The Next Big Thing is a pop up venue for musicians that write their own original material. It’s a place to showcase up and coming musicians and artists who want to be creative with their own styles and genres.

Original material is a hard sell. Audiences don’t tend to want to come and see you unless you have a reputation behind you and they know your music. Gone are the days of excitement about seeing what could potentially be “The Next Big Thing”.

We are Jeff & the Angry Stick, not just an originals band, but a band that spans generations, musical tastes and all sorts of other things. 

Having formed our band in 2023 (this line up), we wanted to be able to play more gigs in our local area, and so The Next Big Thing came about.

2023 was an experimental year, we learned lots of lessons. Now we are back in a new smaller but better venue, with our own gear and a curation of amazing local talent for you to listen to.

We ran some very loose concept dates last year at Solway Showgrounds which proved to us that bands want to play in Wairarapa, the venue got us started whilst we found a more permanent location and allowed us to refine the product to what it is now.