Bite size highlights from 2025: Debriefing Grounded Festival

Welcome back to our curtain-raiser series of bite size highlights drawn from the 2025 wrap up episode.

Here are the voices, places and tunes you're hearing, from ep 247:

0m - Introducing the new year of episodes, from Antigua, Guatemala

0.18 - Matthew Evans, leading into the spectacular 'My Mother, The Mountain', by Claire Anne Taylor

2.31 - Sadie Chrestman.

Title image: Matthew and Sadie (supplied)

To access all episodes, including the full 2025 highlights package in ep 289, head to the website (where there’ll often be photos with each episode), or wherever you get your podcasts. 

With thanks to our wonderful guests and the musicians who generously granted permission for their music to be heard here.

And thanks for listening and supporting the podcast!

Chapter markers

Chapters

• 0:08 Meet Matthew And Sadie
• 0:17 A Song Sparks A Room
• 0:42 Poetic Portrait Of Grief
• 2:31 Rethinking How We Move Forward

Transcript

AJ: 0:08

G'day from Antigua Guatemala, where I managed to connect online just prior to the new year with Matthew Evans and partner Sadie Crestman.

Matthew Evans: 0:17

And I walked in and there's Claire building out this song, and I reckon I my smile stretched, you know, around the back of my head. Um because I you know I was just like, oh my god, this we got through it and we've got this incredible music and everyone's having conversations. I just stood there and watched like 13 different conversations happening while she was singing, you know, as and and yeah, it was just beautiful, beautiful.

Claire Anne Taylor: 0:42

When I found her, she was lying in a field forgetting knots beneath the sky of apple trees. I watched her chest rise and fall with every heavy breath of grief. She told me her mother loved her laughter, she only had time for honesty. I said you know there's a lot of her in you, and there always will be that the wind carry a voice to you while she stinks, what she stinks when I die I'll live on in your smile for you after I'll be right there in your laughter.

Sadie Chrestman: 2:31

And that was very exciting, that mosaic of people coming together and going, Oh wow, okay, we've got to figure this all out going forward. We have to come up with you know new ways of doing things. And this is you know, this is not new, this is what you talk about on your podcast all of the time. But to be in one space with all of those people trying to work that out and understanding that we need to work it out for future generations.