With a friendly atmosphere, beautiful location and consistently fantastic acts it is no surprise more and more people are considering the Cobargo Folk Festival to be the highlight of the Australian festival circuit.
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The festival returns for its twenty-second year this weekend, February 24-26, and volunteers have been hard at work preparing the site for the crowds.
“Our numbers are growing about five per cent every year,” the festival’s executive director Zena Armstrong said.
“The pre-sale tickets are the biggest we’ve ever seem them. But we know from our surveys people like the size of the festival, so we don’t want to grow too big and want to maintain the intimacy and friendliness.”
There are a few changes this year with the layout of the festival.
There will be two bars, the Mumbulla tent has moved location and now seats about 600 people, while main stage the Magpie is now on the showground’s oval.
The festival also helped to support works by the Cobargo Showground Trust to improve seating in the terraced area above the oval.
A record number of volunteers have signed up this year to keep the festival running.
“Without volunteers we wouldn’t be able to do this festival, the cost would be beyond us,” Ms Armstrong said.
“We estimated the volunteers provide a quarter of a million dollars in contributed labour.”
This year is the first to feature a fringe event – the premier of the play Dead Men Laughing on February 23 at the Cobargo School of Arts Hall from 7pm.
There will also be open bush dances at the hall at 8pm on Friday and 7.30pm on Saturday.
Back at the festival site, the 40-odd acts that make up the line-up include both newcomers and old favourites.
“The two main things I was looking at for the program was balance and diversity,” artistic director Dave Crowden said.
“One aim this year was to get more women performers, and I think we’ve got about 50 per cent.”
There will be headliners The Young Folk – who have been labelled the next Mumford & Sons – as well as energetic dance band Psycho Zydeco, long-time folk singer Danny Spooner, guitar maestro Bruce Mathiske, Indigenous Act of the Year winner Gina Williams and genre-blending Canadians Les Poules à Colin.
Also on the roster are Bega Valley favourites guitar extraordinaire Daniel Champagne, blues/roots band The Blue Ruins and diverse performers The Figmentz.
Another highlight will be the tribute concert for the 50th anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album release by Shortis and Simpson on Saturday.