Vacations tripping on overseas appeal

Vacations frontman Campbell Burns packed and posted it himself from his Newcastle home.

In the past year the enquiries from overseas fans of the Novocastrian indie band have skyrocketed. Whether it be the United States, Japan, Chile or Eastern Europe, the popularity has spread like wildfire.

“We’ve exploded online, I guess you could call it exploded,” Burns says. “We’ve been able to get our music to the other side of the world and get fans that way.

“I’m shipping out merchandise to all these different places. I’m sending shirts and hats to Germany, California, Japan, Taiwan and getting messages daily from all different people asking to come over and play shows.”

So how did this happen? How does an unsigned independent four-piece from Newcastle suddenly attract a passionate foreign fan base?

The answer is in the power of the internet and the increasing influence of music curators on streaming sites like Spotify and YouTube.

Without an ounce of major record label support or Triple J airplay, Vacations have clocked 766,000 views on YouTube for their EPs Vibes and Days in six months.

On Spotify they average 29,638 monthly streams and their tracks Home (249,844) and Day Dreamin (228,035) have pushed well past 200,000 listens.

An analysis of Vacations’ listening data shows the majority of their fans live in Los Angeles, Santiago, Mexico City, Houston and Chicago. 

It’s serious business considering arguably Newcastle’s most famous current indie band is the Los Angeles-based Gooch Palms, who boast only 7,239 monthly streams.

“It’s strange, but really nice,” Burns says. “We’re so early in our career, but we already have this reach that a lot of bands don’t have and need to work really hard to get that breakthrough single.

“We’ve just gotten it really naturally. It’s a simple as someone uploading a song to YouTube and it growing from that.”

For all the talk about streaming services ripping off artists, Burns says its delivered a reasonable income for the band.

“We actually do make a bit of money from streams and it’s actually helped us out quite a bit,” he says. 

“It helps us play shows in Australia, get merch and buy gear. If we didn’t have those royalty streams we’d be relying on income from shows, which isn’t that reliable as you can be waiting months to get an invoice back or you mightn’t be paid at all.”

Vacations released their first five-track EP Days in 2015 through Newcastle’s No-Fi Records label, which was co-founded by Burns, artist Krystyan Nowak and Hunter Powell from rock band Voodoo Youth.

From there Vacations developed a loyal following in Newcastle for their melodic shoegaze vocals and washed-out guitar sound.

Ironically their fan base is relatively small in Australia and other Newcastle bands like Raave Tapes and Treehouse Children boast bigger audiences.

Vacations’ second EP Vibes was released last December and by then Burns had finalised the line-up of himself (guitar and vocals), Nate Delizzotti (guitar), Jake Johnson (bass) and Joseph van Lier (drums).

New York-based indie blog Cereal+Sounds posted a glowing review of Vibes and it further ignited interest in the US.

From there Atlanta-based indie label Human Sounds Records posted Vacations’ two EPs on YouTube.

Vacations have continued to grow organically throughout this year with fans even making their own videos for their music.

This included a Sydney filmmaker Sebastian Hill-Esbrand directing a clip to Home in Seattle, while an online blogger used live performance footage of the track to create a karaoke-style video with Portuguese subtitles.

Another fan used Vacations’ song Young as the soundtrack to a Eastern European wedding video.

All this attention has led to inevitable invitations to tour overseas. Burns says it all comes down to money.

“We have been hit up by one or two companies, but it came down to them saying we needed to secure a grant to get the funding, and if we did, they could book us the tour,” he says.

“We got offered to go to Europe, but needed the funding to do it. I wouldn’t be surprised if we head over next year at the rate it’s going.”