Willem Hendriksen, who has joined the Board of BMCAN, is the Founder/Director of Retro Rehash, a Blue Mountains based music enterprise that sets up live music events and creates media for artists, such as podcasts, videos, band photos, press kits and editorials. Its mission is to enrich the local scene, promote local artists and to grow the night time economy of the City of the Blue Mountains.
Retro Rehash presents music of manifold styles by local artists in the ‘Sounds of our Town’ compilations, developed in partnership with Blue Mountains City Council, and links famous performers like Steve Kilbey (The Church) with a big group of Katoomba musicians or curating several main acts with rather different styles, with punters raving about this approach.
Retro Rehash also offers mentorships for up-and-coming artists, and will work with BMCAN to support member-initiated projects. Our latest work together is the project, Lithgow Lowdown, working with musician and arts entrepreneur, Sam Williams of SamBucca to curate a live music and poetry/dance slam event in Lithgow in 2023. We’ve submitted the grant to FRRR. Now we wait till March 2023 to see if we are successful. If successful, we plan to hold the event in Spring 2023.
This project will bring the two communities of Lithgow and the Upper Blue Mountains together in solidarity, as Lithgow begins the work of reimagining its future away from coal mining and coal-fired power generation to become a renewable energy storage and distribution hub, and centre of a growing eco-tourism industry. As part of this Lithgow has rebranded itself as The Seven Valleys – the new lifestyle/arts region’s gateway to the Central West of NSW, including such places as Bathurst, Orange and Mudgee.
