The Rise & Fall of Easterfest
The Rise & Fall of Easterfest
In the late 90's a group of Toowoomba business people, civic leaders and the city's church community come together with an audacious plan - stage a gospel music festival that will bring people into the city over the Easter weekend. Despite humble beginnings, Easterfest (formerly the Australian Gospel Music Festival) grew to achieve major event status in Queensland, and became one of the largest t…Follow the podcast:
Bonus Bit #6 - The Artist That Took 7 Years to Book
Michael W Smith was one of the biggest artists to ever grace the stage at Easterfest, having been one of the defining artists of the contemporary christian music movement in the 1980’s. Along with his good friend Amy Grant, Michael had a significant impact on the genre, not just as a performer, …
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Bonus Bit #5 - Jeremy Bennett, Toupee Records & The Brisbane Scene
When the Australian Gospel Music festival, the event that would give rise to Easterfest got going in 1999, the independent Christian music scenes across Australia were pretty healthy. There was a lot going on in that space with plenty of Aussie muso’s diving in and giving it a go. In Brisbane, …
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Bonus Bit #4 - The Aussie Brothers Who Conquered The World
One of my favourite Easterfest stories is around two expat Aussie brothers, who wrote a bunch of killer songs, crafted a sound that can really only be described as epic, and found themselves at the very top of the Christian Music industry in the US. But when you look at the For King and Country s…
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Bonus Bit #3 - Claire Hazzard's Full Interview (Plus a Live Song!)
I was stoked that Claire Hazzard agreed to be part of this project, because she was one of the artists who was leading the charge in the independent Christian music scene in the late 90s and early 2000s. Claire is a Queensland artist who cut her teeth on the Brisbane music scene, before signing t…
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Bonus Bit #2 - The Aftermath of Easter Saturday 2011
If you’ve listened to the full series of the Rise and Fall of Easterfest, you know that the events that unfolded on Easter Saturday night in 2011 would end up being one of those key moments in the Easterfest story. Steve Monro and Matt Gees were radio presenters with Vision Christian Media, who w…
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Bonus Bit #1 - Paul Colman's Full Interview
When I was making a list of guests for this podcast series, Paul Colman was right at the very top, because he and his band the Paul Colman Trio, were the biggest act in Australian Christian music as the Australian Gospel Music Festival got going in the early 2000s. The Paul Colman Trio released a…
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Episode 4 - The Fall
The Rise & Fall of Easterfest is a celebration of the Easterfest and Australian Gospel Music Festivals, that ran for almost two decades in Toowoomba. The Easter of 2011 saw the biggest crowd in attendance that Easterfest had ever seen, but something on that weekend would lead to the downfall of A…
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Episode 3 - The Experience
The Rise & Fall of Easterfest is a celebration of the Easterfest and Australian Gospel Music Festivals, that ran for almost two decades in Toowoomba. At the heart of the AGMF and Easterfest festivals was community – over and above the music, festival goers were really attending to be with other l…
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Episode 2 - The Music
The Rise & Fall of Easterfest is a celebration of the Easterfest and Australian Gospel Music Festivals, that ran for almost two decades in Toowoomba. You can’t have a music festival without the music and that’s what the focus is in this episode. What did the Australian Christian music scene lo…
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Episode 1 - The Rise
The Rise & Fall of Easterfest is a celebration of the Easterfest and Australian Gospel Music Festivals, that ran for almost two decades in Toowoomba. In this first episode, we’ll be looking at the rise – how did the festival get started in 1999 and then grow to become one of Queensland’s major ev…
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