Singing in a new direction

Last year saw the end of Marty Maher’s era as the Aireys Inlet Open Mic Festival director, happily handing over the reins to Tony Caon.

Under the direction of Tony, the Open Mic festival will see a focus on musician promotion this year, with new features including a marquee tent for all participating musicians to display their merchandise and a webpage for each act on the Aireys Inlet Open Mic website.

“This year will be a bit more of a spectacle, with lighting effects added throughout the shows,” Tony said.

“We’ll have fewer stages this year, focusing on quality over quantity and we hope to group acts together in similar genre so the audience doesn’t have to move around the stages too often to hear the kind of music they prefer.”

Bendigo Bank is sponsoring the merchandise marquee, with solo musicians, duos and bands allowed to drop off CD’s, bottle openers, T-shirts, caps and anything band related to be sold over the Saturday and Sunday on March 17-18.

“We will keep an inventory of all merchandise sold for each band and it will all go straight back to them.

They deserve the opportunity to promote themselves as much as possible; they put in the hard work so they deserve the reward.

“A webpage will also be dedicated to each act, allowing the audience to gain a better understanding of who is playing and what style of performance can be expected too.”

Registrations for the Aireys Inlet Open Mic Festival will be open until January 25, with the festival on from March 16-18. For more information and to register, head to aireysinlet.com.au.