New Found Sound is a free festival featuring 26 local acts playing on the same night, across nine venues all within walking distance of each other.

Next Saturday, February 17, the inaugural New Found Sound festival will take over Port Adelaide and showcase Adelaide’s talented local musicians across the Port’s diverse venues.

The lineup includes some familiar names from CityMag’s Best New Music column, including Street Legal, Alana Jagt and Coldwave.

The fun starts at 6pm, with punters encouraged to follow the trail of venues all within walking distance from each other.

The Port venues opening their doors for the festival are Archie Badenoch, The Banksia Tree, Confession, Fergie Mac’s Lounge, Iparrityi Laneway, Milledge’s Distillery, Pirate Life Brewery, Port Adelaide Lighthouse and Port Admiral Hotel.

Confession night club is one of the newer kids on the block. It opened in 2023, inside an 1850s church.

Pirate Life Brewery’s head of hospitality, Katie van de Merwe says live music has been part of the DNA since the business was founded in 2014.

Although they have family-friendly live music every Sunday, the festival allowed them to think outside the slab.

“New Found Sound is something different for us because we’ve been wanting to host a gig in the brewery for the best part of three years now and working with Port Adelaide Enfield [council] really helped us bring that to life through this initiative,” Katie says.

“The actual gig is going to be located in the brewery with the tanks as a backdrop so that’s why we’re so excited about this, because it won’t be the usual sort of stages in the beer garden, it’ll be a little bit more moody and a bit more unique.”

Pirate Life at the Port. This picture: Jack Michael Cameron

The brewery will host artists Effie, Los Palms and Sons of Zoku. Katie says that when planning the lineup with council organisers, they chose artists with a sound that would suit the warehouse and its stainless-steel tanks.

New Found Sound is the latest initiative from the City of Port Adelaide Enfield’s Live and Local program and is presented by the council, the Live Music Office and APRA AMCOS.

Katie says there’s more and more happening in the Port since she moved to Adelaide in 2019 for her role at Pirate Life. She says she’s noticed the council is trying to create a culture to suit the growing Port Adelaide community and bring people together.

“It’s really exciting that there’s this option that’s coming through and I really think this is the beginning of the Port getting started, really getting started,” she says.

The Port Admiral Hotel will host Naomi Keyte at 8pm, followed by Tilly Tjala Thomas and Sturt Avenue. This picture: Angus Kiley

Folk artist and singer-songwriter Naomi Keyte will be playing at the Port Admiral Hotel.

Naomi says councils play an important role in helping fund these events so that new audiences can be exposed to live music.

“I actually don’t believe that everyone, or a majority of South Australians, value local live music in the same way that obviously the music scene might,” she says.

Naomi Keyte. This picture: Jonathan van der Knaap

“I think the beauty of curating music events like this, is that it exposes people to the magic of live music and that can have a beautiful effect.”

At the tail end of 2023, the live music industry struggled with venue closures, and a lack of punters at small-medium size venues leaving local artists with fewer options to gig.

“I definitely have felt financially the strain the cost-of-living crisis is having on live music as in less attendance at gigs, and it’s difficult to make it all work financially from an independent artist perspective,” Naomi says.

“We look to funding bodies and hold them responsible for the funding issues in our state, which to an extent they are, but it’s also about looking elsewhere within our communities.

“Who else might have the power, the finances, the capacity to engage artists and support artists to promote and place value on live music…councils are one of those groups that can absolutely step up and step in.

“The more that different organisations and businesses and government structures support music and place it in line of sight and place value on it, my hope is that the more people will feel connected to and proud of the local live music industry.”

New Found Sound is a free event throughout Port Adelaide from 6pm on Saturday, February 17.