Bilge Festival

Bilge Festival were a Wellington rock band active in  the early to mid nineties. Members comprised Peter Daube and Jim Lederman both on vocals and guitar, Tim Robinson on drums, and Steven Bain on keyboard bass. Their EP cassette Baby Monk Girl was released in 1992 and was recorded and mixed at Wellington’s Writhe Studios with Brent McLaughlin and Nick Roughan.

Their self - produced and directed video for the song Wilderbeast a go go and shot on Super 8 film won the Best Video at the Flying Fish NZ Music Video Awards the same year.

After Steven Bain departed Aaron Jonkers joined the band on bass guitar.

Bilge Festival were an integral part of the mid-nineties Wellington music scene centred around the original Bar Bodega in upper Willis St. Although playing other and often larger venues both locally and beyond, they were seemingly most at home in the sweaty confines of Bodega and played a number of memorable gigs there.

Bilge Festival released their debut CD album Cape Goat  [1994]  - and also the follow up album The Shrimp Boats [1996] on Auckland’s Wildside Records with distribution through Festival Records. Both albums were again mixed by Nick Roughan.  A CD single Pave it Over with an accompanying video preceded The Shrimp Boats release

Reviewers found easy descriptions of their sound sometimes difficult to pin down, as the band didn’t seemingly adhere to the usual musical tropes of the time.   “ Lords knows what the Bilge Festival are – if the right adjective could be found it would probably be worth a fortune – highly impressive and on a tangent all of their own”  - was one summation.   Needless to say - in as far as the general musical terrain was concerned, it could be said that they came from ‘over the fence’.  An idiosyncratic approach to both vocals and lyrical themes, but a strong melodic and rhythmic sense combined to create a unique and distinctive sound.