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folk

The Dreggs

The Dreggs are hitting the road to round out one hell of a year. Fresh off the back of new singles, be prepared to sing and dance your hearts out as The Dreggs bring their high energy live show to regional and coastal towns all over Australia.

Earlier in the year, The Dreggs played their biggest shows to date with tickets selling out like hot cakes before venturing to play sold out shows in the UK and Europe.

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Ry Cooder

Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder (born March 15, 1947) is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.

Cooder's solo work draws upon many genres. He has played with John Lee Hooker, Captain Beefheart, Taj Mahal, Gordon Lightfoot, Ali Farka Touré, Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Neil Young, Randy Newman, Linda Ronstadt, Vishwa Mohan Bhatt, David Lindley, The Chieftains, The Doobie Brothers, and Carla Olson and The Textones (on record and film). He formed the band Little Village, and produced the album Buena Vista Social Club (1997), which became a worldwide hit; Wim Wenders directed the documentary film of the same name (1999), which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2000.

Cooder was ranked at No. 8 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of "The 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time",[2] while a 2010 list by Gibson Guitar Corporation placed him at No. 32.[3] In 2011, he published a collection of short stories called Los Angeles Stories.

Lord Huron

Lord Huron is an indie rock and folk band from Los Angeles, California. Led by singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Ben Schneider, the band has released two full-length albums, two EPs and a handful of singles since 2012. Lord Huron has won fans with their melodic and moody sound, and their music has been featured in film, television shows, and commercials. The Music of Lord Huron
Lord Huron's music has an ethereal quality that combines elements of folk, indie rock, and dream pop. Schneider's lyrics are often introspective and mysterious in nature. His songwriting is also inspired by his travels; songs like "Ancient Names (Part I)" are inspired by a trip to Mexico. The band's instrumentation consists of guitars, drums, bass, synthesizers and occasional strings. Collaborations with Other Artists
Lord Huron has collaborated with several other artists over the years. These include singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers on the song "Strange Trails" and musician Gillian Welch on the song "The Night We Met". They've also released a cover of John Prine's "Paradise" with The Highwomen. Real Name & Age
The primary member of Lord Huron is Ben Schneider (born 1982), who is 37 years old. He is joined live by Mark Barry (drums), Miguel Briseño (bass), Brandon Draper (drums/percussion), Tom Renaud (guitar/vocals), and Karl Kerfoot (keys/guitar). Social Media Bio
Indie rock band Lord Huron creates tunes that take you on a journey.

Hannah Cameron

Hannah Cameron is a weaver of emotionally wrought, poetic folk music that navigates the spaces between relationships, trust, acceptance and forgiveness. A master in the art of subtlety, her nuanced songwriting holds at its core an assured grip on life’s bewildering juxtapositions, finding strength in fragility and intimacy amongst universal chaos. This tenacity is precisely what sets the flourishing Melbourne songwriter apart.

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The Whiskey Priests

The Whisky Priests were a UK based folk rock band formed in 1985 by twin brothers Gary Miller (Lead vocalist, songwriter and guitarist) and Glenn Miller (Accordion). Their debut release was the 7" single, 'The Colliery' (1987) and a string of critically acclaimed singles, EPs and albums and a live video recorded in Hamburg, Germany followed. They were renowned for their exciting live shows performing hundreds of times throughout Europe before calling it a day in 2002 following their final release 'Bloody Well Live! Special Edition' double CD. In 2018, they reformed for a brief Reunion Tour and released 'Bloody Well Everything! (The Complete Works 1985-2000)', a limited edition 12-disc CD Box Set.

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Casual Fan

Casual Fan is the musical project of six friends from Sydney, formed around the songwriting of bandleader, Nathan. With a love of the American folk tradition, the music of Casual Fan expands beyonds the borders of this genre, exploring diverse arrangements and themes of connection and loss, decorating simple frames with dissonance and complexity. There’s guitars and drums, synthesizers and voices, warm fuzzies, and fuzz pedals.

Liquid Architecture

RISING’s handed Liquid Architecture some subterranean territory, bringing sounds from West Papua, Iran and Europe for a striking night of experimental sound world building.
Naarm-based art organisation Liquid Architecture supports radical interdisciplinary experimentations offering a platform for artists working with sound -- from our everyday data driven world to the dissonant, to the beat driven with sounds that defy definition.

