In a weakened state in the aftermath of Campus A Low Hum 2010, its mastermind, Blink Jorgensen, was laying low. CHRIS ARMSTRONG caught up with him: 

KEEPING IT HUMMING: Ian 'Blink' Jorgensen. Photo by Karen Lee

Ian ‘Blink’ Jorgensen is one of those rare individuals who manage to fuse their passion, job and hobbies into one all-encompassing lifestyle.

Blink is “living the dream”, he jokes, as we slowly climb Wellington’s Brooklyn hill in his beat-up van. He does a job he loves, and in doing so shares music with like-minded people. He cuts costs every chance he can. This is not to say that he is cheap, but he’s efficient.

Since 2004 he has conducted more than 30 nationwide music tours, thrown four music festivals, and released 37 records, all under his label, A Low Hum.

Blink worked part time as a photographer while at high school and had a couple of part-time jobs before trying Wellington Polytech for three months in 1997. It didn’t fit; he dropped out to take up photography full-time.

He recalls shooting a school ball at his old high school, Onslow College, where some guys recognised him from the music scene.  He got talking to these 16-year-olds about their band Ejector.  Guitarist and songwriter Nik Brinkman blew Blink away with his talent. So much so, Blink he put down his guitar.

“It was tough for me, but it was the most important day of my life,” he says. “I finally realised I’m not a musician. I’m not meant to be a musician; I needed to get this musician [Nik] out there. So that pretty much became my goal.”

In 2003, Blink started organising shows for Ejector, which snowballed into mini-tours. Nik is now half of Over the Atlantic, a hugely successful indie-pop duo that just spent three months recording an album in Los Angeles. The band returned to New Zealand in 2007 to play the first Camp A Low Hum festival at Brookfields Outdoor Education Centre in Wainuiomata.

“Camp” has been an annual event ever since.

Blink is the driving force behind Camps. He started the festival, as a magazine and tour circuit, and from the outset it has stood out from other festivals: The crowds are small, the list of performers isn’t released until the gig begins, and the sets are intimate – the performers are also campers, there to enjoy the gig between sets.

What is so special about Blink’s hands-on approach and lack of concern over profit? His viewpoint – if he makes money , but first let’s make sure everybody has a good time.
 

2009 Camp ALH poster, courtesy of Amy.

Before the advent of digital photography, Blink was one of the few photographers shooting bands in New Zealand. Taking photos of Shihad for Rip It Up, he would shoot three or four rolls of “awesome” black and white shots. The photos didn’t get published: Blink was told the magazine paid for colour paper, so would only print colour photographs.

 “If I was commissioned to shoot a gig, I’d shoot from start to finish,” he adds. “I remember Betchadupa were playing a festival I was shooting. A photographer turned up half way through their set, he didn’t care at all. He turned to me ‘isn’t one of those guys Tim Finn’s son? Which one?’ I said yeah and pointed to the bassist Joe [Not Liam Finn] and laughed as I watched this guy shoot roll after roll of the wrong person.

“They have no idea, and they just don’t care!” 

He laughs, gesticulating wildly as he talks.

A Low Hum began as a Xeroxed zine, initially as a way for Blink to publish his photos and promote bands he rated highly. Bands that otherwise would get no press, were too small to get air time or be covered by music magazines.

By the end of 2003, he had taken the simple paper product a step beyond, organising a tour for Ejector and Degrees K. Each tour would be accompanied by an A5 magazine, with band bios and often a compilation CD, or a feature album/EP of songs from local and international acts. 

The Low Hum Tours quickly became well known for their pace and scope. They played in towns other bands ignored. Blink would be on tour three weeks in the month, as well as organising the forthcoming tours for the next two months.  Looking back, he can’t work out how kept this up often for nine or ten months of the year.

“If you told me how much money and sleep I would lose, how much heartache and stress they would cause. Yeah, I’d still do it, but I’m not sure how I was able to.” 

The tours took in small towns across New Zealand including all-ages gigs, something relatively unheard of at the time. All-ages gigs meant a bunch of young people getting exposed to live music in a way they had never been before. Touring bands would often play two shows a night, an all ages starting at 8pm then an R18 licensed show from 10pm.

Blink says: “New Zealand is more than just Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. The magazine was getting distributed in New Plymouth, but how would those kids see a Wellington band. . . The tours changed that.”

This would come to represent everything the Low Hum tours were about. 

The no-alcohol, all-ages shows were important. Blink explains: “I used to tell people I was a teetotaller, try to bring that word back in. But people didn’t know what it meant. I tried the whole, ‘my body is a temple’. Didn’t work. Now I sometimes tell people I’m ‘straight edge’ – it’s easier.”

