Concert Review: CMC ROCKS FESTIVAL (Day 3), Ipswich, QLD, Australia

Before you begin, make sure to check out my Day 2 review here! 

Like all music festivals, the weekend had flown by and somehow I had already reached the final day of CMC Rocks. Surprisingly, it started with beatboxing. I know, unusual for a country music concert, but that’s what you get when you invite Home Free to the party – country music’s answer to Pentatonix. The acapella group had pulled quite the crowd as they performed a bunch of cover songs including Cam’s Mayday, Blake Shelton’s Hillbilly Bone (complete with interesting dance moves), and a mashup of Dierks Bentley’s Woman, Amen and Keith Urban’s Female. They were very different from anything I had seen before, and super fun to watch.

I stuck around in the campers bar as the all-star Songwriters Show was coming up shortly after (you can read about that here), and then headed back to the main area. Another Aussie legend was on the stage at that point – Kasey Chambers, whose vibe I really liked (take a listen to Am I Not Pretty Enough?) but unfortunately didn’t get to enjoy much because I had since started lining up for the Florida Georgia Line signing event later that evening. Yes, it may have been only 3:30pm, and yes, the signing may have been at 7:30pm, but a queue had already started forming and since they were only due to sign for 30 minutes, I knew I needed to be one of the ones at the front.

Quite frankly, the signing was awfully organised. At 3:30, I had gone in to ask whether a queue had been started yet and was told not officially, but I could join the ‘unofficial’ queue that some fans had started. A small group of us stood there as the rain started to pour, but determined not to lose our space. A few hours later, we were moved by the organisers to the back of another queue or people who had not been standing in the rain for hours, thereby pushed back about twenty places even though we had been the ones there first. When the queue moved position again, a number of people pushed in, and this wasn’t even accounting for the vast numbers of people saving spaces for others who couldn’t be bothered to wait. So, from my position about fourth in the queue at the beginning, I’d say I was moved back to about 40^th or 50^th by the time the signing started – not particularly fair by my books.

I was also very disappointed by the signing itself. We were literally pushed past the desk BK & Tyler were standing behind by security, and the two didn’t even look up because they were so busy scribbling signatures on CD covers. I had expected to at least be able to share a few sentences with them as I had with Cam and Thomas Rhett, so to end up with the same result as I would have got had I just ordered a signed CD (minus the four hours wasted!) was terribly disheartening. I felt that I had not been able to enjoy the afternoon’s music due to stressing that I the signing would be over by the time I got to the front. Afterwards, I went to the toilet and by the time I came back, the signing was over. They had signed for less than 15 minutes rather than the 30 advertised. I’m sure this was not FGL’s fault, but no doubt many fans felt as cheated as I did, and it did put a damper on what was otherwise a great weekend.

Alas, I returned to the Main stage as Michael Ray finished his set and Locash took over. I had high expectations for the brothers, and they didn’t disappoint. They are proper country boys, from their accents to their songs like Don’t Get Better Than That, I Know Somebody and One Big Country Song from their upcoming album. I loved how they took songs that could easily have been a ballad and turned them into pop-rock party anthems – take Ring On Every Finger which deals with the same subject matter as Dan + Shay’s Speechless but in a very different manner (I love the lyrics ‘Let’s spend this life together / Dropping F-bombs like ‘forever’’), or God Thing which is basically a religious song disguised as a pump-up track.

They were the ideal opener for the headliners and definitely got the party going with songs like It Feels Like A Party as well as songs they had written for other artists including Keith Urban’s Fly With Me and Tim McGraw’s Truck Yeah which I almost thought fit them better than it did Tim. Locash finished their set with the apt I Love This Life, a sentiment to which many of us at CMC Rocks could definitely relate to.

We then began the Main event with BK and Tyler of Florida Georgia Line starting their set with new songs Colorado and Speed Of Love. With their album having only been released a month ago, it was no surprise that the crowd were not too familiar with these songs, so we were told they would play a song we all knew next – Cruise, which definitely had the whole crowd singing as undoubtedly the song that got us all listening to FGL in the first place.

We continued with the countrified Y’all Boys and Shine, during which I definitely felt my Southern drawl coming out (can’t be helped!) We held up our phone lights during Shine – a song completely different to the ballads normally called upon for arena-lighting-songs. Things got groovy during Smooth and my personal favourite Confession, during which the two worked all sides of the stage, making sure to move around so the vast crowd stretching back across the site could all see. Tyler mentioned how cool it was to be playing for 120,000 people, although I think he may have added an extra 0 to the festival’s capacity, but still, that’s a heck of a lot of people. We had some throwbacks with Dirt, Anything Goes and May We All, the heartwrenching music video playing in the background as they sang.

I liked how BK was called upon to sing guest parts on songs such as Tim McGraw’s on May We All, as any FGL fan will know that it is almost always Tyler’s voice that you hear on their records. What followed was a variety of songs ranging from club banger Swerve to the baby-making Talk You Out Of It (one of the better tracks on their latest album) before we slowed things down for H.O.L.Y. – Tyler sitting down to play the piano for the ballad, the likes of which are unusual from the rest of FGL’s party songs.

Things picked back up again with Simple and Up Down for which Morgan Wallen, who had played earlier in the day (an act I was sad to have missed having been in my never-ending queue at that point), joined the duo on stage. They bid the crowd farewell before returning for an encore of their hit with Bebe Rexha, Meant To Be, and This Is How We Roll, complete with fireworks shooting out of the top of the stage. It was a shorter set than we had been told, ending at 10:15 rather than 10:40 (short appearances seem to have become a thing that day) but they had played the songs we wanted to hear and put on a good show.

All in all, CMC Rocks was a great weekend. The fact that they had managed to bring so many big names – Cam, Frankie Ballard, Luke Combs, Thomas Rhett, FGL – together, highlighted those who will hopefully get more success as a result – Jillian Jacqueline, Danielle Bradbery, Noah Schnacky – and shared some of Australian’s best and brightest – Troy Cassar-Daley, Kasey Chambers – was truly admirable. I walk away having seen some of my favourite country music acts and discovered new ones – what more could you want? I’ll definitely be back next year!

I hope you enjoyed today's review! Make sure to leave me a message in the comments and follow me on Twitter @CiarasCountry for even more reviews and interviews coming soon - thanks for reading!