists and discovering new music. When I started this, I was mostly into, I dunno, internet indie music, like Car Seat Headrest, you know, bread and butter. And now through my local scene, I’ve gained a love for dance music and hardcore music.
For those that haven’t been there, or don’t live there, what does Newcastle look like from a punter’s perspective in terms of the venues that bands can play at, the show’s accessibility and the range of musicians and sounds on display?
With the Newcastle CBD area, you’ve got several venues that can host probably 100 to 400 people, like the Lass O’ Gowrie Hotel. They have a lot of free gigs in their beer garden, which is quite a unique kind of atmosphere compared to most other cities, where if there’s an act out in the beer gardens, usually it’s like a cover band or an acoustic act. But there’s been bands that have played out there like Shady Nasty, or from the Gong, Private Wives played there last year. That was a pretty sick show.
And then there’s like the Hamilton Station Hotel, who recently, at the beginning of last year, opened up their new band room, which has a capacity of like 600 people almost, and there’s been a couple of sold-out shows, like uh, Frenzal Rhomb played there.
But then there’s like a lot of more personable places where you can see original live music in a space that’s pretty cosy, like the Seven Seas Hotel or the Oriental Hotel. They’re like smaller venues where you couldn’t fit more than 40 people into the room, but they’re renowned amongst the scene for just going there and seeing a good act.
You’ve got a lot of options in Newcastle, that’s for sure.
The [Lass O’ Gowrie] have a lot of free gigs in their beer garden, which is quite a unique kind of atmosphere compared to most other cities.
That’s awesome. As you’re saying all these venues, I’m trying to associate each one with a Wollongong venue of the same ilk.
But in Wollongong, there’s only one all-ages venue, which is the youth centre. I wanted to ask if there are similar barriers of entry for young musicians in Newcastle.
At the moment, yes. Like when I first got involved and started going to see shows, when I didn’t really have any interest in small time bands, we had these like venues like the Dungeon, which is, it’s like an old like dance room that’s underneath a church in out of town in Newcastle. There were lots of all-ages gigs there, that’s where I found my love for music.
As well as infamously in Newcastle there was this place called Hombre, where it was this hardcore place/record store, like in the mid 2010s.
But nowadays, we don’t really have any all-ages venues. You’ll have the occasional show such as, I think Ruby Fields did an all-ages show at King Street Hotel, which is like our big venue. But nothing that’s like set in stone.
Doris, who’s from Maitland, is doing an all ages show at this record store called Aggravation Place. So I think it’s up to record stores, also like Hiss and Crackle Records out in Wallsend. They do live all-ages gigs in store every weekend.
But that’s what you need, right? I think you need bands that — not just punters or concert-goers that are under 18, but you need the bands to kind of be young as well to kind of keep that scene fresh, you know?
There’s no real sense of the classic tall poppy syndrome when it comes to Newcastle. Like, we’re very much supportive of our acts in the long term, like, what’s an example of this, like Dust. They toured Europe last year and such, and yet they still come back to Newcastle and play here, and we’re very much supportive of them.
Like, we love saying, Vacations (!), oh yeah, Vacations, Newcastle band, Rum Jungle (!), Newcastle band. Um, I don’t know, it’s an in-joke. “I love the small local time band Silverchair, or the Screaming Jets.”
No matter how far and wide they go, we still call them our own.
There’s no real sense of the classic tall poppy syndrome when it comes to Newcastle.
Can you talk us through what you think the future of the Newcastle music scene might look like or what you would hope the future of the Newcastle music scene looks like?
We kind of need more larger venues, which I know it’s happening in Newcastle. Like, there’s this old theatre from the early 1900s in the middle of our CBD, and I think it’s being refurbished, and that will allow more international acts to come through, which I think is vital for a growing city.
Whereas on a more local level, we probably need more support. The council gives a lot of support to local artists, which is great, and it’s very helpful that we have that kind of arts backbone, but it’ll need to be continued, obviously, going forward.
The dance music scene is very much going off at the moment with dance events inside of venues, which were historically, like, vanilla club music. They’re now getting a bit more experimental and a bit more left field, which is cool to see.
Hardcore music has very much taken over Newcastle in the last year as well with bands such as Feel the Pain, Skorn, Volatile Ways… Speed from Sydney is actually signed to a Newcastle label, Last Ride Records.
A lot is happening in Newcastle all at once, and it’s very exciting to see people get behind it.
Note: interview responses have been edited slightly for clarity and readability. Header image by Nikola Jokanovic for the Newcastle Herald.
