Brisbane promoter Dan Munn is looking for musicians to play live, original music as part of a new, monthly event at Norman Park Bowls Club, The Green Sessions.
With a new spin on Sunday afternoon, live music at bowls clubs, Dan is excited about the future of The Green Sessions. “I guess what inspired me was the way it’d be done in other venues. I’m not criticising the way it's been done, but it's very much like a chalkboard sort of arrangement.
“What inspired me was that I wanted to do something different, where I can group the artists together in similar genres for the afternoon. Because I know who’s playing ahead of time, I can promote them as well. Whereas the chalkboard arrangement, you don’t get any promotion, you just sort of turn up and hope for the best. I’m doing it where I can group the artists, listen to them first, get a bit of a bio on them, so people have a bit of an idea who’s playing rather than first in, best dress type thing.”
Dan's hopes for The Green Sessions is to build an environment where young musicians can feel comfortable on stage. “The difference between what I’m trying to do ... is the way live music is done. It’s set up on a stage, there’s an audience, and it can be quite intimidating for people who are just starting off and performing in that format. So this is at a bowls club, it's more casual, the eyes aren’t all on them. People are eating, bowling, drinking; it’s outdoors. So it’s less intimidating, particularly for a lesser-experienced artist, or a new artist, to get up and perform their songs.”
The Green Sessions is geared towards the solo performers. “To run it with bands would be logistically a lot harder; soloists you can get more people in. And it would possibly attract a certain type of music as well. It could be really anything, you could get someone doing hip hop on loops, backing tracks between solos if you wanted to … but it could be anyone or anything really; a solo artist could mean they have a drum on their back and they can play ten instruments, that's fine.”
With his background as a promoter, Dan doesn’t want this experience to be a play and leave situation. Instead, he's using it as a means of discovering new talent within the city and offering them future gigs according to social media responses. “People can like it on Facebook and other forms of social media. That’s something I’ve not seen done before. So the way we choose is that after the session each month, I pick a song based on audience reaction and I’ll it put on Facebook, and we’ll see how much we can get for that month, and do the same thing the next month for another artist.
“At the end of six months we’ll pick the artist with the most Likes and tell them 'hey, that was a really great song. If you’ve got a couple of sets worth of material, the venue is happy for you to come down and play, and we’ll pay you, pay you well, to play your music.'”
The Green Sessions will debut on Sunday 12 April from 2.30pm at the Norman Park Bowls Club.
