Portland's Jono Colliver plays to 100,000 people at AFL Grand Final

Portland's Jono Colliver plays to 100,000 people at AFL Grand Final MATT NEAL
Published in Warrnambool Standard 3 Oct 2016

PORTLAND musician Jono Colliver admits to freaking out a little bit when he discovered he would be playing as part of the pre-match entertainment at the AFL Grand Final.

“I was pretty excited and then that feeling was overtaken really quickly by crippling fear,” he laughed.

Portland musical export Jono Colliver (second from left) with his Vance Joy bandmates before their performance at the AFL Grand Final.

Colliver is the bass player with Vance Joy, a band that has taken him all around the world and seen him play to crowds of 75,000 people opening for Taylor Swift.

But Saturday’s two-song set at the MCG was the band’s biggest audience yet, with almost 100,000 people at the ground. An average of four million people tuned in to watch it on TV as well.

“Unlike other gigs where you become very aware of the audience, I was more aware of the fact there was a national audience, even though there was 100,000 people around me,” he said.

“But they’re taking a back seat because you can’t see their individual faces – they become a singular ‘crowd’ and I was very aware of the individual people watching at home, like my Nan and Pop and my friends watching it on television somewhere. That became the main thing I was thinking about.”

Colliver said sticking to a schedule help keep his nerves at bay.

“It’s a lot of ‘wait here for 10 minutes’ then ‘walk to this spot and wait for five minutes’. So you only think about the next step.

“Walking into the change rooms when Sting started, that was the first time I felt the gravity of it. It had a physical effect on my body. I walked down the ramp to change rooms and I felt this huge (weight hit me), like ‘wow, this happened – that was a real thing’. I had to sit down and chill out for a minute. My next thought was ‘there’s a grand final about to happen and 44 dudes are going to feel this same pressure, but they have to physically play a game of football’. I got a whole new appreciation for the players at that point.”

When he’s not playing with Vance Joy, Colliver also plays in Dr Colossus, Gums, The Pretty Littles, and is releasing an EP of his own songs under the name Money On Verema next week.