For an all-night takeover of Max Watt’s, LA have invited Iran-based sound artist Sote in collaboration with audio-visual composer Tarik Barri on an immersive Live AV work. They’ll be joined by the king of experimental dembow from The Dominican Republic/New York heavy hitter Kelman Duran, and West Papuan music producer Asep Nayak, who has been redefining the Wisisi music of his home region, creating rapid, relentless, and euphoric ceremonial sounds.

Liquid Architecture invites you to a big night of absorption into beat driven experimentations, echoes, melodies, sounds and searing visuals.

CMAT

CMAT, who had aspirations to become a professional musician from a young age, relocated to Manchester, England, to pursue a career in music with her then boyfriend, performing together as Bad Sea. She has since described their relationship as toxic and isolating, and she stopped pursuing a music career, living a partying lifestyle. She attended an in-person listening session at a London studio with the English electropop singer Charli XCX, who advised CMAT to reimagine her approach.

Breaking up with her boyfriend and returning to Ireland, she began self-releasing her music online to considerable attention and received radio play from RTÉ Radio 1 and BBC Radio 6 Music. Her debut studio album If My Wife New I'd Be Dead was released in February 2022. Metacritic, which aggregates review scores, gives the album a score of 85 based on 9 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Hot Press magazine wrote that the album was "undoubtedly one of the most thrilling Irish pop debuts of the century".[16] In a four-star review, DIY wrote, "If My Wife New... feels like a more well-rounded, modern proposition than one solely indebted to the oldest style going could suggest." The album entered the Irish Albums Chart at number one. In June 2022, she released a single called "Peter Bogdanovich", which came with a music video which featured CMAT dressing as the late director. On 19 August 2022, "Peter Bogdanovich" charted at number 20 on the Irish Homegrown Top 20. In March 2023, If My Wife New I'd Be Dead won the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year.

In June 2023, CMAT announced her next studio album, Crazymad, for Me, which was released in October 2023. Like her previous album, this album debuted at number one on the Irish Albums Chart. Her album was later nominated for the Best Album Ivor Novello Award on Thursday 23 May 2024.

CMAT has been noted for her large fanbase among Irish LGBTQ+ people, once telling an NME interviewer "I'm making music for the girls and the gays, and that's it."

In May 2024, the BBC were forced to disable comments on a video on its Instagram page of CMAT's performance at the Radio 1 Big Weekend festival, following a spate of comments labelled "fat-shaming." Later that month, CMAT pulled out of a performance at that summer's Latitude Festival due to the festival's sponsorship by Barclays, and the company's financial involvement in the Israel-Hamas war.

Mick Thomas

Following a hectic end to 2022 – including a full national tour supporting their brilliant Back In the Day EP (which was voted #6 Best Australian Album in the Rhythms Readers’ Poll even though it is not an album!) – Mick Thomas’ Roving Commission will release their new album Where Only Memory Can Find You on May 5 then head out on a national tour starting at the National Folk Festival in April.
Where Only Memory Can Find You marks the return to the fray of Mick’s former Weddings, Parties, Anything bandmate, violinist Jen Anderson – joining founding WPA accordion player Mark “Squeezebox Wally” Wallace in the Roving Commission ranks.

Adding to the bolstered female presence is the fact that, by some quirk of fate, six of the nine songs on the album are co-writes by Thomas with prominent Australian female singer-songwriters; two tracks with Amy Saunders from ‘90s Indigenous folk trio Tiddas, and one each with Saunders’ bandmate Lou Bennett, Oz country legend Sara Storer, Melbourne veteran Barb Waters, and Brooke Taylor, who also happens to be a recent addition to Mick’s Roving Commission.

Where Only Memory Can Find You takes its name from a line in one of Thomas’s most famous songs, “Away Away”, which he first recorded with Weddings Parties Anything in 1987, and which Mick and band reprise on the new album.

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Judy Collins

Judy Collins has inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century.

