The team behind this November’s Harvest 2013 have yet to give a definitive answer as to whether the music festival is officially cancelled, and though things look particularly grim, with promoter AJ Maddah noting that ailing ticket sales could likely lead to the event to “disassociate into several tours,” it seems one of the bands on the Harvest 2013 lineup has already moved on to the next step.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club have taken the cancellation of Harvest as a given. “You may have already heard that Harvest Festival has been cancelled,” reads a post on the band’s Facebook page, as FasterLouder points out.
“But we want to let you know that BRMC is still coming to Australia,” reads the statement from the leather-clad San Franciscans. “Details for the Australian tour will be announced shortly. We will see you soon.”
It’s unclear if the rock trio’s tour news is a case of them going out with an official announcement ahead of the Harvest festival team, or simply taking the bad signs of the event’s slow ticket sales – especially in Brisbane – as the writing on the wall.
In any case, it does follow Maddah’s comments that the Harvest 2013 lineup – featuring Massive Attack, Goldfrapp, Franz Ferdinand, Neutral Milk Hotel, and more – would still be headed to Australia as part of a series of headline tours.
BRMC were last in Australia in 2010 for Splendour In The Grass off the back of their Beat The Devil’s Tattoo album. Their follow-up, this year’s Specter At The Feast, was inspired by the death of bassist/vocalist Robert Levon Been’s father, Michael, who acted as a sound engineer for the group but died of a heart attack backstage following their performance at the 2010 Pukkelpop festival.
The lead single and opening track of BRMC’s new album is a cover of ‘Let The Day Begin’, the 1989 single from The Call, the rock band that Been’s father fronted. While paying tribute to his legacy, the band haven’t let that turn their brand of rock into an elegiac downturn.
“The more time we’ve spent together as a band, living, working, laughing, touring, and killing each other, that’s what makes a band less of a ship in a bottle, and more of a battleship on the war path,” said Been in a recent interview with Tone Deaf. “Comfort is for grannies and grandpas. Rock ‘n’ roll is a restless motherfucker.”
Meanwhile, the fate of Harvest 2013 has yet to be announced by festival organisers and head honcho Maddah, who’s noted he’d make a loss of around $5.5 million at current ticket sales should he soldier on with the event, offering the alternative of breaking up the festival in favour of a series of headline tours and absorbing parts of the lineup into Soundwave 2014.
“Ethically I can only take risks at my expense… I don’t want to add to the statistics of festivals fucking people over,” noted Maddah late last week, “I don’t want anyone else to get hurt over this.”
