Tamworth Country Music Festival cancelled for 2021
Organisers have called time on one of Australia’s most popular cultural events four months out from its January dates.
The annual muster of country music artists and fans in Tamworth is the latest event to fall to COVID-19 public health regulations as festival organisers announced its cancellation more than four months out from its planned start date of January 15 2021.
On Tuesday night, the Tamworth Regional Council voted to suspend all activities associated with next year’s festival, following advice provided by NSW Health, Hunter New England Health, festival sponsors and stakeholders across recent months regarding the spread of coronavirus.
Mayor Col Murray said on Tuesday: “Tamworth Region Councillors faced a difficult decision tonight, one that had the health and safety of our community, our fans, the artists, volunteers, local businesses, staff, and the wider country music industry front of mind.”
“It is hard to believe that we have had to make this decision, and it most certainly has not been an easy decision to make,” said Murray. “Still, the impacts of introducing COVID-19 to our community far outweigh the impacts cancelling the festival would have on our community.”
The Tamworth Country Music Festival typically runs for 10 days and attracts tens of thousands of people to the regional city whose name has become a byword for the home of country music. Promoted as Australia’s largest music festival, it usually comprises more than 2,000 scheduled events and 700 performing artists across 80 venues.
“Right at the moment, music festivals are in fact illegal to run in New South Wales,” festival manager Barry Harley told The Australian on Tuesday. “So we were faced with either letting it go a little bit longer, or making a call reasonably early so that everybody could adjust.”
“Normally we would have been on sale with tickets to our major concerts in early August,” said Harley. “The rationale for calling it a little early was so that all of those major events that require ticket and seating applications wouldn’t go on sale, causing a little less disruption.”
The council’s decision is unsurprising given that since mid-March, every major music festival in the country — Bluesfest, Splendour in the Grass and Falls, among many others — has been wiped from the calendar, as mass public gatherings have become unfeasible due to concerns surrounding the spread of COVID-19.
“It’s very heartbreaking, and it distresses me to not be a part of it,” said country singer-songwriter Troy Cassar-Daley, one of many performers who has long seen playing Tamworth as the one and only way to kick off each new year.
“I started busking there, and we’ve all got history there,” he said. “I can’t feel sorry for myself as an artist — I just feel sorry for the town losing its money. They rely on so much of that financial injection to get them through each year, and they’re going to miss out on that.”
“There’s a lot of situations that we can’t change and it makes you feel very heavy-hearted,” said Cassar-Daley, who lives in Brisbane. “But I think that we just have buckle down, be sensible about the whole thing and listen to the experts, and not think that anyone’s trying to steal anything from us — what they’re trying to do is look after everyone’s health.”
Beyond the economic hit that the city will take from the loss of summer tourists flocking to Tamworth, organisers had carefully weighed other possibilities that might have occurred had they decided to push ahead with the event in a reduced capacity without some of the regular attractions that add to the atmosphere each January, such as the array of buskers on Peel Street as well as free gigs held at Bicentennial Park and the Fan Zone in the city centre.
“Reputationally, if someone comes for the first year and it’s well below what it’s supposed to be, you do risk them going home and saying, ‘Is that all Tamworth is?’” said Harley. “It’s very important that we hold that high quality of experience for our visitors.”
“Also, how damaging would it be if we invited the COVID virus to Tamworth and the community was shut down, or it became a hotspot?” he said. “There’s a very important link: we’ve got to guard jealously the health and safety of our visitors, our community and our industry, as well.”
Harley has held the role of festival manager since 2015, but his personal involvement goes back much further than that.
“I’ve been involved in the organisation of the festival for 47 years,” he said. “It’s a very difficult decision to be part of, and it’s taken with a massive heavy heart. It didn’t come easy, but we don’t see that there’s any alternative right at the moment in terms of massing of large crowds. This is the only true outcome at this point in time, and we’ll wish for a much safer version of it in 2022.”
For country music fans, there is one glimmer of positivity among the gloom: the 49th Golden Guitar Awards will still go ahead in January, and the ABC will continue to be the broadcast partner for the event.
The Golden Guitars will likely adopt a remote “virtual” format, where presenters and performers will either prerecord their contributions or juggle live video links, in the same way that the National Indigenous Music Awards and the APRA Music Awards were held earlier this year.
“2022 should still be the 50-year milestone for the festival, because the festival grew around the awards anyway,” said Harley. “It’s always been the centrepiece.”
The very first Golden Guitar Award was won by singer-songwriter Joy McKean in 1973 for Lights on the Hill, a song made famous by her husband Slim Dusty.
“In the earlier days, the awards became a focus for all the artists. Country artists had to travel more than what they do these days to make a living,” McKean told The Australian on Tuesday.
“Often you didn’t see your friends from one end of the year to the next — but you always looked forward to Tamworth to see everybody, and see what was happening in the music,” said McKean. “And then you’d all split again and out you’d go, around the nation. It’s not quite that sort of thing now, but it is a focal point for us each year. It’s going to be a terrible blow for all of us.”