This year's Longline Classic music festival will celebrate the end of an era, with the final event happening in Gisborne this Labour weekend.
This year’s Longline Classic music festival will be a bittersweet one for its organisers, who say it is not financially viable to continue running.
Its final edition will be held at the Gisborne Soundshell in late October.
Organisers Kurt Barker and James Bristow told the Gisborne Herald they had run the event at a loss for the last few years.
“It is sad and gutting for us because it’s our favourite event to put on,” Barker said.
“We’re from Gisborne and passionate about putting on events for the community here. We love coming back home, but we haven’t broken even on the event since the first one we ran in 2020,
“You can only do something for the love [of it] for so long.”
The first year Barker and Bristow hosted the Longline Classic, New Zealand had come out of a Covid lockdown during which international acts were not able to enter the country.
As soon as the dates and line-up were released, they had instant take-up from around the country.
“We were pretty naive back then – we had worked on this Longline project over lockdown and decided to just release it. Because none of the other big events had been announced, we got this crazy response,” Barker explained.
That year, the festival attracted people from across the motu, with 70–80% of festival-goers coming from out of town.
Auckland accounted for the biggest audience share at the time, but it had been harder to attract out-of-town visitors recently due to the cost-of-living crisis, with people having less disposable income.
“Everything has gone up in price – artist fees, production costs and people are less likely to travel such long distances," Barker said.
“Trying to get 2000 people to the Gizzy soundshell over Labour weekend became pretty stressful.
“But we’ve had massive support from Trust Tairāwhiti – without their help, we wouldn’t have been able to go ahead this year."
Trust Tairāwhiti granted $15,000 from its Regional Events Fund earlier this month for the event’s marketing costs this year.
The regional economic development agency had supported the event through this fund in previous years.
“With their help, we made the decision to give it one last nudge.
“So whoever has supported it in the past can come get around it for one last big party.”
Barker said ticket sales to the final edition of the event were steady. He believed, with it being the final Longline Classic, people wanted to experience “a bit of history”, especially if they had supported it in past years.
The first two Longline Classic festivals were held at Makaraka Racecourse (now Ashwood Estate) in 2020 and 2022, with Fat Freddie’s Drop headlining. The 2021 festival was cancelled due to Covid restrictions.
In 2023 the location was changed to the Gisborne Soundshell. By then, Barker and Bristow knew they had to “get creative” to attract the numbers they needed.
“It’s part of a festival experience to head down to some remote location for a weekend, but it’s been harder to attract people from out of town as people are less likely to travel to Gizzy twice in the space of four months for R&V and Longline,” Barker said.
They have tried to get bands and performers who would attract wider audiences and have also targeted their marketing to some of the closer beach towns like Hawke’s Bay and Mt Maunganui, he said.
“Since it’s our last one, we’ve built it in a way so it’s not as expensive to run. We’ve taken on less risk, and it’s definitely not as stressful as it has been in past years,” Barker says.
Last year, they introduced a twin-fin surfing competition, which they will hold again this year. It attracted top surfers from around the country and a few from Australia.
“All walks of life from the Gizzy community come and help out wherever possible, which is really fun for us. Like Gisborne Boys’ High School coming in and doing all the stage and festival artworks.”
Barker and Bristow live in Auckland, where they run monthly club events with their company Nextgen Touring. They also run the Coro Classic in Matarangi and In Bloom in Tauranga, which they will continue to put their energy into.
“We would love to run more events in Gisborne in future – when the economy picks up,” Barker says.
At last year’s Longline Classic Tiki Tane, Scribe and Che Fu performed, along with DJ Messie.
This year’s line-up includes Smashproof, P.D!GSS, Flamingo Pier, Jed Skuse, Te Wihi and more.
What: Longline Classic
When: 2pm Saturday, October 25
Where: Gisborne Soundshell Awapuni Stadium