While Lou Bradley and her husband Phil Chaffer are best known locally for running the Nimbin Roots Festival, she has had a rich and varied life in the music industry for many years.

Although she is very busy preparing for this year’s final festival and recording a new album, she made time to have a chat this week with Darlene Cook about her life.  

I was born in the mid-1970s and grew up in Avalon, a northern beachside suburb of Sydney. I was the youngest of three sisters, and I was fairly spoiled as a kid and while back then I think both my sisters may have resented that, as adults, we got on really well. 

Our family and friends all had proper conservative jobs; my father was a practising lawyer who then decided being a milkman was more rewarding. He worked as a milkman for thirty years, as well as running some small businesses. My Mum, like many women of her generation, was a homemaker.

We had an organ in the house and both my Dad and my Nan played; we often gathered round to sing with my Nan. I was the freaky music person that can play tunes by ear. I loved singing, and my parents encouraged that; they were happy to put me on show, as I loved being the centre of attention. 

I attended Barrenjoey High School, and I was playing guitar and keyboards and singing in my first band at the age of twelve. I went through teenage rebellion against my parents and “the system” and left home at fifteen to live with some band mates in Redfern. We moved around Sydney a bit, suburbs and inner city – wherever we could get a gig. I got smuggled into quite a few pubs back then! 

At 16 I met my life partner, Phil Chaffer, who is a fantastic musician, playing banjo and mandolin. Over the next eight years, we had three kids while still playing in the band and working part-time. In those days, I also learned how to be a booking agent and band manager, and I sat in meetings with record companies.

In 1999, both my father-in-law and one of my sisters died. It was a shock for all of us, and Phil and I realised life is short and we needed to go somewhere to raise our family and get stuck into the creative side of music.  

We stuck a pin in a map and found a beautiful place in the hills behind Mullumbimby (Mullum) near a small village called Huonbrook. It was about 12 kilometres as the crow flies from Nimbin. We had 30 acres of beautiful waterfalls, organic gardens, permaculture gardens. We were mostly self-sufficient for food, it was the most inspirational place ever. 

((Lou out the front of her Huonbrook house, where her creative juices kicked off)

This is when I started writing songs. The inspiration just came from the hills and nature around us, and from our experiences playing gigs for so long. In 2004, I found a local studio in Byron Bay and we recorded a backyard EP. 

Shortly after, we were driving to Mullum and I saw John Butler in the street. I’d just received the first copy of the EP and I jumped out of the car and ran over and introduced myself, gave him my EP and thanked him for paving the way for independent artists. He was only just starting to do that then, so it was a really big thing. I got a call a month or so later and he offered me a grant from a fund he’d established, called JB Seed, to tour my music in the Northern Territory. 

It was supposed to have been just Phil, me and the band going, but all our friends wanted to come too, so we had a mini bus with families, kids and pets and off we went and toured for weeks – 23 shows in 28 days!

(Lou and her family touring in the NT)

That was a really great experience and we learned a lot about different audiences in country areas. After we came back, I reflected on my need to take my music writing more seriously. It was a mix of country and bit hillbilly, and I needed to explore how I wanted my music to sound and evolve. 

In 2006, I saw this advertisement for a course with the Country Music College and thought I’d like to have a go at it. It’s based in Tamworth and held two weeks before the actual festival started. It’s an intense two-week program with skills workshops, songwriting workshops and learning about the industry and its history back to its roots in America. I got to meet singers, and writers, and producers – some great contacts.

Ted Howard, a recording engineer I met at the Country Music College, introduced me to producer Rod McCormack, who lived on the Central Coast, and who is one of the best banjo players I’ve ever heard, and he produced my first full-length album , Love Someone.

This album was a personal journey for me. It reflects the ups and downs of life, but it also allowed me to express some of my grief over my sister’s death. The album was nominated for an ARIA Award and Golden Guitar for Best Country Album. 

In 2007, I recorded a follow-up album, La La La Not Listening, exploring the joys and difficulties of modern life in Australia. This album was released on Slim Dusty and Joy McKean's Nulla label, and produced by Shane Nicholson.

As it happens with musicians, finding work to make ends meet when you’ve decided to have a life dedicated to the arts was a struggle. The continuing question of do I keep my focus on my music versus focusing more on family and work. Sadly, we ended up not being able to keep the house in the hills, the bank repossessed it. This land was where we raised our children. It is a part of who we are as a family. Anyone who has ever had land will know what I mean. It is also a part of who I am as a songwriter. I believe this land is where my alternate style comes from.

After losing everything, I decided to pack it in. But then one day I was waiting for my youngest daughter to finish her netball training and I was in the car reflecting on all the heartache and loss that had come before, when I thought once again about the music industry and whether or not it was worth my while. 

Distant thoughts of my children telling me in the toughest times, even once we had lost our family home, not to give up, came to me and tempted me to give this one last try. Maybe I should try local again. Full circle. I’ve heard we have world-class producers. 

