As the local music industry rebuilds, Ben Whaley wants to help create a community of more connected, professional bands and musicians in the city through his new PR and events company Small Poppy Collective.

There’s a mindset that can develop within a musical community in a city like Adelaide, when one band or musician starts to see a level of success beyond the rest of the pack.

It’s a well-understood phenomenon: tall poppy syndrome, and it’s generally understood to affect Australians particularly strongly.

Ben Whaley, drummer of Adelaide band Colourblind and founder of new music PR firm Small Poppy Collective, knows the feeling well.

“That is something that I noticed and worked through myself as well, in my early days being a musician,” he says.

“And that is something I would really like to work towards removing, and really encouraging everybody to be as collaborative as possible.

“I think people can sometimes forget that just because one band is doing one thing doesn’t mean that there aren’t other opportunities out there for them as well.”

Ben has been active in Adelaide’s music scene as a musician for seven or so years, and had been sitting on a marketing degree for a little while before the quiet of the pandemic instigated a personal “crisis”.

“The pandemic was raging, there wasn’t a lot of music going on. I was working at Suncorp, which I still work for three days a week now, but I had gotten to a point where I wasn’t really feeling like the work was aligning with what I wanted to do,” Ben says.

Given the experience he’d had as a musician and his passion for the music industry, Ben saw that he had a lot of professional insight he could combine with his marketing nous to help bands reach an audience.

Colourblind (Ben’s other gig)

Ben interned with Part Time Records and did some work with Rebel Yell and WOMAD to get a feel for marketing and PR in music, and eventually won a Robert Stigwood Fellowship to kickstart Small Poppy (along with friend Christina Lauren, who later had to pull out of the business).

The range of services Small Poppy offers is diverse, from developing PR campaigns for music releases, to setting up a website for hosting said music, or simply sitting down for an hour to offer advice on a band’s own marketing methods.

“It can be [a tough sell]. It’s not for everybody,” Ben says.

“There are definitely artists that just want to focus on the art, and that’s totally understandable, and I think that’s the beauty of music is that there’s a lot of variety in what people are looking for. I’m pretty open to meeting what they’re looking for.

“I think through playing shows and meeting people, and watching the way that people run their small businesses, so to say, was the catalyst for me to realise that these are fantastic songs, but they’re putting them out with two days’ notice, and there’s not a lot of process behind it.

“So really focussing on helping local artists professionalise what they’re doing and making it reach as many ears as possible.”

Ben has termed his new business a ‘Collective’ intentionally. He hopes for Small Poppy to be a platform for events as well, through which the community can forge stronger ties.

Small Poppy has been operating for about a month now, but Ben will officially launch the venture next week with a gig at Lion Arts Factory. The bill features Paradise Club, Lola, Choosing Sides, Nuclear Family, Sour Sob and Oliver Miller.

“Shows is what I know and what I’ve been doing for a long time, and because I’ll be focussing a lot on collaboration and giving opportunities to artists in the Adelaide scene, I thought that would be a fantastic way to [launch the business],” Ben says.

“As much as I would love as many industry professionals to be coming, I think these sort of events are targeted towards… the people that listen to music, the punters that really see the value in local shows and want to get behind that.”

Before the pandemic hit, Adelaide was “running really strong,” Ben says. A little bit of pace has been lost in the couple of years since, but as the city’s music scene recovers there is a chance to create an even tighter and more collaborative scene.

“Definitely some momentum’s been lost. But I do think we’re bouncing back,” he says.

“Businesses like Swirl Records, PAK, Rebel Yell, Part Time Records as well, they all have been doing some wonderful work for the industry throughout this whole period.

“I would love to not hear of wonderful musicians and industry people moving overseas and interstate.

“Being a musician in Adelaide is generally really awesome. There are a lot of very, very supportive people… For me, really focussing on building our community and helping it grow even bigger than it is means [offering opportunities to] talent that might normally have moved to pursue careers elsewhere that would be able to do so here.”

Small Poppy Collective’s launch event is happening at Lion Arts Factory on Saturday, 27 August. Purchase a ticket here.