Oh my lord Woodford! We are so excited to be apart of Woodford Folk Festival’s Festival of Small Halls Australia
The Dorrigo Folk & Bluegrass Festival will be the beginning of the 2019 spring Small Halls tour ending at Queenscliff Music Festival!
This means that The Jellyman’s Daughter (SCOT) and Ash Bell & Sara Tindley (AUS) will be joining us at our 18th Festival!
Festival of Small Halls (Woodford Folk Festival) has announced that a new partner festival has joined their family to co-present The Jellyman’s Daughter (SCO) together with Ash Bell and Sara Tindley (AUS) on the upcoming Spring Tour 2019: Dorrigo to Queenscliff.
Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival joins Queenscliff Music Festival to partner on the Spring Tour 2019, which will kick off in the rolling hills of Dorrigo, NSW, cross the sunburnt outback of western Queensland and conclude on the sunny Victorian peninsula of Queenscliff.
This takes the total number of Australian festivals in the Small Halls family (so far) to eight – Queenscliff Music Festival, Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival, Mullum Music Festival, Woodford Folk Festival, Cygnet Folk Festival, Illawarra Folk Festival, Port Fairy Folk Festival and National Folk Festival. Together, they support regional touring across five states and a territory over four tours a year.
The route will be announced in August, and sees The Small Halls Tour once again take in three states over four weeks in October and November. It’ll include some of Queensland’s most alluring reasons to take a road trip this spring and an invitation to those living far from the enchanting red dirt of the mighty west to pack up the car and come away.
Producer Eleanor Rigden says programming the tour hand-in-hand with some of Australia’s biggest music festivals means regional communities can leverage access to the same standard of arts and culture as their metropolitan counterparts.
“These towns are some of the friendliest, most welcoming places I have ever been to,” said Ms Rigden.
“We’re inviting people to come away with us, plan a road trip and really experience the double whammy of this brilliant music alongside the country hospitality and hosts that just have to be seen to be believed.”
Hailing from Edinburgh, The Jellyman’s Daughter are one of Scotland’s most innovative new exports and are looking forward to the unique exposure of the tour.
Described as a blend of bluegrass, post-rock, folk and soul music, The Jellyman’s Daughter promise “harmonies that squeeze the heart” and cello playing that can be “as percussive as a drum, as grounded as a bass or as sweet as a fiddle” (The Sunday Herald).
Ash Bell and Sara Tindley will ring familiar to many across the outback – Ash Bell comes from contemporary Australiana outfit and festival favourites The Starboard Cannons and is already looking forward to his second run with Festival of Small Halls. He’s formed a new partnership with Sara Tindley, who is fresh to the band from her fourth solo album, produced by Nick Didia (Bruce Springsteen, Powderfinger, Pearl Jam). Together they’ve created an iconic Australia roots sound which reaches down into the soul of the listener.
Festival of Small Halls Autumn Tour starts 25 October 2019 at Dorrigo Folk and Bluegrass Festival, travelling to venues across western Queensland from 30 October – 17 November and concluding at Queenscliff Music Festival on 21-24 November