Tamworth 2008

The 2008 Tamworth country music festival will be remembered as one of the most pleasant on record, thanks to the mild weather that persisted throughout the week. Rather than endure the heat wave conditions that normally afflict Tamworth during the last week of January, visitors and festivalgoers were treated to mild and occasionally wet weather that reduced the ordeal of negotiating your way through numerous venues and added considerably to the pleasure of what was a typically enjoyable festival. However, crowd numbers were again below par, apparently lower even than those of 2007, with anecdotal evidence of significant reductions in takings at a number of premier venues being presented.

2008 was also the year that saw an ever so slight changing of the guard at the premier awards event, the Golden Guitars, with some new names appearing in the honour roll, albeit while major hitter Lee Kernaghan still managed to take home three of the awards, although they were all in minor categories. Lee did, however, manage to also win the Australian of the Year title.

The festival was also characterised by a seemingly massive increase in the number of alcohol promotions, with scantily and tightly clad ladies touring hotels and clubs offering free drinks and trinkets (and consistently aiming their product at fat and ugly middle aged males) as well as low standards of journalism being exhibited by the local paper, the Northern Daily Leader, which seemed to plumb new depths in poor (or was it just weird?) writing techniques. The main problem was the bizarre manner in which they consistently referred to the festival: “the Tamworth Country Music Festival sponsored by Telstra”. Quite apart from the clumsy sentence construction, what’s with the free sponsor plugs in a news item? Or does advertising constitute the Northern Daily Leader’s entire content? As if that wasn’t enough, the last edition of the paper published during the festival made another claim in favour of Tamworth becoming a ‘music festival’ (as opposed to a country music festival); a tangible sign that editorial direction and vision is sadly and surely lacking within its journalistic walls.

Apart from all that, the festival, or at least those parts that I witnessed, was of an excellent if somewhat inconsistent standard and it was again a pleasure to hear some great music from some of our best known, if sometimes unrecognised, acts. As is now the custom, the major names limited themselves to few if any performances, and the bulk of the entertainment was provided by the keen and enthusiastic up and comers as well as the large contingent of independent artists who are responsible for most of the recorded output within Australia, and also for many of the live performances. And the buskers, who, as usual, were almost uniformly dreadful (which didn’t stop the misguided Northern Daily Leader singing their praises). Perversely, the buskers are a major part of the Tamworth experience, although they receive disproportionate publicity from the mainstream media, who seem to be happy to promote the view that the entire festival occurs in Peel Street. Perish the thought, but luckily that is far from the case, with the best music occurring in a handful of select venues, each with their own flavour but all committed to providing entertainment of at least some quality. (One bright spot amongst the buskers was a young girl – Erin Taylor - singing a cheatin’ song, of which not enough are performed in Tamworth – perhaps there is some hope left in the world).

This year the Wests/Diggers conglomerate provided their usually acceptable range of artists and gigs, with six venues between them pumping out music for up to 19 hours a day. The real disappointment was that Alby Pool (this year with guitarist Rusty Crook back on board and daughter Melody as a regular part of the band) was relegated to the Cowboys bar, the marquis outside the main Wests club, which is absolutely the wrong venue for an artist that is best heard in a small barroom. Alby’s song list was, as we have come to expect, impeccable, and he remains the only artist in Tamworth who is prepared to take on material made famous by the likes of Gene Watson and Vern Gosdin. The other problem at Wests was their late night shows have morphed into something other than country music shows, although it seemed to me that the crowds really wanted country music. Actually, late night country music has become a bit of a problem in Tamworth, and there wasn’t a lot of it this year, although I did enjoy a night with the Smokin’ Crawdads, even if was at the truly awful Fitzroy Tavern.

Travis List, fresh from another year in Nashville and with a swag of new songs as well as a new album under his belt, produced some great sets of straight and hard country music. He is truly one of our great artists and deserves much success. John Stone, Alabama native and now Nashville resident, was one of the few international visitors but his hard edged honky tonk shows at Diggers and Wests were excellent and showcased the casually superior presentation skills of American artists in general. One of the disappointments was Sinead Burgess, ‘ABC Records newest signing’, who could sing well enough but like many local artists, particularly those from the female ranks, was let down by generally poor material. She even sang a song about finishing high school! Even by country music’s liberal story telling standards, that was a stretch. What most of these young girl artists really need is some serious trashing by a bad-assed substance abuser who will take complete advantage of them, get them committed to a serious drinking problem, exploit their sexuality to the hilt and then quickly abandon them by the roadside, heartbroken and emotionally dishevelled. Then we might start to hear some real country songs! Don’t they teach that sort of thing at the much-hyped college of country music?