The award-winning singer-songwriter is esteemed for her imaginative interpretations of traditional and contemporary folk standards and her own poetically poignant original compositions. Her stunning rendition of Joni Mitchell's “Both Sides Now” from her landmark 1967 album, Wildflowers, has been entered into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Judy’s dreamy and sweetly intimate version of “Send in the Clowns,” a ballad written by Stephen Sondheim for the Broadway musical A Little Night Music, won "Song of the Year” at the 1975 Grammy Awards. She’s garnered several top-ten hits gold- and platinum-selling albums. Recently, contemporary and classic artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Shawn Colvin, Dolly Parton, Joan Baez, and Leonard Cohen honored her legacy with the album Born to the Breed: A Tribute to Judy Collins.

Judy began her impressive music career at 13 as a piano prodigy dazzling audiences performing Mozart's “Concerto for Two Pianos,” but the hard luck tales and rugged sensitivity of folk revival music by artists such as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger seduced her away from a life as a concert pianist. Her path pointed to a lifelong love affair with the guitar and pursuit of emotional truth in lyrics. The focus and regimented practice of classical music, however, would be a source of strength to her inner core as she navigated the highs and lows of the music business.

In 1961, she released her masterful debut, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, which featured interpretative works of social poets of the time such as Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, and Tom Paxton. This began a wonderfully fertile thirty-five-year creative relationship with Jac Holzman and Elektra Records. Around this time Judy became a tastemaker within the thriving Greenwich Village folk community and brought other singer-songwriters to a wider audience, including poet/musician Leonard Cohen – and musicians Joni Mitchell and Randy Newman. Throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and up to the present, she has remained a vital artist, enriching her catalog with critically acclaimed albums while balancing a robust touring schedule.

Prolific as ever, Judy recorded a DVD special Judy Collins: A Love Letter To Stephen Sondheim, in her hometown of Denver, CO. Along with the Greely Philharmonic Orchestra, Judy dazzled the audience with Sondheim’s beautiful songs and her lovely, radiant voice. DVD and CD companion will be released in early 2017. Judy also released a collaborative album in June 2016, Silver Skies Blue, with writing partner, Ari Hest. Silver Skies Blue has been GRAMMY nominated for BEST FOLK ALBUM in 2017, this is the first GRAMMY nomination for Collins in over 40 years.

In 2012, she released the CD/DVD Judy Collins Live At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art which aired on PBS. This special television program was nominated for a New York Emmy and won a Bronze Medal at the 2013 New York Festival International Television & Film Awards. Based on its success, in 2014 she filmed another spectacular show in Ireland at Dromoland Castle. Live In Ireland was released in 2014. This program also won a Bronze Medal at the 2014 New York Festival International Television & Film Awards and the program will broadcast on PBS in 2014 and 2015.

Judy’s most recent collaboration with her as a singer-songwriter is the 2019 album Winter Stories, including critically-acclaimed Norwegian folk artist Jonas Fjeld, and masterful bluegrass band Chatham County Line. Winter Stories, is a collection of classics, new tunes, and a few surprises, featuring spirited lead vocal turns, breathtaking duets, and Judy’s stunning harmony singing.

Judy has also authored several books, including the powerful and inspiring, Sanity & Grace and her extraordinary memoir, Sweet Judy Blue Eyes: My Life in Music. For her most recent title to be released in 2017, Cravings, she provides a no-holds barred account of her harrowing struggle with compulsive overeating, and the journey that led her to a solution. Alternating between chapters on her life and those of the many diet gurus she has encountered along the way (Atkins, Jean Nidtech of Weight Watchers, Andrew Weil, to name a few), Cravings is the culmination of Judy's genuine desire to share what she's learned—so that no one has follow her heart-rending path to recovery.

In addition, she remains a social activist, representing UNICEF and numerous other causes. She is the director (along with Jill Godmillow) of an Academy Award-nominated film about Antonia Brico – PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN, the first woman to conduct major symphonies around the world–and Judy's classical piano teacher when she was young.

Judy Collins is as creatively vigorous as ever, writing, touring worldwide, and nurturing fresh talent. She is a modern-day Renaissance woman who is a filmmaker, record label head, musical mentor, and an in-demand keynote speaker for mental health and suicide prevention. She continues to create music of hope and healing that lights up the world and speaks to the heart.