MEMOIR OF TAMWORTH COUNTRY MUSIC FESTIVAL 2011

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Tamworth Country Music Festival is over for another year, the 39th year to be exact, and I thought I'd tell you all about the time I spent there this year and what took my fancy the
most.

Like the two previous years, I only went down there for about 4 days in total, so I am really going helter-skelter trying to fit in as many shows as I can in such a short timeframe. 

Unlike 2009 and 2010, I opted this year to give the pubs and free shows a miss and instead go to a couple more paid shows, and at the same time, give myself time to actually catch my breath and have half a day of rest and recreation. 

I had already bought five tickets before I left home, which were for Felicity Urquart, Graeme Connors, John Williamson, Troy Cassar-Daley as well as the Maton Guitar Showcase.

While I was in Tamworth I tacked on The
Wolverines and the Tamworth Country Music Awards finale on the saturday night, the latter dishing up some controversy which I will get to soon. 

I haven`t got a lot of time for the buskers on Peel Street, even if I do feel a bit sorry for them. To me, if I am going to listen to country music, then it has to be good quality stuff, and quite honestly you dont get too much of that on the street in Tamworth. 

Being the rock man I am, I decided to go to
a Wolverines concert at the Tamworth Services Club. The Wolverines are a bit like a cross between ZZ Top and Rolf Harris, with a few country licks thrown in for good measure.

They`re a 3 piece rough looking bikies band, but below the rough exterior you have three big softies in reality. The Wolverines have an absolute gem of a song called `65 Roses`, which sounds so much like Cystic Fibrosis when sung in the manner in which lead
singer Darcy LeYear does. 

The woman who wrote the song won a songwriters award for it, its a very poignant
song about a young girl who gets 65 roses for her birthday but who cant even get up and play because she has Cystic Fibrosis. 

Another great song by the Wolverines which I adore is the upbeat blues rocker `No One Rides My Harley But Me`, which is sung by the guy with the big white bushy beard, John Clinton. 

No it isn`t Santa Claus. Felicity Urquart, along with Catherine Britt, to me are the dual Queens of australian country music.

Felicity`s concert at the Capitol Theatre was simply fantastic, her husband Glenn Hannah is also her guitarist and he really is damn good at playing country music with a meaty rock edge to it.

Felicity always can hit the high notes, and she`s not a stick in the mud who is limited to just crooning country tunes either. 

She really knows how to rock and swing so

well. Her support act, Victoria Bailey, who has the song `Shit Happens` in her repertoire, is also one hell of a good singer when she wants to be. 

That song doesn`t do her any justice at all. I had never seen either Graeme Connors or John Williamson in concert before this, Graeme put in a pearler of a performance which was mostly made up of songs off his latest and argubly the greatest album of his career, `Still Walking`.

The song`All The Money`s Gone` is a brilliant pisstake parody of the global financial crisis and all the corporate big wigs who brought it on.

His performance at the Town Hall was made even a lot better thanks to the most underated keyboardist and piano accordionist in Australia, the great Tim Weddes, who has previously been a member of The Flood. 

His touch on the keyboard is up there with Jim Capaldi and I dare say Elton John.

Weddes is truly one of the best musicians in the country and Connors would be crazy to ever let him go.

John Williamson was something really different for me because he is so damn country. I was expecting his concert, which was also at the Town Hall, to be a cross between say Don Williams and Redgum. 

I am really into rock music, so the idea of a guy sitting on a chair for two hours without moving strumming an acoustic guitar was a gigantic leap of faith for me in country music.

The fact is I enjoyed Williamson`s concert immensely, he is not flash and there wasn`t a bass guitar or drum kit in sight, but his storytelling style of songs are quintessential australiana.

He did have his mate Colin there playing an
acoustic guitar as well, and together the two
of them jammed together better than most
blokes could without a drummer or electric
guitarist to give them some volume. 

It was definitely more exciting than Don Williams. Troy Cassar-Daly was, as you could expect, crisp, sharp and innovative on stage, as he always does at his Tamworth gig, Troy invites guest artists on stage (he calls them
his friends) to play a song with him, some-
times they just contribute instrumentals
but others contribute lead vocals and/or
instrumentals. 

Troy has a fantastic backing band, the standout being a great singer and guitarist by the name of Luke Austin. 

