Katoomba’s annual Blue Mountains Music Festival returns in 2017 for its 22nd year on March 17, 18 and 19, with Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen headlining, joined by The Waifs, Eddi Reader, Folk Uke and more.
Earlybird weekend tickets went on sale via the bmff.org.au website only from November 1 (until December 15).
Esteemed performers Paul Kelly and Charlie Owen will be at BMMF 2017 playing songs from their first album together, Death’s Dateless Night. En route to the funeral of a friend, the two got to talking about all the songs they had played together and separately at such occasions over the years and decided to make an album which features The Beatles’ Let It Be, Leonard Cohen’s Bird on a Wire and Townes Van Zandt’s To Live Is to Fly, along with standards Pallet on the Floor, Stephen Foster’s Hard Times Come Again No More and Cole Porter’s Don’t Fence Me In.
The Waifs return to the Blue Mountains Music Festival as part of their 25th anniversary tour as an independent band in Australia. They will be heading back to their roots and playing songs from across their huge catalogue of work, including hidden gems and fan favourites. The Waifs’ seventh studio album Beautiful You is being released to commemorate this huge achievement.
The solo albums by Scotland’s Eddi Reader’s show her ability to move between different musical styles as both singer and songwriter, and follow her time with Fairground Attraction, whose single Perfect from the debut album First of a Million Kisses both topped the British charts. The album The Best of Eddi Reader was released earlier this year. Reader has also won three Brit Awards and will be joined at BMMF 2017 by John Douglas (Scotland), Allan Kelly (Ireland), Boo Hewerdine (England), and Kevin McGuire (Scotland).
Folk Uke is Amy Nelson (daughter of Willie) and Cathy Guthrie (daughter of Arlo) and as such are folk royalty. In the words of one of BMMF’s favourite performers, Steve Poltz, “Folk Uke makes my heart happy”. “They’re always entertaining and never fail to deliver scrumptious live sets that make my eardrums happy. I would walk 200 hundred miles barefoot across the scorching hot Arizona desert full of hissing rattlesnakes and hungry coyotes just to see them play. I’m a believer.”
The international contingent will feature an amazing variety of acts from Ireland, Scotland, Canada, The Netherlands, he US, India, Japan and Ehiopia.
There will be three days of great music on seven stages totalling over a hundred concerts, as well as the usual songwriters’ and instrumental circles, Heartland Conversations and roaming performers.
For more details visit: www.bmff.org.au,
