Mitch Irwin and his band mates from The Pits were pretty excited to see some of their favourite music acts like The Presets and Ball Park Music on The Drop Festival line-up.
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So much so, a few of them were thinking about about heading along to Saturday's music festival in Empire Park.
It was lucky the group of Newcastle musicians held off on buying tickets and answered a call from The Drop Festival organisers asking them to join the bill.
"We're excited to be part of it," Irwin said. "Some of us were looking at the line-up when it first came out and were pretty excited to go ourselves to watch.
"We got the call about three weeks ago asking if we wanted to be part of it. We supported Papa Roach a few years ago, which was a great experience for us, but we've done nothing of this sort of calibre."
Irwin, a guitarist and vocalist, is one of seven members of The Pits, which has been making music since 2017.
He is joined on stage by Matthew Probert (trumpet), Boyd McCormack (trombone), Dain Watts (vocals), Josh Brown (bass, vocals), Tristan Lacey (drums) and Hayden Jefferries (saxophone).
While they have supported Papa Roach, a US metal band, and earned air time on national radio station triple j's Short Fast Loud program, The Pits are hard to 'pigeonhole' into a music genre - if it can be done at all.
"One of our big appeals, and one of our drawbacks, is we are hard to pigeonhole," Irwin said. "Trying to describe it to people, it sounds like crazy circus music.
"We can appeal to anyone into high energy, jazz, punk, cabaret music and brass horns. It's something you've never seen before. It's an eclectic mash and I like to think we make it work."
On how they were selected to fly the flag for Newcastle in The Drop Festival, Irwin said it partly to do with a battle of the bands type of competition they were part of in 2018.
The Pits were finalists in the University of Newcastle's Unisounds that year.
Finalists names were passed along to The Drop Festival and The Pits were picked.
The Drop Festival is currently travelling alongside the World Surf League Australian tour. Newcastle's own Surfest, to be staged at Merewether Beach from Monday to Sunday, is part of the WSL tour.
The Pits join a stacked festival line-up of Australian music acts including gentle indie rockers Boy & Bear, cult rapper Allday, grunge superstars DZ Deathrays, pop chanteuse Kita Alexander and glassy electro pioneer Graace.
The Pits hit the stage first at 1.10pm on Saturday, March 7.
Ellie-Marie Watts
A journalist with 10 years experience, Ellie-Marie connects readers to the stories that matter in their communities. A Port Stephens-based news, sport and event writer and photographer with a passion for human interest features.
A journalist with 10 years experience, Ellie-Marie connects readers to the stories that matter in their communities. A Port Stephens-based news, sport and event writer and photographer with a passion for human interest features.
