By NOEL MURPHY
Few teenagers can lay claim to performing live at the world’s biggest musical festival – let alone sharing the bill with Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Outkast or Brad Paisley.
But that’s exactly what a talented bunch of 16 and 17-year-old Geelong girls has done at Milwaukee’s famous Summerfest, which draws a cool one million patons each year.
The Sweethearts also bumped, blasted and crooned their way through Memphis, Nashville and Chicago on a nine-day soul tour including the renowned Southern Soul Stax showcase.
The Matthews Flinders Girls Secondary College band’s latest overseas jaunt adds to a corpus of international tours that have wowed jazz audiences in Switzerland and Italy for years.
The band, which Ross Lipson founded 25 years ago, is now overseen by Steve McEwan, Evan Jones and Sandy Thompson with a host of supporters.
The 25-piece band generally performs on stage with a complement of 16 or 17.
The band starred in the ABC3 series Heart and Soul, produced by Geelong’s Kristy Fuller.