Blink doesn’t drink, or smoke, or take drugs.  They cost money that could be better spent doing what he loves, touring with bands, sharing music.

“Bands complain that it’s too hard to tour, too expensive. Then you see each of them spending 20 or 30 bucks on beer at the bar… If you look at that over a month or two, that’s a ticket to Melbourne. Over a year, it’s a ticket to the US.”

So when Blink goes out on weekends, it’s not to get drunk. “I don’t have time to get drunk. When I’m in town, I’m all over town. Running from this gig to that, I’ll try to see, like, nine bands in a night.”

Blink sighs and leans back. “People put up barriers all the time just by putting caveats like money into the picture,” he says.  

His bare feet poke out from beneath my coffee table as he speaks.

“When I was a kid it was my dream to travel the world touring with bands and taking photos of them. I never wanted to be rich at the same time, never occurred to me.”

Which is just as well, because now he leads a relatively simple life. You don’t need to spend a lot of money to do what he does. He has lived for free the past couple of years, how? The oldest trick in the book, he moved back home, or he lived with family and friends. He eats a lot of baked beans.

Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll? More like sleeping on floors and sausage rolls.

Touring with Blink takes a certain dedication.  Using networks of friends and sharing contacts, he reckons, any New Zealand band can tour the world for $5000. It may not be pretty but it works.

Last year he spent five months touring America with Disasteradio. Just because you are touring with a band doesn’t mean that it has to be all cocaine and strippers. But his tours are always on the cheap.

Blink has an interesting approach to money. It’s not so much that he doesn’t like it or doesn’t value it. He just realises it’s for spending. In 2008 Blink took Over the Atlantic on a six-month world tour that took in the USA, England, Scotland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Australia and, obviously, New Zealand.

The tour was done with Blink’s usual finesse and economy. They slept in tents and on people’s floors. Blink laughs as he tells of driving across the UK for two weeks with only one pound to spend on food a day.

When Blink starts working on a new project, he does so not expecting to make money. It’s all part of a larger plan, known only to him.“When I started the zine, I decided I’d do it ’til it cost me $1000, and then when I started doing Low Hum tours, I decided I’d do them until I’d lost $5,000. . . You’ve got to be prepared to lose when you start something new.”

Caleb Carati, scientist and long-time Camp enthusiast, says of the festivals: “Whilst at camp I’ve found there to be a pervasive vibe of everyone being there for the same purpose. .  .We’re all there to get down! Have a party! Have a rocking good time!“

Blink just kinda rocks around the festival, micromanaging the shit out of everything to ensure that everyone is having a good time and things are running smoothly. But in doing so he always is just cruising through the crowd, like everyone else.” For the interview, I arrange to meet Blink at a ritzy bar on Cuba St; we meet outside but merely looking in it dawns on us that neither of us can afford it. I ask him if he knows a geeky unpopular place that will be quiet enough for us to talk undisturbed, then realise that a pop-culture guru may not be the right person to ask this question.

He laughs.  “Man, the only places I know are geeky and unpopular!”He’s excited, though: he’s just moved into a flat for the first time in five years. He’s also started looking for a day job. “Something quiet and low key, maybe working out the back of a print shop or something.”

Initially he  padded out his lifestyle with the occasional photography gig. He’s decided to focus on Camp A Low Hum festivals in the future, which in and of itself take over his life. He works 14-hour days in the months leading up to the festivals. 

Art for Camp's sake.

The reason Blink does all this is because he wants to contribute something to “the scene”. Does he mean the indie scene, the hipster scene, or the punk scene?

Blink describes “the scene” as music the way it should be seen, live, to audiences who are into music, and that’s what they go out for, rather than choosing specific bars or seeking particular cliques.

“The dudes that only go to gigs at Bodega or Mighty, I mean, that’s cool,” says Blink. “But you’re not into the scene then, you’re into a bar. Kids that pick up the groove guide every Thursday and go through it seeing which band is playing where, those are the cool kids. Those kids are into the scene.”

Amy Walsh is one of those kids.  She describes the scene as a cult, but without negative connotations. “No one’s too cool to be involved,” says Walsh. “We’re all just there to get down. Sure there are poseurs… but that’s just people. A Low Hum breaks down barriers and brings people together.”

And that’s why Blink does what he does.

When A Low Hum was starting out, Blink got a real kick when he went to people’s flats and saw that they’d cut photos out of the zine and put them on their walls.

“And Camp, after the months of stress and lack of sleep, by about the end of the second day [when] there is a band on each of the stages, when I see people smiling and coming together and making friends: Camp is what these people look forward to. That makes it.”