Dec2013_Festival of Small Halls tours the best of the Woodford Folk Festival to Mount Mee

Get a taste of the internationally renowned Woodford Folk Festival when its off-shoot touring program, the Festival of Small Halls, passes through the Mount Mee Hall on Sunday, December 22nd.

The one-off show features three of the best artists to perform at both the Woodford Folk and Mullumbimby Music Festivals, award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter Rose Cousins (in her first Australian shows), and folk troubadour Jordie Lane.  Both artists are at the top of their game musically, and have been chosen for the tour not only for this, but for their personalities, and the odd or hilarious anecdotes that they tell between songs.

Rose’s folk/roots music is characterized by its dramatic, often sparse beauty, and has been chosen for a host of dramatic scenes in well-known TV shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Drop Dead Diva, while Jordie’s country-tinged banjo and guitar-driven songs feature subject matter such as fornicating dogs, hocked diamond rings, Clancy of the Overflow’s great granddaughter and aspirin.

The Mount Mee event is one of only six shows on the tour in which Rose and Jordie will be joined by Australian folk heroes Cole and Van Dijk, a fiddle and guitar duo from the Sunshine Coast who have been praised by critics as ‘innovators rather than imitators’.  Cole and Van Dijk’s original tunes are based heavily in the Western traditions of Ireland and England, and have been described as ‘mongrel folk – the bastardization of Western folk music carried across the seas to Australia and then left for dead, but secretly blooming in the subtropics’.

All artists spent time together in Canada earlier this year at the International Folk Alliance in Toronto, and are looking forward to cramming into a tour van and seeing a different side of Australia – its Small Halls.

The tour takes place uniquely in small country towns (with a couple of seaside locations thrown in for good measure and added tourism) throughout Western Queensland.

The Festival has joined with the Mount Mee Hall Committee who will provide a supper and run a bar in this early evening show.

With tickets priced at only $27 Adults/$22 Student and Concession and accompanied children 13 and under getting in free, the Festival of Small Halls is perfect for getting a group of friends or family together for a great pre-Christmas afternoon out.

This is the first of a huge series of tours planned by the Woodford Folk Festival under the Small Halls banner, and the artists are a perfect indication of the quality and caliber of the shows Queensland can expect in future.

For more information or tickets go to www.festivalofsmallhalls.com