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BLUESFEST JUST GOT BIGGER!
Next Easter Long Weekend 1st – 5th April 2021 at our beautiful home on the lush Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm just 10 minutes north of Byron Bay, a plethora of this country’s best artists will be busting to break loose on stage and give you the best Bluesfest experience ever. Check out the All Aussie legends joining us – just announced!
Tash Sultana
Tash Sultana is an explosive global producer and artist who has commanded attention worldwide since their homemade videos went viral on YouTube. This dynamic muso plays over 12 instruments (guitar, bass, drums/percussion, piano/keyboard/synth, oud, trumpet, saxophone, flutes, panpipes, sitar, harmonica, beat production) with guitar as their main love, a self-trained vocal that reaches over a 7 key range and a live show that needs to be seen to be believed. In under 2 years Tash was soon selling out major arenas, with a string of sold out world tours and headlining the world’s biggest festivals – no mean feat for an artist who just a year before was recording songs on a ‘go pro’ in a bedroom back in 2016. After years of mastering their solo set, Tash Sultana is bringing in the addition of a 3-piece band to help bring to life songs that will appear on their next album ‘Terra Firma’ and onstage at 2021 Bluesfest. Tash Sultana previously played Bluesfest in 2018 and 2019.
Ziggy Alberts
Ziggy Alberts will perform all his new material created during lockdown. Ziggy is a singer-songwriter who gives new meaning to the term independent artist. At only 25 years old he has released five records, founded his own label, Commonfolk Records, played sold-out tours across the world, and his music has effortlessly amassed millions of listeners worldwide. Musically, Ziggy’s folk-hewn sound has raised comparisons to the likes of early Ben Howard or Jack Johnson. Like these contemporaries, Ziggy creates honest and personal music that explore his relationships both with others and the planet – a subject close to Ziggy’s heart as a surfer and environmental enthusiast. Ziggy Alberts played over 110 shows in 2019 on his ‘Laps Around The Sun World Tour’. The mammoth tour saw him play to fans across Europe, United Kingdom and North America, all before returning home to Australia in December to play his biggest sold-out headline tour to date.
Kev Carmody
Kev Carmody is a National Treasure. He is one of Australia’s pre-eminent singer-songwriters, a wordsmith whose often politically charged and socially-aware lyrics early in his career found him described as “Australia’s black Bob Dylan”. Of Indigenous Australian and Irish heritage, both cultures famous for oral histories in song, Kev was born to be a storyteller. His best-known composition (with Paul Kelly) is ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’, based on the story of The Gurindji Strike and Vincent Lingiari as part of the struggle for Indigenous land rights and reconciliation. Kev began writing songs in the mid 1960’s but did not record his first album until 1987. This week Kev re-releases his seminal album, ‘Cannot Buy My Soul’ which features collaborations with some of this country’s best artists; many of which are performing this year at Bluesfest.
Ian Moss
Ian Moss made his Bluesfest debut in 2015 – this highly anticipated performance will be his second visit to the Bluesfest stage. Respected as one of Australia’s iconic musicians he is widely regarded as one of the best blues guitarists in Australia. Ian Moss delivers an unforgettable sound – not only as a telling soloist on guitar but especially with his silken voice, ringing with clarity and resonating with pure soul. While primarily recognised as an axeman of tenacity and sweet melodic sensibility, Ian’s distinctive vocal is the essential signature of his soulful, bluesy muse – as it has been since his first tentative foray into music during the early 1970s. Moss has released six incredible and dynamic studio albums – The #1 and multi-platinum, ‘Matchbook’, ‘Worlds Away’, ‘Petrolhead’, ‘Let’s all Get Together’, ‘Soul on West 53rd’ and the self-titled ‘Ian Moss’. Ian will be playing directly before Jimmy Barnes on Easter Sunday.