Joe Maguire’s Pub, the spiritual home of the festival and now completely refurbished, maintained a consistently good line up of artists, notably Mark Lucas the Dead Setters. Mark remains one of the country’s most interesting and literate songwriters, and his band exemplifies the hard edged inner western honky tonk that is inexplicably not well respected in his home town but always goes over well in Tamworth. The one set I caught by Jeremy Sims and the Dust Radio Band also showed considerable promise. Missing this year was one of Maguires’ favourites of the last two years, the Red Hot Poker Dots (apparently on tour in the USA), although the word is they should be back next year. A highlight at Maguire’s was the Monday night show by the true Queen of Tamworth, Leslie Avril. Like any artist, Leslie can be up and down a bit but this year she was in spectacular form, sounding better than ever and still hugely entertaining after the experience of many years on stage. She is a real trouper and Tamworth wouldn’t be Tamworth without her.

Overall, the best venues remain those establishments that belong to The Pub group, ie The Pub, Southgate, the Family and the Good Companions. The latter had some music this year (for the first time in its new guise), which was essentially acoustic solo artists, but the usual suspects were back at Southgate, which remains the venue of choice for the festival. If you had to choose one venue to inhabit for the entire event, it would be Southgate (apart from anything else, the food is excellent), which has consistently superior entertainment. Andy Baylor’s Cajun Combo and Gleny Rae Virus and Her Tamworth Playboys are the staples that hold the place together, but other notable additions to the line up this year were Danny Mack (originally Canadian, now living on the Gold Coast and 50 years in the business) and Nicki Gillis, who featured one of the largest bands seen throughout the festival.

The Pickers Night at The Pub was one of the best in recent years, with some superb performances from the band (minus Michel Rose after he managed to break his wrist earlier that day, but with a more than adequate substitute in the form of Canadian guitarist Redd Volkaert). The early part of the show was characterised by the usual crowded conditions but by the time of the last set, the masses had thinned somewhat and those that remained were treated to some best music of the festival. A highlight was Tamara Stewart, making her first visit to Tamworth in 4 years after having spent some time out of the industry, who ripped through some great versions of “Sing Me Back Home” and “Oh Lonesome Me” – what a pity that her own material comes nowhere near matching the heights of these classics. Sam LeMann, mostly seen with Andy Baylor and Leslie Avril, joined the band on stage towards the end of the night and provided a wonderfully tasteful contribution to proceedings.

Visiting American artists Becky Hobbs and Kacey Jones played to two packed out shows at the Family (I can’t provide a review as I could not get in). Otherwise, the Family hovered between paid and free shows, with a consistently good line up all week.

Festival FM was the scene of more fun and games this year, with Bryen Willems, Nicki Gillis and me holding forth on the Monday – Thursday night programs. We had our usual guests in the studio – Lonesome Train, Mark Lucas and Redd Volkaert(!), together with the aforementioned visiting American artist John Stone. The Harmonators dropped in for a fashion report (a dangerous area to explore in Tamworth) and one of our fellow programmers from 2RRR in Sydney, Hugh Irish, joined the ‘staff’ of Festival FM this year, which surely set something of a record for announcers sourced from the one station?

One odd but fascinating feature of Tamworth is that it is a week of awards. The Golden Guitars (or, more correctly, the ‘Country Music Awards of Australia’) are the best known and their presentation night climaxes the week, but there is actually a host of other awards handed out during the festival. Consider this list: the People’s Choice, the TIARAs (Tamworth Independent Artists Recognition Awards), the Cutting Edge Music Talent Search, the Australian Bush Balladeers Association Star Quest, the Busking Championship, the Tamworth Songwriters’ Association Songwriters’ Salute Awards, the Road to Tamworth, the National Fiddle Awards and the Country Music Challenge: Band Search are all awards that are handed out in Tamworth. Virtually every day there is something being awarded. Interestingly, there is not much crossover between the different awards. The TIARAs are probably the most prestigious after the Golden Guitars, but even there, the list of common winners is short. The Golden Guitars is very much a major label exercise, at least for the leading categories of Male Artist, Female Artist and Album of the year, but occasionally others sneak into snaffle one of the titles. This year Dianna Corcoran managed to win Female Artists of the Year against some of the industry’s biggest hitters, but this was symptomatic of that ever so slight ‘changing of the guard’ referred to earlier (this theory, by the way, was originally advanced to me by another artist, but I happen to agree with it). The TV broadcast of the awards night was, once again, only broadcast live to rural Australia (an edited version appeared on daytime weekend metropolitan TV a week later), although Tamworth viewers themselves were subjected to the indignity of a 2 hour delay in the telecast. The program this year seemed sloppier than usual, although there were some good performances, notably the indefatigable Beccy Cole’s delightful rendition of her song, “Lifeboat”. Beccy’s natural exuberance has made her one of the most popular live performers in the genre and her shows are a wild mix of humour, music and sheer good fun. On the other hand, Adam Brand’s contribution to the night was quite overblown – and who was that female singer joining him on stage? In a uniquely Australian twist, the Golden Guitar awards night sponsor is a manufacturer of caravans, which actually makes a lot of sense when you match the demographics of the audience (and a large part of the local country music fan base) with those likely to want to purchase such a conveyance. A minor controversy erupted after the festival finished over a ‘leaked’ plan to move the awards night out of Tamworth. This story was quickly denied, but its emergence revealed the ongoing frustration that the country music industry has with mainstream Australia, particularly the national TV networks, none of whom have any real interest in broadcasting the event to a metropolitan audience. Some years ago Bryen Willems and I suggested on air on Festival FM that the awards night should be held at the Central Coast Leagues Club, which is located much closer to where many of the frequent winners live. Our idea has not been adopted but it did not seem to be the basis for what was essentially a media beat up over the issue of moving the awards.

