Addi Rock is Coming

Paddy just dropped in to the Addi Road Community Organisation offices in Marrickville to pick up the t-shirts that Audrey has designed for Addi Rock, which will take place on Saturday 16 September.

 

“It’s the youth deal,” he explains. “Teenage bands and performers. We can’t get gigs being under 18 because of drinking laws. You might be performing and nowhere near the bar, but if kids are around they can’t serve alcohol.”

 

Audrey and Paddy are part of the Addi Road Youth Committee. “I was complaining at a meeting about not being able to play anywhere,” says Paddy. “And how even if a lot of the festivals are accessible to youth, they don’t really have youth in mind as performers. So Audrey said let’s organise our own one.”

 

Paddy describes Audrey as “an artist. I’m more a musician like type of deal. Audrey has just done this great collage i want her to submit to an art exhibition. It’s really nice. She gets the bus a lot and she always has stories about the people she met on the bus . The collage is made up of four separate artworks for the different buses, the 428, the 423, that kinda thing, and the people she met on them.”

 

While Audrey works on festival planning and things like Addi Rock posters, stickers and t-shirts, Paddy is helping out and trying to get his own band up-and-running as well as get more friends involved too. “Me and Audrey are rallying the troops,” he says laughing.

 

Right now, Paddy has one friend he has mostly been jamming with. Others have faded in and out. He wants to do original songs and is hoping the other teenage acts will do some originals too along with any covers they might choose. Paddy says “Black Sabbath are part of my core stuff”, especially the first self-titled album, as well as other influences like Hendrix, Billy Bragg and “me listening to a Beatles best-of when I was young and in the car with my parents a lot. But I am never in one spot with music. I like the classics but I listen to lots of things.”

 

Paddy started off learning piano, stopped doing music for a few years, then picked up a guitar last year. “I think I’m doing really well but that sounds like I am tooting my own horn. I got back into music and guitar thinking about what I want to do in life. I don’t really wanna do an office job,” he shrugs. “I don’t wanna get into the corporate cog wheel thing, I dunno.”

 

He is still working on matching the music with the lyrics he has written. They are like two separate things for now. What are his lyrics about? “Just being a teenager. I can’t really write about being an adult.” He smiles. “But I can write about being afraid of being an adult. And thinking about being an adult sorta from the teen mind.”

 

While Paddy works on his songs and putting together a band, Addi Rock is already sorting out the first few acts for its line up. “We have these friends of Audrey’s called The Dragons in Hats. I actually managed them for a few weeks. We didn’t get any gigs but I told them how to get gigs. They play a bit of Creedence. And they all like Ween. A lot. It’s kinda funny that they are all so into Ween. They have this eclectic thing going on. Their singer Red is named after Elvis Presley’s bodyguard. He is really good.”

 

“We also had a band from the Central Coast apply. They were real serious about everything. But they aren’t playing anymore. I don’t think they realised you had to be under 18.”

 

“There’s this other girl Ruby too. She writes acoustic songs. That’s gonna be real good. And this little guy from primary school, year six, his dad signed him up.”

 

That’s pretty much the Addi Rock Music Festival story so far. Paddy will meet again with Audrey and the Addi Road Youth Committee to work out more things about the line-up and making Addi Rock totally happen. “It’s gonna be real nice.”