Checking my phone for local producers, the first name I came up with was Anthony Lysenko. I emailed him from my phone, introduced myself and said I had about $5 if he was interested in making an album! He wrote back pretty much straight away, saying that it was one of the best emails he’d ever had and wanted to meet me straightaway. So, we met and started making an album. And what a journey it has been!

I was pretty bitter about the music industry and still damaged from losing our home, so I knew this album would be very different from the others, but I was determined not to conform and make a mainstream album. It has to reflect my voice and my life.

The album took me two years to make. I had to save every penny, including busking and pumping petrol to pay for it, and it actually evolved as I did, and by the end of it, I felt like I’d reached the “other side” of whatever the hell I was going through. Hence the title, I guess!

In 2015, I recorded Moonshine, which is dedicated to my Dad, who died in April 2014. It was recorded live at Bill Chambers’ house with just Bill, Phil and me sitting in a circle playing the songs. The album deals with my grief about losing Dad, but there are also happy moments and stories of my life on the north coast. 

Financially, we were still in great difficulty. Phil and I agreed we need to get a “real” job. So, he worked full-time as a mechanic, and I also worked at the servo in Mullum for about six months.

We’d been forced to find somewhere really cheap to live – by this time, the kids had left home and gone to Sydney – and we found a place at Barkers Vale, a shed for $100 per week, but with no bathroom and no toilet, so Phil had to go there and build one! 

That’s when Nimbin Roots Festival was born. 

Over the years, I’d been to a number of performances of “successful” artists – large venues, people packed in, and I always said “that’s not for me”. It felt like we had to create something just for artists who needed an outlet to perform their original music. They wouldn’t have to be famous, nor have to be successful, but just had to really mean it with their songwriting because that’s when you get back to the roots of your art.

We decided to go back to the Northern Territory to get some money to help fund the start-up of the first Nimbin Roots Festival. Joy McKean, who was a terrific mentor for so many of us younger musicians, donated a caravan for us to tour in, and she told me to go and find our audience one by one and bring them here. 

So, we went out on the road to try to raise funds. While we had this idea for the festival, we didn’t want to tell people about it in case it didn’t work out. We got a bunch of artists who were friends over the years who said if we could sell 200 tickets, we can have this festival. With that in mind, we found work at Daley Waters pub and forged a relationship with them. They loved us, and we went back every year for ten years in a row – doing 100 shows in 100 days.

(Lou in the NT with her grandson)

The Daley Waters pub became our mainstay for touring. They provided a room for us. There are regular people who come to the pub every year just to see us, and many of them come down to Nimbin for the festival. In the first year, we hoped to sell 200 tickets; by the time we got up to Daley Waters, we had sold 300.

After we did the stint in the NT, we came back to get the festival ready. That’s what we did every year for 10 years – a long stint up top, race back and run the festival. This year is the first year not doing the NT tour to raise awareness and funds for the festival.

I had a very idealistic view about Nimbin, which is why we went there in the first place; its reputation as an alternate lifestyle village, its welcome for people of all different walks of life. It doesn’t give over to commercialism easily. It has several local festivals the village puts together, Mardi Grass, Nimbin Performance Poets, the Aquarius Festival – so a music festival embracing the roots of music should have found a definite niche in the village.

People come from all over the country to Nimbin; they want to feel safe, they’re curious about the village and people. The music festival is one of the few things in Nimbin that hasn’t got some link to drugs and drug reform. They come for the quality music, and a safe family-run event where they can enjoy the warm, fuzzy vibe. 

Some locals look forward to the festival and enjoy it, but others have been less welcoming. Locals outside Nimbin think it’s just another weird thing in Nimbin without realising the quality of the artists and music on show. Over the ten years, I’ve noticed that very few tickets, maybe 2%, are bought by local area residents, and there hasn’t been the financial support you would expect from the Council, the chamber of commerce and the business community in the village or in Lismore. I think next year they may realise that they didn’t know what they had until it’s gone.

One difficulty with Nimbin as the venue for a music festival has been the lack of a range of accommodation for visitors and undercover or indoor venues to host the event. The Nimbin Bowling Club and the Nimbin Hall have been very supportive, but the limitation has meant that ticket sales have had to be restricted to a maximum of 1,000.  Some years I’ve had a financial loss, which fortunately was covered by the tour in the NT. Last year, I had a small profit from the event.

It's been an exhausting schedule for 10 years; you’ve got to have faith and dedication the whole year that it’s going to work. Reluctantly, I decided that this year will be the final Nimbin Roots Festival. 

The Northern Rivers area has a huge creative arts sector, but except for commercial Byron music festivals, there’s not a lot of other music festival outlets for people, just Nimbin and now Mullum. 

This year was the first year of the Mullum Roots Festival. Following the discontinuation of the much-loved Mullumbimby Music Festival in 2020, I saw an opportunity to fill the void and revive the town’s rich musical tradition. The absence of the Mullumbimby Music Festival has been deeply felt within our community, and I hoped they would embrace a new grassroots-focused music festival. 

