The IMNZ-organised Going Global Music Summit reached new heights at the start of September, with a sold-out two-day seminar event held at Roundhead Studios in Auckland. Ahead of the event, NZMusician.co.nz ran a Q&A with one of the many interesting speakers, Bandcamp’s chief curator Andrew Jervis. As a follow-up, we asked local musician Simon Comber (Herriot Row) to give a quick precis of his Going Global 2017 experiences as an artist attendee.

My band Herriot Row was lucky enough to be one of 12 showcase acts at this year’s Going Global Music Summit in Auckland. In addition to the performance, I attended a number of the seminars featuring local and international industry delegates.

It was great to listen to the thoughts of people representing labels like 4AD and Secretly Canadian, both of which are well represented in my own record collection. The seminar I found especially helpful was an early Friday one titled Unlocking Australia, with the discussion chaired by my friend Anthonie Tonnon.

Believe it or not, it’s easy for NZ artists obsessed with various American and British labels and their long histories to forget about Australia, both as a territory worth touring and a country with its own rich songwriting heritage.

The panel delegates Maggie Collins (Triple J, Bigsound), journalist Andrew Stafford (who I was pleased to discover loved Brisbane band The Apartments as much as I do) and artist manager Catherine Haridy were all possessed of knowledge, enthusiasm and of course anecdotes about the different major cities of Australia and their respective musical communities.

I was particularly excited to discover the existence of Parlour Gigs, whose founder Matt Walters was on the panel. His initiative aims to connect artists to audiences and is a much-needed support platform to help Australian and NZ artists play the type of intimate house concerts that have flourished throughout America’s DIY scene for many years.

Thanks to connecting with Matt I now have my own Parlour Gig artists page set up, and I’m excited about the possibility of playing a Parlour show or three in the near future.

Herriot Row is the new musical moniker of Auckland-based singer/songwriter Simon Comber. Having released two LPs and an E.P under his own name, Comber released the debut Herriot Row album ‘Lesser Stars’ in September 2017. The album was recorded in San Francisco with analogue producer John Vanderslice, known for his work with the Mountain Goats and Spoon.