Linda and I took a bucket list trip to Australia and New Zealand last month. After my brain tumor adventure last summer, our trip moved to the top of the priority list!
Fires, yes. Kangaroos and koalas. Wonderful G’Day mates. But this is a music blog, so I will spare the travelogue to report on the Tamworth Music Festival.
We reserved a couple of days near the end of our stay for the festival, which is the largest in Australia. Tamworth is a smallish town in New South Wales a few hundred miles north of Sydney. Nothing really remarkable about this place except their love for music. The people of Tamworth, many of them musicians themselves, host several big shows every year, and the January festival is the biggest of them.
In addition to a huge stage for the big shows, there are event and music venues all over town. And the music goes on, rain or shine, for 11 days! The central part of town is closed to traffic, and in addition to the big show stage and the smaller stage on the main street, every bar, shopping center, museum, and meeting hall has music going on. Plus six blocks of two streets downtown have buskers playing all day out front.
We found the musicianship and songwriting to be pretty darned good, if a bit corny sometimes. We bought tickets to the John Williamson show. Williamson, an Australian country music icon, is about ready to retire, as reflected by the audience of mostly seniors. Australians retain a good bit of the English affection for schmaltzy, sentimental “no place like home” music, and Williamson delivers. Like most American music lovers, I need a little soul in my soup, and had to go to the street to get it.
Most of the buskers were solos, duos, and families. Some were obviously talented working musicians, like guitarist/vocalist Dom Italiano. He worked the same spot on the sidewalk for most of the two days we were there, knocking out tasty American covers in drop-dead harmony with two talented vocalist mates. Dom was the only instrumentalist in the group, and filled the hole superbly with his guitar and stomp box. Dom’s group stood out among the dozens of acts up and down the street, and they were clearly having fun entertaining the moving-target audience and enjoying each others’ chops.
We really enjoyed the Redneck Gentlemen, a hard-rocking country band – they sounded amazing on the big stage.
A highlight for me was Ziggy McNeill, a picker from Sydney – not surprising, since he is heavily influenced by my favorite guitarist, Tommy Emmanuel. While he has the finger-picking Emmanuel/Chet Atkins style down cold, Ziggy throws in plenty of his own soulful chops too. He worked hard on the hot street, vying not only for the tips of appreciative onlookers, but also perhaps the attention of music promoters who frequent the festival. Ziggy puts everything he has into his work, and while he claims to be primarily a busker, he has traveled the world and received awards for his unique music.
So glad I got a chance to experience the wonderful music of the land down under. It was a bucket within a bucket. Check out my Tamworth t-shirt and my new Aussie hat at a CBD show.
Tom – Caution! Blind Driver