Luke has a very bright future ahead of
him as a country musician in his own right,
and he has the right mentor in Cassar-Daley. Watch out for him in the future. 

And may I put a plug in while I think of it for a well known session and back up guitarist
around Tamworth by the name of Brendan
Walmsley. He has a lovely voice for a a coun-
try musician and he is in very big demand in
Tamworth each year for his services. 

He does seem shy and prone to getting stagefright which is a pity. He`s a very talented guy, just like Tim Weddes.

The Maton Guitar showcase, like it was the two previous years was slightly disorganised and incohesive, you were never sure if the artists were going to end up playing one, two or three songs.

The format of the Maton Guitar Showcase is that each artist is only allowed to use a Maton guitar of some description, with only a few other instruments allowed to be used during the performance. 

Kevin Bennett from The Flood opened the show with a couple of songs off the first Flood album, the most unique and outlandish song of the night belonged to the Paul Burton Trio, the namesake of the band plays a double bass and looks like what Iva Davies would look like if he hit the whiskey for ten years straight. 

Burton is a very eccentric performer, I will have to invent a new genre of music to be able to place his music.

There were too many performers at the Maton Guitar Showcase to describe individually, but if you go to Tamworth next year, do go along to it. It`s a really good
introduction to artists which you normally only hear with an elaborate backing band. No electric guitars allowed. 

The last thing I have to tell you about is the Tamworth Country Music Awards concert, which is the night of nights for Australian country music. 

There was a couple of big controversies on the night, one you might have heard about, another which you probably haven`t. 

Veteran Lee Kernaghan supposedly won the award for album of the year for `Planet
Country`, only to find out after he had got up on stage and accepted the award that it was supposed to be awarded to Graeme Connors for his album `Still Walking`. 

Apparently, dont quote me on this, the golden guitar plaque which Lee accepted did have Graeme`s name on it but it had the wrong year on it, 2010 instead of 2011. 

It has got to go down as the biggest balls up ever in the history of country music. Stand up comic Darren Carr also put on a very controversial and abrasive performance as the fill in for commercial breaks during the awards. 

"Fuck" is one word which slipped through his lips at some stage, I would have to
say that Darren was simply way out of his league doing what he did last saturday night.

He is an excellent ventriloquist puppeteer and he can be funny, but Carr to be honest went down like a lead balloon at TRECC. 

I know most of what he said on stage didn`t go live to air on TV or the radio, but I suspect his absolutely bizarre ending to the night`s proceedings would have had to been broadcast because the MC`s for the night, one being Beccy Cole, had already exited the stage.

Carr`s closing line before the show was over was something like this- `fancy a big fat guy like me being the last thing everyone sees on stage`.

His clumsy and grossly politically incorrect conduct on stage had by now made me have a good chuckle. 

There was another technical glitch which saw about two dozen performers having to `re-sing`a song which they performed to acknowledge the flood victims, I am sorry, I dont know what song it was but I do know it is a well known tune, which was made only more embarrassing and humiliating because of Carr`s hacksaw and antagonising presence on stage.

I was actually waiting for John Williamson to punch Darren Carr at this point lol. All I can say is that I dont think you will be seeing
Darren Carr at TRECC next year. 

To end off, may I say I think it is total crap that Kasey Chambers won 4 golden guitars and brilliant female singers like Catherine Britt won not even one.

If you ask me, just like it is in Nashville, the awards to some degree are rigged, Kasey Chambers is OK, but you wont convince me in a hurry that she is worthy of the 4 awards she received when artists like Catherine Britt and Diana Corcoran keep coming in second.

Corcoran has a unique voice, I would venture to say that she often is trying to sing too high but when she sings down lower she has got a beautiful voice. 

Kasey Chambers to me is so much better when singing with her partner, Shane Nicholson. They`re great together as a duet, but when she is on her own I cant help thinking that she sounds a bit like Toni Childs or one of those black birds that can smell a gun from two miles away. 

Funny, funny! Anyhow, my trip to Tamworth was good, I am still a rocker at heart but going to a country music festival once a year gets you back to earth and enjoying what is essentially just a variation of blues and roots music. 

Australian country music is in excellent shape, whether or not they keep giving

awards to the same people over and over, year in and year out.