Next month, Australian indie rockers Vacations are bringing their very own festival MATES to the Bellwether in Los Angeles. Devised and curated by the band’s frontman Campbell Burns, MATES features acts from Australia and America (and one from the UK), intended as a showcase and a conversation between acts Burns has long admired.

Leading up to Vacations’ headlining set, the fest will feature performances from Puma Blue, Claud, Yot Club, Ian Sweet, Kacy Hill, Jaguar Jonze, and Waax. Stereogum will be on-site as media partners, covering the scene at MATES as it makes the leap from hometown Australia event to an international blowout. Ahead of that, we caught up with Burns about how he first came up with MATES, how this year’s event took shape, and his grand designs for what MATES could become in the future.

The original MATES festival was in your hometown, Newcastle, in 2022.

CAMPBELL BURNS: We hadn’t played Newcastle, at that point, for three for four years — mainly due to the pandemic. It was a homecoming for us. We had just finished our first US tour. We didn’t want to just do another show in Newcastle. I wanted to lean back into events.

When I was 18 or so, me and some of my best friends formed this music/arts collective called No-Fi, and we’d put shows on all the time for bands on our roster, bands in our community. Fostering community was always the biggest aspect of it for us. We always thought, “Why is everyone trying to do this themselves?” We should be joining together. It sounds very holding-hands-kumbaya, but I think there’s a lot of good intent behind it. We had a lot of DIY shows at any venue that would take us — warehouse parties, raves. We had art exhibitions as well. That whole collective naturally died down over time. Life takes over, people start doing other things.

Vacation reached a point where we were doing all these shows and all this touring, but we hadn’t done an event like that in such a long time. I missed booking shows. It was a test. I wanted to invite everybody that I loved from my hometown out for one big night. We had two stages, all these bands. We had a bunch of other collectives. Drag queens, DJs. Just trying to make something special. We wanted to do it again last year but there were complications with touring and timelines.

This time around, I thought it would be fun to take it to LA since I’m currently based here. Even though we are an Australian band, I now feel like we’re almost more of a US band with how much we tour here — there’s more of a market here for us. It gave me the idea: There are so many Australian artists I want to bring over to the US, and it’s very difficult for us to get into the US due to the cost of flights, visas, trying to break the market. There are so many good Australian bands people don’t know about and could be absolutely massive, but they need that level of exposure. So it was this idea of bringing Australian artists over for a US market but also inviting some of my favorite US acts.

At what point you did you think about scaling this up, continuing to explore this — was it moving to LA or realizing you had this life around the world and could reproduce this elsewhere?

BURNS: Kind of both. With that first iteration, we hit the ceiling immediately. We played essentially the only venue — which now doesn’t exist — in Newcastle. We sold it out. We can’t really go much further from here. Again, there’s not just the market there unfortunately. If I wanted to lean into that idea of international community, it’d be way more difficult to bring people to Australia. Because I’m here, it makes sense. Luckily, we found a venue that’s able to host something like this and it doesn’t need to be outside yet.

I’m thinking ahead long term. I don’t want it to always be a festival that’s in Los Angeles. There’s enough festivals that are always in the same place every time. I love this idea of a festival that one time is in Los Angeles, and then maybe next year it’s in New York, then it goes to London, then goes back to, say, Sydney, and it starts to shine a spotlight on different communities globally. There are a lot of great acts all over that I love. I love the idea of collaborating and getting people I think would work together in a room and seeing what happens.

That already touches on one of your core ideas behind this year’s, this notion of “creating community across continents.” If you move around you could have different conversations each year, between Australia and Los Angeles, between Australia and New York.

BURNS: Australians move around a lot. Most of my friends who are very well-established are not in Australia anymore. Funnily enough, a lot of them are now based in Los Angeles. But I also know Australians in London, New York, more capital cities. Everyone’s spread out all over.