Hiatus Kaiyote
Self-termed ‘future soul’ band, Hiatus Kaiyote — akin to a progressive neo-soul group with a little left-of-centre, hip-hop production — formed in Melbourne, Australia in 2011. Fronted by singer, songwriter, and guitarist Nai Palm, the band also features bassist Paul Bender, drummer Perrin Moss, and keyboardist Simon Mavin (also of the Bamboos). The band self-released their short debut album, ‘Tawk Tomahawk’, in 2012, and gradually won support from a wide swathe of taste-making DJs (such as Gilles Peterson) and fellow artists (beginning with Taylor McFerrin and later including Questlove and Erykah Badu). One of the most-exciting and dynamic live bands, their music has been sampled by Beyonce & Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson Paak and Drake and has earned them a Grammy-award nomination.
Russell Morris
With a staggering 50 year career and counting, Russell Morris is one of Australia’s most enduring singers. A major pop star in the late ’60s, he went on to become one of the country’s first singer-songwriters. Morris‘ career started in September 1966 with the formation of the Melbourne group Somebody’s Image, which rose to prominence with a local hit version of the Joe South song “Hush”. Russell’s successful Blues trilogy spans the years 2012 – 2018 and spectacularly re-launched his career. The trilogy features the Platinum selling ‘Shark Mouth’, the ARIA nominated ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ and the ARIA Award winning ‘Red Dirt – Red Heart’. His 2019 current release ‘Black and Blue Heart’ was produced by Nick DiDia and Bernard Fanning and features a co-write with Eddie Rayner [Split Enz].
Briggs
From mattress-proofed recording studios in Melbourne, to LA’s most esteemed comedy writing rooms, Briggs has affirmed himself as one of the country’s most talented all-rounders in both music, TV and now publishing. Born and raised in the floodplains of Victoria’s North East rivers, In less than a decade Briggs has taken his hometown of Shepparton to the world -and in turn, inspiring a whole generation of black excellence in the process. Starting with a hip hop career that has seen him tour alongside the likes KRS-ONE, Ice T, 50 Cent, Hilltop Hoods and Paul Kelly – it soon became clear his penmanship also translated to the screen. This second wind as a TV writer had him script and star in the likes of ‘Black Comedy’, ‘The Other Guy’, ‘Cleverman’, and Charlie Pickering’s ‘The Weekly’. As founder and director of his own Indigenous hip hop record label, Bad Apples Music, Briggs’s forthcoming EP ‘Always Was’ includes the first single off the rank ‘Extra Extra’ and the most recent single ‘Go To War’ features the smooth voice of friend and collaborator Thelma Plum as they explore the idea of what it means to write from a place of having no recourse.
Kim Churchill
He smashed his ‘Like A Version’ out on ‘triple j’ last Friday. His rendition of Julia Jacklin’s – ‘Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You’ will go down as one of ‘LAV’ best covers. A traveller as much as an artist, Kim Churchill has lived on the road for years, but it was no longer enough just to pass through; for Kim it was time to showcase that world in his songs. ‘After The Sun’, the warm, loping first single from a new project where each song taps into the people and environments of some of his favourite parts of the world, is Kim showing the value of a new way of thinking, of writing and of living. Kim is a Bluesfest favourite and former winner of the Bluesfest Busking Competition. This performance will mark his seventh since he debuted in 2010. We are proud to list him in our “Discovery Artist” success stories.
Mama Kin Spender
ARIA nominated Mama Kin Spender will bring their rollicking, yet raw, dynamic duo of howling harmonies and primal rhythm to Bluesfest for 2021. This collaboration is a lightning bolt moment between two long-time friends, co-writers and mischief-makers: Mama Kin and Tommy Spender. Both artists in their own right, this pairing delivers something greater than the sum of their parts. Showcasing their unique style of community engagement, they will be joined by a local choir of many, Mullumbimby’s own ‘Midnight Choir’, to bring a gospel landscape to their unique and magnetic performance.
This community minded inclusion and approach has been a festival favourite from WOMAD to Woodford, Clonakilty (Ireland) to Kāpiti (New Zealand), Winnipeg to Saskatoon (Canada), Darwin Festival to Perth International Arts Festival. Their debut album ‘Golden Magnetic’, and this year’s release of their new EP ‘Are You Listening?’ were enthusiastically received, garnering nominations for an ARIA Award for Best Blues and Roots Album, and an NLMA award, and winning a WAM award.