Good Things: Destroy All Lines’ Chris O’Brien Explains How Fest Thrives In a Broken Landscape

Australia’s live music and touring environment is still finding its feet in the immediate years coming out of lockdown.

The sector has been able to regain traction and motion, with international and national touring artists well and truly back in rhythm with new album cycles, anniversary years and more.

Recent times have not been as kind to the Australian music festival circuit. Organisers at all levels have faced unprecedented challenges due to the impact of the pandemic, but also rising operational costs, regulatory changes, and the changing climate in Australia itself.

Such challenges have greatly affected the music festival culture, which once boasted the healthiest calendars of events this side of the southern hemisphere, leading to the cancellation of many long-running festival events, from Groovin The Moo through to Falls Festival, FOMO Festival and Splendour in the Grass.

During the 2024 Variety Live Biz Breakfast, Bluesfest director Peter Noble described the troubles sweeping through festival-land as an “extinction” event. 

Yet, while research and support has been generated at different levels to help try and understand, and navigate this unpredictable time in the festival industry, some success stories have continued to add new chapters to their growing history.

Destroy All Lines, the independent and Australian-owned tour and event promoter, is one.

The business has been growing and solidifying a global reputation as a trusted industry name since its inception in 2003.

Its touring arm has worked with the likes of Deftones, Pennywise, Belle and Sebastian, James Blunt; while through its agency, Destroy All Lines represents some of Australia’s best talent in the heavy/alternative scene — Parkway Drive, Alpha Wolf, Northlane, Polaris and Make Them Suffer among them.

Since 2018, Destroy All Lines has filled the void left by Soundwave, offering Australian heavy music fans the opportunity to experience a curated festival experience at a high level, with the introduction of Good Things Festival.

Pre-pandemic, the festival hosted the likes of The Offspring, BABYMETAL, Trivium, Bullet For My Valentine, Parkway Drive and more across its east coast run.

Since its return in 2022, Good Things Festival has expanded its vision to include heavy-hitters from Bring Me The Horizon, to Deftones, Fall Out Boy, Limp Bizkit and more.

Key to the festival’s success is the calibre of artists booked each year, sure, but also the way the culture surrounding it has been built. From the ground up each year, the festival has been created with the same vision in play: an event that has passion and the punters’ experience in front of mind.

Chris O’Brien, Good Things Festival promoter and Destroy All Lines general manager, is proud of how this fest in particular has been able to evolve, especially at a time where many others have folded.

“We’re doing everything we can to make sure it’s working in a very challenging economic environment,” he tells The Music Network on site at the Melbourne leg of the 2024 tour.

“I’m proud that there’s still alternative music festivals in Australia, and that people have a chance to go out and experience bands they’ve never heard of before, bands they might never get to see again, bands that are on final tours. Sometimes you can’t do that on a single tour. Sometimes they have to be a part of a festival. I think that’s super important that this continues.”

Good Things Festival this year has been an eclectic mix of genre and career artists.

Headlined by U.S. nu-metal icons Korn, the festival provided many unique highlights for attendees: the return of international favourites in Electric Callboy, The Gaslight Anthem and Sleeping With Sirens, Australian artists like Alpha Wolf, Northlane and significant debut Australian shows for acts like From Ashes To New and Imminence.

There were also special festival appearances: Killing Heidi performing Reflector in full; Billy Corgan performing in a unique set-up with The Delta Riggs as his touring band; Bowling For Soup and 311 making their long-awaited Australian return; Sum 41’s Frank Zummo filling in for Electric Callboy’s David Friedrich on drums.

Killing Heidi at Good Things Festival. Photo credit: Jordan Munns

When it comes to booking artists for a growing festival, O’Brien shares some insights into his process. The need to reflect the consumer’s listening habits, while also serving a mix of local and international artists who represent a new wave and long-standing core memories alike, is crucial.

“The way people consume music has changed so dramatically in the last six to eight years, that has impacted things,” O’Brien says. “It’s easy to get caught up in algorithms, TikTok and streaming numbers and think, ‘Okay, I’ve got all these metrics together so surely that means we’ll be able to sell tickets.’ It doesn’t work that way.”

“You’ve got to do deeper dives,” he adds. “When I’m programming the festival, yes it comes down to hard ticket sales, but it’s also about what the value of the artist is in this country, and a gut feel. I could sit down on the couch at night with a glass of wine and just be listening to music and put myself in the shoes of a punter at the festival. Would this band excite me, would I genuinely be into this? If the answer is ‘yes’, then the band gets booked.”

Citing the Australian success of Germany’s Electric Callboy as a clear example, O’Brien reflects on the band’s first Australian tour – for Good Things Festival in 2022. The reception to the band on that run bled perfectly into their debut headline tour in 2023, where they upgraded venues to sites like Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion and Melbourne’s PICA almost instantly.

This summer, Electric Callboy returned to the Good Things Festival fold as main stage co-headliners.

“When I first booked them for Good Things (2022), I think they only had one single that had come out that had blown up,” O’Brien remembers. “They weren’t big at the time. Within the space of five months, they released the second single (‘We Got The Moves’) and it just blew through the roof.”

“By the time the band came here, they had exploded and they were actually too big for their stages. Their manager was going, ‘Can you put them on the main stage?’ and I just said, ‘Trust me, I want people to almost have that missed out moment,’ so they’ll come back for the headline tour; they’ll do the festival again and then they’re in arenas next. You can map their career [in Australia] based on that.”

When it comes to the programming of ‘heritage’ bands like DEVO, TISM, Dragon, The Living End or Killing Heidi in recent years, O’Brien is adamant that they aren’t on the bill purely to strike a nostalgic chord.

The resurgence of these festivals can give older bands the opportunity to engage a new wave of fans in an environment they may not be able to connect with on their own headline tours.

“A lot of those ‘90s bands were getting pigeonholed into playing ‘90s festivals,” he says. “I kept looking at it and thinking, ‘It’s pretty much same old-same old, why can’t I bring those acts into this environment and introduce a new legion of fans to them?’. Sometimes it’s hard for those bands to get in front of new heads if they’re playing to the same crowd every time.”

The ability to pivot when bands pull out, or when the festival falls victim to extreme weather conditions, is something Good Things Festival has had to become proficient in.

And more broadly speaking, being able to steer their ship through difficult waters when festivals and large-scale touring ventures have taken hits across the board, is something that Destroy All Lines have thus far been able to do successfully.

Having expanded into the country music and comedy spaces in 2024, Destroy All Lines is continuing to prove that it’s not willing to be pigeonholed by genre or expectation of what an independently owned company of its kind can achieve in this country.

“We just exploded out of COVID,” O’Brien explains. “We decided to take the financial risk during the pandemic to keep everyone on full time. Obviously, we weren’t making any money, but because what was coming in the pipeline was so big, we needed to make sure we had enough staff to manage the workload.

“It worked successfully for the first year. We’ve got nine promoters now. I think we’ve managed to create a pretty cool culture where people just want to work with us, which is great. Scott Mesiti has just come on board, who specialises in rap, hip-hop and R&B. We do ‘80s music, ‘90s music. When I joined DAL, it was pigeonholed as a business. My vision was always that I didn’t want us to be known as anything other than being promoters who, no matter what we do, do a good job at it.

“We’re passionate about what we do,” O’Brien puts simply. “It’s the nice thing about being independent. I don’t have to have anything ratified at a board level, or talk to suits at a certain size. We do what we want and then we’re off to the races.”