It was a great success. Mullum people really got behind the event – nearly 65% of tickets sold were bought by locals. We had 2,500 people across 26 venues and have three more venues signed up, so we can fit in more next year. Mullum has the space to give musicians a place to perform and an audience that was appreciative of the experience to hear grassroots music, some for the first time. 

I’m looking forward to a long-term relationship with Mullum; I’ve got a good artistic vision for it going forward and excellent support from other people who have worked on festivals in the past and who want to be involved with this one. It is a 12-month project to actually organise and get the festival up and running, and it gets busier closer to the date. 

This year it’s also been a family event for me, with my Mum selling T-shirts and tickets, my sister helping with admin tasks, and my daughter and granddaughter coming along to help too. Four generations of one family all together!

I need to keep this as a dedicated quality event for original music; musicians across the board can be very ego-driven, and it can be hard to keep the egos away and the self-indulgence away, and keep it entertaining so people will be interested enough in the new and unknown to come to the festival. I’ve just gotten to know through the years that I’ve got a good filter for that stuff, so I can now say to some people that I don’t want you, you’re too disruptive.

Similarly, I can tell if someone really loves what they are doing. For so many musicians, it’s the first opportunity to have someone hear their music. It makes such a big difference to their perceptions of their voice and music, and if I can do this and create some success for them, then I’ve done a good job. People have come back to me and said they have buzzed for months after playing at Nimbin.

Mentoring new voices and new original music is like caring for a broad family of people you’ve raised in the music industry. You’ve got to keep that support going. Next year at Mullum, there will be a Youth Battle of the Bands to encourage our younger players to showcase their music.

While it’s not about the money, it has been really nice not to have to do the trip to the Northern Territory for funds this year. It’s also the first winter we’ve had down here in 10 years. Phil and I can now choose which small gigs we want to play and keep our own music fresh and alive.

In the past couple of years, I’ve campaigned for an alternate-country Golden Guitar Award. Alt-country, things like bluegrass, indie folk, indie roots and other alternate stuff. It’s that whole fringe area that never goes near traditional country music. That genre is coming in really beautifully, and it’s working. 

Country music is very insular; I’ve worked hard to try to make it less insular and for the voice of alternate country to be heard. For an Alt Golden Guitar award, I had to put in a submission and try to teach them what alternate country music is.  Lee Kernigan and John Williamson were there at this meeting, but couldn’t get their heads around what I was trying to explain. It’s not mainstream, it’s not pop, it’s all this stuff on the fringe that needs to be recognised and have somewhere to go. 

Not country enough for strict country; it took two years for me to work on that project, and now, even today, the awards committee is still misrepresenting that genre. They don’t get it; they treat the Awards, so if you don’t get best country album you could win the alt country one. 

Moving forward, I’ve got other promotions and projects in the pipeline. I’ve been down in Sydney making a new album – the first new album in 10 years; it’s going well, we are about three-quarters through. I’m working with Peter O’Doherty at a studio at Malabar. Peter’s been a good friend for many years, and he and his brother Reg Mombasa have been very supportive of the Nimbin Roots Festival and now the Mullum one. Reg has done the artwork for many of our posters over the years, and they play together as Dog Trumpet.

Phil and I have bought some land down in Tasmania, about half an hour out of Hobart, near the Huon Valley. It’s taken ten years to find our feet again and buy land again; the area is very like Huonbrook but freezing cold in winter. We’ve got 28 acres of beautiful undulating hills, a small cabin, a creek with rainforest along it with big ferns, mossy ground, and snow in winter. In my old age, I want to be able to sit by the creek, drink red wine, and watch the snow.

I’d like to go to England and explore their old traditional folk and village music, most of which is the music roots for modern music. Phil and I do play “old time music” as part of our shows, me on fiddle and Phil on banjo. There’s a lot in those old-world traditions that I’d love to learn. 

Phil is my silent, quiet, awkward nerd, solid as a rock, partner. He’s fabulous on banjo and mandolin, but he’s so quiet! He’s shy, and even after hundreds of performances, he still gets stage fright and nervous.  I make fun of Phil for being so annoyingly shy and quiet, but by the end of the show, he’s become the hero of the show. 

Phil and I have been together for 35 years and married for 21. We got married at home in Huonbrook in 2004, with the kids all involved. We tried raising the kids in a music environment, took them out of school and on tours. But they all turned out “normal” people! One is a lawyer, another a psychologist and the third works with Department of Education. While they are all great singers and play instruments, none of them wanted the life we have had. They saw the struggles and have chosen to have hot and cold running water on tap. Phil and I visit, and actually, we find their life a bit boring; we get into trouble for not being “normal” enough.

But we’ve got six grandkids so far, I’m hoping we may get a musician out of one of them!

For information about the final Nimbin Roots Festival 2025, to be held on the 24th to 26th October – go to https://nimbinrootsfest.com/ and to buy tickets go to https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1310864