The mild early autumn evening was ideal for this dreamy intimate gig, one of the first of its kind in a while.
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A few people gathered around the entrance to the Candelo Hall on Saturday March 19, and light brimmed from the Town Hall Café next door, where friends pulled up a chair to chat.
The air was abuzz and an array of eclectic people slowly trickled in when the doors to the hall were swung open around half past seven.
The hall was dimly lit and grand red velvet curtains framed the entrance, but the first sense evoked was smell, with fragrant herbs and spices from the curries provided by Cowsnest filling its four walls.
The woman on the door ushered me in and directed me to Cody Munro Moore, whose label Dinosaur City Records had organised the event.
Cody was bushy-haired and wore a simple red T-shirt and jeans.
He told me about the gig the touring artists had played the night before at the Narooma Kinema - it had gone great, and given them a great chance to polish up their stage routine for the night.
The Candelo Arts Society had done a great job to set up the hall, which had rows of seats and ascending grandstand seating at the back.
People wandered in to find a spot, bottles of wine under their arms. Others floated to the curry window where kitchen staff scooped out ladles of steamy goodness.
While people were still chatting and spooning mouthfuls, Cobargo musician Stella McMahon walked on stage reminiscent of a Woodstock original, and picked up her guitar.
A couple of songs in and she had managed to capture the audience's full attention. Her introduction well-received by the audience, who were surprised by the 18-year-old's ability to steal the stage with her original solo performance.
Stella said she'd grown up in halls like Candelo where she watched her father play, "and fell asleep in just about every corner".
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Cody was up next with a lot of new songs he had wrote in the last couple of months with a real folk sound - playing homage to his upbringing around the joy of attending local folk festivals.
He was joined on stage by a viola player, someone on harmonies, and another band member on acoustics.
A good laugh was heard in the audience when he introduced his song Country Hedge, which he said probably wouldn't have garnered the same response in a city audience.
"There were a couple of elements with that people picked up on that you wouldn't get from audiences from the city, I just don't think anyone would laugh about a country hedge in the city," said Cody post show.
Cody said the show really reaffirmed why he chose to do the tour in the first place.
"There was a concept behind it, but the concept wasn't just frivolous. Once we did the night I thought, there's a real point to doing this and that is to create some excitement. I would love to do more things like that in the future," he said.
"I think artists aren't playing massive festivals at the moment, they're not touring overseas so you've got a lot of artists like Julia Jacklin who would love to come down and play to 180 people at Candelo Hall.
"There's a lot of established artists at the moment that would love an experience like that, because it's special and it's different," said Cody.
Julia Jacklin's stage presence was incredibly charismatic, paired with her unique stark red two piece ensemble and auburn hair.
The moment she stepped on to the stage and started playing, audiences were drawn to her pulled back, but melodic performance.
Being able to entertain people with the bare bones of a song and have people get completely lost in the show was how Cody described her experience on stage.
Her performance was full of stories about her songs, bringing an understanding about the context of her music, as well as bringing out the antics of a few country hecklers.
Jacklin even commented post event that it was her favourite location she had at played on the tour so far.
Cody said she was used to playing venues where she didn't know the owner or staff, but in Candelo the event was put on by the Arts Society, who were part of and run by the local community.
"Playing festivals and the Enmore Theatre and places like that, you get used to the ownership and sense of community is dispersed a lot more, but it was kind of decentralised in Candelo, where a lot of people have a stake in it, but it's not in a monetary way, it's more in a cultural way," said Cody.