Riding on board the local music wave
Text and Pictures by Kok Yufeng, Video by Andre He
As the sun set on Marina South Pier on Friday (22 January), the lights on the docked Stewords Riverboat went up to herald the start of a unique music event on the waters.
Some 340 people were treated to a medley of diverse tunes on board the Mississippi-style riverboat at the Bandwagon Riverboat concert. Nine local acts, ranging from singer-songwriters Linying and Dru Chen, electronic duo [.gif], to alternative rock bands Stopgap and Cheating Sons, as well as DJs Blankverse, Fauxe, William J and A/K/A, provided the pulsating entertainment across three decks.
Singer-songwriter Dru Chen performing at the Bandwagon Riverboat on Friday (22 January)
Organised by the events arm of concert aggregator and music editorial website Bandwagon, tickets to the one-night event, which were priced at $32, were snapped up in less than a week, a feat that even surprised founder Clarence Chan.
The concert was sold out without much marketing as people took to the unique setting, the 29-year-old said.
“It’s a reflection that having music in new spaces does invigorate the whole live music experience,” he added.
“We want to push the boundaries, we want to show people that we’ve got a very vibrant music scene,” Chan said. “It doesn’t just exist in the pubs of Clarke Quay, not just in the Esplanade, a premier music venue. Even in a space like (the riverboat), we can create a very unique experience.”
Clarence Chan, founder of concert aggregator and music website Bandwagon.
Chan and his team at Bandwagon are no strangers to quirky concert venues.
In 2014, they organised the Bandwagon Festival Bus, a live music concert on a bus travelling from Singapore to the Urbanscapes Festival in Genting. Two more concerts on wheels were held last year — in Manila, and again from Singapore to Genting.
Holding a concert on a riverboat posed a different kind of challenge but they were undaunted.
To accommodate the capacity crowd, a lot of work went into staffing the boat and increasing the insurance liability limitations, Chan said. Fourteen volunteers from Republic Polytechnic’s events management course were also roped in to set up nautical-themed party games.
A bigger stage for local musicians
For Cheating Sons’ frontman Wang Renyi, Friday’s event was an opportunity to play their brand of folksy rock and roll in front of an audience at an unusual venue.
“We were excited to play because the lineup was great. I didn’t even know that there was this boat at the pier and it sounded like a pretty cool venue to play at,” Wang, 32, said.
“I think if you were a Singaporean and you went in blind, you would have been pretty shocked because I think the stereotype is that local musicians don’t really cut it.”
Wang Renyi (second from right) and his folk-rock band Cheating Sons rock out aboard the Bandwagon Riverboat.
Defying these stereotypes was exactly what Chan and his Bandwagon team had set out to do with their online content and the riverboat event.
“The whole idea is to challenge people’s perceptions. We ride on the novelty of the place to introduce people to bands they may not have heard of, DJs they are new to,” Chan said.
Citing local bands like Gentle Bones and The Sam Willows, who have signed onto major labels, as well as festivals like Laneway and Zoukout that have started to promote local acts in their lineups, Chan feels that the music scene has elevated to a bigger stage.
“For the longest time, people feel like it is a bit second-rate compared to what you hear from the West,“ he said. “Right now, we are on the uptrend. More and more people are getting into local music,” he said.
“We really want to introduce new music to people to broaden their sonic palette, to say ‘Wow, this kind of music is here in Singapore’.“
