I’ve applied to many grants over the years to various Australian Music programs and in May 2025 I was beyond delighted to receive an offer to be in the

REGIONAL TOURING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT Program offered by Music NSW.

I applied by providing my bio, social links videos, links to songs and a range of photos for promotion, As part of the Program, I would be involved in two Online Professional development workshops with two industry professionals, and then work together with two other artists to put on Three shows.

The Zoom workshops were:

1. Online Workshop – 16th July 2025 Tour Management by Christian McBride, and

2. Online Workshop – 7th August 2025 – Support Act REWIRE – Addressing mental health in the Music Industry by Dr Ash King.

Our Regional tour is called

The Rising North.

It was with The Florin Arc (Armidale),

Pam Hata (Grafton), and Myself,

Shelly Brown (Byron Bay).

We played our three gigs at

The Jacaranda Festival GRAFTON,

The Beach Hotel BYRON BAY and

No 5 Church Street, BELLINGEN.

I did one side show, which was a Gospel Choir Workshop at The Studio Space at Bellingen Memorial Hall. I have always wanted to go and do that, and I would not have taken that plunge without the support from Music NSW.

And as part of this Regional Touring Project, I felt I needed more Overwhelm, so I created an album to release – beginning on the first gig and over the following 4 months, and created Merchandise to gift at each event.

As part of the MUSIC NSW Support, I need to show all the documentation/artwork/promo STUFF I/We did, so, following, is all the Stuff!  I’m sharing this as a link to give to them, but also to show You the process and what went down, in case this insight may shine any light on your project, whatever it may be.

TOP IMAGE CREDIT:

Adam Hourigan (Grafton Jacaranda Festival 2025)

Accepted into the REGIONAL TOURING PROGRAM with MUSIC NSW

Meetings and planning begin with our Regional and illustrious Team Leader.

Meet the other artists in our Regional Cohort. Begin researching the time frame and Venues and Gigs we want to play in

• Byron Bay,
• Grafton,
• Armidale, and
• Bellingen.
• Make sure we have all of our Assets ready to begin – Bios, EPK’s, Links and Video’s Art etc etc. (Sus each other out!)

Here’s all the folks that Received this support from Music NSW!

I made it a post on my website. (https://www.shelly.com.au/news/)

Master Class with Christian McBride

Christian spoke about touring world wide acts. Big big. Think big cats. Touring with Pink etc.

I needed to scale down everything he spoke about to apply it to me. But it did make me remake my stage plan from crap to not crap. And I really appreciated seeing his Document / Organising folder organisation.

It made me realise I’m a bit of a mess, and I cleaned up my act a little. Im not going to screen shot my Document folder. But, it is better than it was.

Revised Stage Plan:

Attended the Regional and Remote Music Summit as a Proud Recipient of the Regional Touring Support from MusicNSW.

My favourite thing of this weekend was a story told by Dr Vic McEwan.
He told this terribly heartbreaking story of taking the audio recording of a terminally ill patient’s heart beat to a disused Oil tanker in Scotland, to record the sound of the heartbeat playing in the longest natural reverb humans could find.

This idea stayed with me. Poetic, sad, adventurous and unique.
Inspired.

IMAGE: https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/now-we-ve-heard-it-all-acoustic-scientists-shatter-the-world-record-for-longest-ever-echo-9062134.html

Masterclass With Dr Ash King

We did an interactive digital workshopping project on mental health, what makes us stressed, how to deal with that stress, things we’re looking forward to, how we can take care of ourselves.

I found this inspiring and I appreciated acknowledging that I’m not the only one that falls into overwhelm and decision fatigue.

I particularly appreciated that She was juggling her parenting with her presentation. Mums In the Industry.

Kicking Goals.

Getting shit done.

ELEVEN WEEKS TILL THE IDEA OF THE TOUR

Getting very close to locking in the dates and confirming everything.

The Main Artwork is provided by MusicNSW, with all of our additional PR supporting that poster.