Aside from Vacations, the Australian artists on this lineup are Waax and Jaguar Jonze. How did you select the Australian acts you wanted to showcase this year?

BURNS: I grew up listening to Waax and going to their shows at the Cambridge in Newcastle. They were very much at the Australian forefront. Maz [DeVita] is one of the best front women in the industry and the band should be so much bigger than they are. Unfortunately, again, the Australian music industry is quite small, it’s a bit clique-y, and there’s a bit of a monopoly with some people. I just really like their music. I actually played in Waax in December of last year. She announced a hiatus and there were these comeback shows and she asked if anyone wanted to play guitar. I did two shows and it was so fun.

If Vacations is doing a festival, I don’t want it to be bunch of bedroom pop indie acts. We listen to a whole bunch of music, so having Waax brings something a bit more aggressive, a bit more punk, and exposes people to a different thing.

Jaguar is the hardest working musician in Australia. I have a lot of respect and admiration for her. I’ve seen her come up and, again, wanted to give her some representation on an international stage.

Even though this is bigger than the last, it’s still an intimate day-long festival. What the line is between the like-minded bands and something that makes it more eclectic?

BURNS: It’s just bands I like, and in a way that paces the day out so people don’t get fatigued if you hear the similar sounds all day long. Reaching out a little bit outside of our genre.

Otherwise there’s several American acts. What’s your relationship with them? Had you toured with them or known them before, or just admired from afar?

BURNS: A mix of both. This run of the festival is also a celebration of Nettwerk, our record label’s 40th anniversary. Some of the artists on here are on Nettwerk, but they’re also artists I’ve enjoyed long before I was on the label. Like Kacy Hill for instance, I’ve been a fan of her work for quite some time. There are also artists like Ian Sweet. She’s just fantastic. I saw her play at Zebulon for her album release for Sucker. It was incredible. All these musicians are so fucking good. It’s trying to find a way to use our platform to bring more of an audience in but also to build a community between artists and focus on local scenes, what’s happening in LA. Because I just moved here, it’s also about what do people do here, what’s going on here — incorporating that as well.

Vacations had a new album earlier this year. Now you’re based in LA. Earlier I was thinking more about “an Australian artist moves to America and is bringing some of the Australian scene with them.” But how do you feel the conversation is going for you personally so far, in terms of how the LA scene might be influencing you?

BURNS: There’s simply more happening and thus I’m consuming more culture. There are bands of such a caliber playing every day in Los Angeles. I’m constantly out seeing bands, exposing myself to music. That’s really invigorating. I’m always being influenced by something or someone. The way in which people carry themselves. Yes, there is that stereotype that people are fake and transactional, and I have encountered that. But, at the same time, I’ve encountered some of the most genuine, kind-hearted people I’ve ever met. They’re all so hard-working. Everyone’s here for a reason. When you find your pocket, there’s a lot of good energy to be surrounded by.

You already mentioned some schemes for the future. Do you envision scaling this up even larger and larger as time goes on?

BURNS: Oh, yeah, that’s the whole point. I’m not trying to be the next Coachella or Lollapalooza — I mean, that would be kind of sick, but the idea of putting on an event of that scale freaks me out a bit. I do imagine it scaling up in vastness. I want it to be a bigger event, for sure. I don’t know what that looks like, but I have a loose five-year plan in my head that wants to establish the brand and travel it around the world and have a point of difference. There are enough established festivals. Maybe it’s a gimmick that it travels, but I think that’s also interesting. People will follow this and get excited and hopefully you get those diehard fans who are just going to travel to it no matter what. To me, that creates community, which remains the most important thing.

Which ties back to those DIY origins you talked about.

BURNS: Absolutely, absolutely. I want to get it to a point where there’s a main stage and you have the big acts, but I love the idea of a side stage that’s used for really new bands and we take submissions and give people that chance, that opportunity. Try playing a festival and see what happens.

MATES will take place 11/16 at the Bellwether in Los Angeles. Tickets to the festival are available here.