Fanny Lumsden leads Golden Guitar Award nominees for 2021
Despite the absence of a crowd due to the pandemic, the 49th Golden Guitar Awards will be held in Tamworth on Saturday, January 23 2021.
Although the pandemic has kept crowds away from live music venues across the country for much of this year, country musicians have shown resilience to continue writing and playing, just as they’ve always done.
Nominees for the 49th Golden Guitar Awards were announced in a live stream from Tamworth Town Hall on Thursday morning, and leading the pack was NSW singer-songwriter Fanny Lumsden, whose third album Fallow earned seven nominations including album of the year, song of the year and female artist of the year.
Just behind Lumsden with six nominations was Grafton-born trio The McClymonts, whose sixth album Mayhem to Madness is up for album of the year, its lead single I Got This up for song of the year, single of the year and video of the year, and the sisters among the nominees for group of the year.
Also nominated for six Golden Guitars is NSW singer-songwriter Travis Collins, whose recent release Wreck Me is a contender for album of the year and male artist of the year, among others.
While both The McClymonts and Collins are multi-Golden Guitar Award-winners and firmly established within the country music scene — and independent artist Lumsden well on her way to the same stature — some of the other key nominees announced on Tuesday are lesser-known quantities within the tight-knit community.
Tamworth local Allison Forbes received nominations in four categories – female artist, new talent, alt-country album and bluegrass recording – having released her debut, Bonedigger, only this year. Forbes previously won the annual Star Maker talent contest in 2016.
Gold Coast country rock artist Casey Barnes is also up for four awards including male artist of the year and album of the year for Town of a Million Dreams, while multi-instrumentalist songwriting trio The New Graces received four Golden Guitar nominations including group of the year and talent of the year.
Midnight Oil drummer and songwriter Rob Hirst was nominated in the alt-country album of the year for The Lost and The Found, his collaboration with his daughter Jay O’Shea. The pair are previous Golden Guitar winners, having taken home the video of the year award in 2017 for The Truth Walks Slowly (In the Countryside).
In September, Tamworth Country Music Festival organisers announced the decision to cancel the annual event due to public health concerns more than four months out from its planned start date of January 15 2021.
The 10-day festival typically attracts tens of thousands of people to the regional NSW city. Promoted as Australia’s largest music festival, it usually comprises more than 2,000 scheduled events and 700 performing artists across 80 venues.
Despite the absence of a crowd, the Golden Guitars will be held at the Tamworth Region Entertainment and Conference Centre on Saturday, January 23 2021 and live-streamed via the ABC.
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