9 WEEKS TILL REGIONAL MUSICNSW TOUR

Confirmed all gigs for Oct 31st, Nov 5 + Nov 8th – SO COUNTDOWN BEGINS 9 WEEKS TILL REGIONAL TOUR

• Set ticketing up with Humanitix + facebook event pages.
• Artwork management for all the different portals and sizes etc.
• Humanitix: minimum of 3200px by 1600px and in a 2:1 ratio
• FACEBOOK event image size is 1920 x 1005 pixels, which has a 16:9 aspect ratio

Ticketing and Promo for my additional event – The Gospel Choir Workshop at Bellingen Memorial Hall.

• Booked the Hall and set up the ticketing

Wrote on the Bellingen Community Facebook Page – Hey – I want to come do a Singing Workshop are you keen?
Had a great response from the community, and came back to this post many times to share news and share the poster. 
Trying to use the same post to sway the audience, instead of starting new ones each time. 

Had a lovely connection with a stranger from Thora (Near Bellingen). She suggested I run the workshop in Thora General Store, Or at Thora Community Hall. 

This didn’t end up happening, but it was really lovely to connect with her and to have a connection like that with a stranger to me. 

5 WEEKS TILL TOUR

I kind of stuffed up about here. This was time to dig in and get access to the Google drive of MusicNSW assets.

This folder full of amazing resources that VERY OBVIOUSLY Teams of people have worked really hard to put together.

So, Its a google drive though – and sometimes, just sometimes, you get stuck in that self inflicted stupid loop of needing your access approved, because your gmail email isnt the same as your email email, and so you request and then get distracted and move on with all the projects and go in circles of access issue.

So. It took me a hot minute to get in there. and I think by then it had been also copied to Dropbox so people could get in there. And my dropbox is full of crap. So dropbox gave me grief.

This is literally the most annoying sentences I have ever written.

Anyway. I got there in the end and HAVE LEARNT TO CLEAN UP MY FILES a bit more, and the assets and workbooks and schedules and advice in there are amazing. Worksheets, man. Those Worksheets. I wish everyone actually did them. It might be industry standard for the big wigs, but its not for regular gigs and it should be.

My feedback to myself is sort your shit out.

My Feedback to MusicNSW is maybe send files on a sharing platform that doesn’t need signing in approval like WeTransfer? But, this was self inflicted. You cant give feedback on your own stupidity.

• Tickets have begun selling for the workshop and the gig which is amazing.
• Posting to instagram and fb about imminent tour.
• Release a Podcast Episode to Singing Lessons for No One and begin sharing the upcoming tour.

We felt like attendance at The Jacaranda Fest was it’s own Beast,

I was telling people in word of mouth for The Byron Gig,

So, I Ran an Ad for the Bellingen Choir/Gig.

I HATE boosting ads on instagram, because Apple Charges you an App fee for boosting via an app on your phone.

Boosting via Facebook on your computer does not have those fees.

Stupid Meta. Arse Donkeys.

Podcast Stats:

Snail Mailed Hardcopy Posters and a family block of chocolate to a friend of a friend in Bellingen so he could do Posters for us.

They Never Arrived.

Someone Stole The Chocolate.

Bastards.

Luckily The Bellingen Memorial Hall had printed and done some posters for my Workshop and therefor for the gig.

Thank you so Much! Bellingen Memorial Hall for the WIn!

ONE WEEK TILL TOUR

It’s Radio interview time. Connect with Shows from Bay FM, Paradise FM and ABC North Coast.

• Head to an interview in person with Karena Wynn-Moylan for Arts Canvas on Bay FM 99.9,  Actually had a really amazing chat and connect with Karena about all kinds of things – audio books, The Byron Bay Writers Fest and so much more. And she had a really cool remote recording Mic. I need one of those.
• Head into Bay FM for a radio interview with Ange Kent- Northern Rivers Music Box and Nino Haggith from MusicNSW. Great chat and sang a song on air.
• The wonderful Nicky Fisher played my new song and shared the Tour news on the radio on That Friday Feeling, Bayfm.
• In person interview and song on Ballina Radio Station’s Paradise Fm, with Kate Reynolds. I think I was their very first live performer! How fun is that!
• Phone interview with the lovely Bridie Tanner on ABC North Coast. Love chatting to Bridie. She helped me get the word out about my petition to name a street after my Dad’s aircraft. Forever in debt to Bridie. Legend! She read me the weather on air. I felt very special.

