tim tam(worth), slim (dusty) slam (worth it!)

the spirit of the king of aussie country lives and breathes in the annual tamworth country music festival.

two weeks a year, at the height of summer, outback australia lives a fairy tale called tamworth. the ghost of slim dusty rises from his grave singing songs every aussie country music fan knows by heart. parents bring their kids, kids bring their parents, families reunite in caravan parks and dingy motels to revisit and revive the music that made them aussie.

more than two decades after his soul passed into country music heaven, slim dusty’s aura still pervades the many stages and sidewalks of the tamworth country music festival. buskers lining peel street, tamworth’s CBD (aussie for central business district) , cover slim dusty classics, and if they’re old enough to have known the great one, spin yarns of their encounters with him and how he affected their career paths. in the sacred center of peel street stands a statue of dusty and his partner in life and song, joy mc kean.

tamworth is small town australia.  neat, orderly, law-abiding, church-going, family-oriented, friendly. for fifty weeks a year, there’s not much to distinguish tamworth from dozens of other tidy communities that dot the countryside of new south wales, west of the great dividing range that separates bush country from the coast, where the great majority of the population lives. but for ten days every january, tamworth transforms into the capital of australian country music, a genre that captures the hard-working, hard-drinking, god-fearing spirit of the aussie bush.  here, slim dusty is next to god. or maybe, IS god.

this year’s TCMF, as it’s called, featured some of australia’s biggest country music stars in concert, with lots of “guest appearances” by the big name performers at each other’s shows. troy cassar-daly and lee kernaghan, two of the genre’s veterans, filled the four-thousand seat tamworth regional entertainment and civic center (TRECC) on consecutive nights, doing a cameo appearances at each other’s concerts. they joined forces for a cover of a slim dusty classic written by joy mckean in 1972.

these TRECC concerts were sellouts , but at AU$65 to AU$75 (maybe US$40 or so) a seat, they’re not the main attraction for the estimated 300,000 country music fans who visit the festival each year. most folks come for a free peek at aussie country music’s future. of the big names we saw in concert, almost all stumbled over themselves to tell stories of starting out busking the streets of tamworth, playing for spare change from passersby. some of the best of this year’s crop were stevie wright, a nine-year old keyboardist who we saw doing an impressive cover of lynyrd skynrd’s 1970s classic “simple man”, and wade forster, a mustachioed youngster wearing a hat four sizes too big for his head, who won the “toyota starman” competition. wait 20 years, these will be tamworth’s headline names.

peel street is a buskers jungle during the festival. walking along the avenue is like scrolling across an AM radio dial, moving from one musical orbit to another. it’s momentarily jarring as one song fades out and another fades in. but it rocks if you let it.

down peel street we wandered to town hall on saturday morning, the final day of the festival, to see “fanny”. we hadn’t a clue beforehand, only tickets purchased online for “fanny at town hall . town hall isn’t a premier venue, but fanny and her band blew us away. “fanny and the prawnstars”, all (except fanny) wearing red jumpsuits, could have been mistaken for inmates at the local jail. (convicted of “prawnography”, i suppose.)

fanny’s a farm girl from tooma, a tiny community 600km from the nearest city, and she connected with the farm families who filled the hall from the moment she pranced onto the stage. afterward, home girl fanny (who was born margaret edwina lumsden) led fans to the back of the hall where she posed for selfies and signed autographs until the last fan had gone.

later that night, at the “golden guitar” awards ceremony, fanny won for best album of the year. she got a standing ovation from the fans at TRECC. later this year, we hear, she and the prawnstars are touring the u.s. (keep an eye out, americans. you’re in for a real treat)

the next day, tamworth rolled up the signs, the artists packed up their gear, and the fans melted back into their daily lives ploughing the red earth in outback australia, west of the great divide. bush country.

until next year.

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