Getting the awards underway is the Starmaker competition, held on the first Sunday of the week. The organisers repeatedly claim that Starmarker is not a talent quest, but that is exactly what it is. Over the years it has produced an odd mix of genuine superstars (most spectacularly Keith Urban, but other local heroes that claim the honour include Lee Kernaghan and Beccy Cole) as well as some absolute duds. Last year’s winner, Kirsty Lee Akers, should go on to achieve something but the previous year’s winner, Cat Southern, seems to have sunk without a trace, a fate that has actually befallen about half of the Starmaker winners. In short, the competition is far from being a guarantee of any kind of success. This year the major prize went to South Australian Talia Wittman, of whom I know absolutely nothing. Backstage gossip had it that the real winner was a character going by the name of 8 Ball Aitken, but he missed out because he was too ‘left field’ for the judges to seriously contemplate awarding him the prize. These days, Starmaker has to be careful that it doesn’t upset the establishment – too much credibility (and too much sponsorship) is at stake to be taking risks with the winners.

One cause of some anguish during the week was Tamworth’s newly acquired penchant for applying curfews and crowd restrictions at venues. Although I didn’t personally fall victim to either of these practices, their imposition apparently disrupted the drinking and general enjoyment of many patrons, some of whom found themselves unable to return to a venue after stepping outside for a cigarette. The upside of these restrictions, if it occurs, is obviously a more comfortable experience for the patrons inside a venue and potentially less chaos as the drunks work their way through the evening, but one can’t but help think that this is yet another area of civic life where the do-gooders can’t leave well enough alone. The police dogs were also an irritant to some and you have to wonder if there really is any value in sending such a resource to Tamworth for a week.

The downtown hotels were the scene of much of the disquiet caused by the above practices, but to some extent they have brought the discontent upon themselves by promoting a provocatively rowdy atmosphere and up-tempo thumping music (very little of which is anywhere near being categorised as country) to match. Of the hotels in question, Albert’s and the Court House are generally best avoided (easy to do as they are conveniently located across the street from each other), not to mention the Imperial, which seems to have gone completely downhill over the last few years. Another disappointment is the revamped and seriously sterilised Tudor, which was a lot more fun in its seedy and cramped incarnation and where some of the best bands used to play. However, the Central Hotel, ordinarily another dive, held its own with the return this year of Sandra Humphries (she was noticeably absent in 2007), who was just superb during the lunch time show that I saw her perform. One of my listeners to my Sydney radio program told Sandra that she must have been good, because I had stayed for the entire show – was he really implying that I normally leave after one or two sets? A little sidebar to Sandra’s performance was the sight of Bronwyn Bishop bopping around the dance floor with her husband.

2008 marked the first Tamworth festival without ace Sydney guitarist Les Scott, who sadly died not long after the 2007 festival. Les was many things besides being a great musician but one of the qualities that I always admired was his consistently sympathetic and empathetic accompaniment to the youngsters performing in the junior talent quest (these days held at The Pub). Les was not a musician who wanted to upstage his fellow players, or dominate the proceedings, and his sensitive contributions to whatever musical event he was involved with marked him as a true player. His thoughtful demeanour was never better demonstrated than during the talent quests, where his refined presence always made the most nervous of kids feel comfortable and he was able to bring the best out of them. Even an average talent sounded great with Les backing them on his harmonious guitar and his death last February was a sad blow to not only the local Sydney music scene, where many of us had got to know Les over years of seeing him perform with different artists, but to the wider Tamworth music community.

If anything, 2008 was a year in which I probably visited the smallest number of venues ever, and I managed to avoid setting foot in some of the more prominent entertainment sites, including the Longyard, the Court House, the Services Club as well as the usual array of lesser lights that I habitually avoid. However, one venue that is always a must is the Locomotive Hotel, which has actually moved just a fraction upmarket in recent years. The Loco has a refreshing honesty about it, with a healthy mix of serious alcoholics, aging music fans and a somewhat ragged younger bunch that coalesce to form your ultimate Aussie pub crowd. No one can have too many airs and graces at the Loco, and that’s the way it should be.

And that was Tamworth 2008. Not the best festival by any stretch, but the mild weather made it one of the most comfortable on record and there was enough good music around to keep everyone happy. The seemingly steady decline in the numbers of visitors that has occurred over the last two years is potentially concerning (although the pleasure of less crowded venues is never a factor to be underappreciated), while the ambiguous commitment to the genre shown by at least some of the venues (and apparently with the active connivance of the local paper, if their silly editorial on the subject is to be believed) is frustrating and regrettable. Let’s keep Tamworth country – and let’s urge the do-gooders to stay at home next year.

See you somewhere on the streets of Tamworth in 2009.