October 23

This is a weird one. Ages ago I did a photoshoot with a makeup artist and Photographer. And I hated the photos. I thought I had a vision of what I wanted. And I thought I had expressed that. But the photos that came back made me cry and cry and cry. Too much, not right, real bad. Not their fault. and not mine either. just a stuff up. Shit happens. So, on October 23, I set up a camera and a remote control, and I did my own

Single Release ArtWork. Done.

24th OCT – Music Feature in BYRON BAY NEWSPAPER THE ECHO

An article and a paid ad in the Byron Bay Echo. Look, I dont often have a good reason to pay for an actual ad in the Newspaper. And You can never really know if someone saw it and came to the Byron Gig because they saw the ad. So, I think there’s a few things at play here. I took the momentum of the MusicNSW Support to, I dunno, Gawd damn actually believe in myself. And PaY fOr aN Ad in the local rag, because, I want to support my local Rag, and because I think things like that are more likely to show another local singer they can do this shenanigan, or it will show a local promoter or festival director I’m in this game. So, this one came out of my pocket, and It was worthwhile to me.    

UPLOADING SONG TO MY DIGITAL STREAMING PLATFORM FOR WATERFALL RELEASE

Ok,

This was one of my biggest learning curves.

I am on the DSP Gyrostream, and after many emails back and forth I have learnt that the way the fancy people release music is to release one single each month/time period, and then after a few singles, you release the whole album.
You upload one,
next month, take it down and upload the next one, with the first one attached.
Next month, take them both down,
release #3 with the 1 and 2 attached.
This is how they say to do it.
Then,
When its album time,
you take them down, release the Whole Album, for the Releasing an album price,

and then They REFUND YOU for all the singles you released.

So you’re not paying for every step.

I think this is ridiculous and exhausting, and with the glory of hindsight, I wish I had not started down this path. But I wanted to release this album in 2026, and I wanted to start releasing with this tour.

So this Waterfall format makes sense in that scenario.

It is.
Insane though.

Also upload and send to Sync Agencies. 

LESS THAN ONE WEEK TILL TOUR

MERCHANDISE CREATION In our weekly Meeting, Our team leader asked what our Merch was. Oh, dang. Yeah Merch! Ok, What is Merch I can make that has ZERO FOOTPRINT? I dont want plastic STUFFFFFF Everything is plastic. And I persaonlly don’t wear t-shirts. And I have done Tea towels in the past. So, This time, I make FLOWER BOMB SEEDS. F-BOMBS, if you will. I documented my creating process with video and photo, on my instagram/socials. Electric drill wizzing up a newspaper and clay, adding flower seeds,  letting it dry a little, moulding them into balls, with decorative flower seeds. Then when they were nearly dry, wrapping them in pairs with a QR code to my music. Initially it was my intention to sell them at gigs. But when it came to the time to say – I have the first song of my album out – it felt right just to throw them into the audience at the Jacaranda Festival – The perfect place to present such a gift – ESSENTIALL A FLOWER FESTIVAL! WHAAAAAAT??? GOLD. You can check out the process on my instagram – Under Merch Creation in my stories. https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17862679893507722/

One Day till Tour Begins

• Interview on ABC North Coast with Bridie Tanner
• Release a Podcast about new song and gigs. My Podcast gets over 2.5k streams per month. I THINK THATS INSANE.
• Radio Interview on Bay Fm
• Checking the Weather for Grafton – Projected Storms Oh No!
• Confirm Child is ready for the tour
• Checking Guitar batteries
• Finishing Merch Project
• Finalising WorkSheet for the Second Gig of the Tour
• Social Media Shares, Posts, Story, Tagging everyone, Hashtags, All the things.

Podcast Stats:

Some Social Media Stats after the tour:

What did I learn?

I learnt that I am not built for this contemporary Music Business Model.

Or Rather, it is not built for me.

This is definitely something I do for the joy. Because there isn’t an amount anyone would pay me for the work displayed above.

I am Sunshine and Light. I bring joy and love filled music.

My music is light, quirky, joyful, poetic and emotive.

That’s what I learnt.

Thank you MusicNSW. I was really honoured to travel through this journey with your support.

NEW MUSIC OUT NOW!