Country Witches Bring in Beltane
Join the Country Witches Association to celebrate Bealtaine, (Beltane) the real pagan festival that should be celebrated in the Southern
Hemisphere on 31 October instead of Halloween! Bealtaine is a fire and fertility festival that marks the transition of seasons and the arrival of summer and the riches that season brings. This is when the veil is thinnest between the spirit and human worlds and hence the perfect date for witches in all hemispheres to gather and mark their intentions for the coming year. Fires are lit as a way of clearing the air, recharging the Earth and planting hope for a fruitful season ahead. With 2020 being the year the world was in the grip of a pandemic we have never needed a more hopeful reason to gather than Bealtaine, and plant some potent hope – together!
Singer–songwriter, and founding witch, Áine Tyrrell grew up sitting around Bealtaine bonfires on the West Coast of Ireland and she is looking forward to sharing her witchy Irish traditions with the Southern Hemisphere witches! Mandy Nolan joins forces with Áine as the two present their hugely popular Country Witches show for the first time at the gorgeous Regent Theatre, in Murwillumbah. Drawing down on the themes and traditions of Bealtaine, these two bring a very different version of the CWA, mixing genres to bring dangerous dialogues and uncomfortable collaborations to the boil! Áine and Mandy stir the political pot, spin a yarn, tell a joke and have a damn good time.
The witches ask you to mark the moment by wearing your sassiest and most fertile black!
While the Saturday night is sold out there are still tickets for Sunday at 11am! Tix $40 on trybooking.com/BLUFR. Or ainetyrrell.com
Aloha! It’s Clelia
Mullumbimby’s own country music queen, Clelia Adams teams up with Aloha Baby to explore the origins of the steel guitar and its migration from the Hawaiian Islands to become a mainstay sound of Country and Western music. Clelia and Paul Agar, steel guitarist from local Hawaiian music trio Aloha Baby, will share their knowledge of the history of these two musical genres in a one hour musicological concert full of fascinating stories, beautiful instrumentals and country songs we all know and love.
Book your seat now for a one-hour-plus show of engaging entertainment with humour and musical panache, this Sunday morning. Tickets are $15 per person. Available from https://www.mullumexservices.com.au/what-s-on. Limited capacity. 11am at the Mullum Ex-Services Club.
Givin a Buckleys!
After their stunning debut live performance, Daydream with the Buckleys Live from Byron Bay was broadcast globally, their World Virtual Tour with Live Nation, reached over 4.5 million peeps. Now you can experience the skyrocketing brilliance of The Buckleys when they perform live in concert as part of the Great Southern Nights Initiative.
Sarah Buckley speaks of the show; ‘We can’t wait to bring our live show to our home region and to start rebuilding the strong, resilient, and ever so important live music industry that provides us all with these memory making, spirit lifting concerts: the crews, venues, musicians, and all the behind-the-scenes workers in all parts of the industry [who] have had it extremely tough this year.’
Country, Pop, Americana and Indie, Daydream is a sun-kissed collection of music that embodies the personalities and spirit of the Buckley siblings – Sarah (20), Molly (17) and Lachlan (19). Becoming a formidable force in the US recently, The Buckleys have been establishing themselves as a young, dynamic act to watch.
Friday 6 Nov at The Byron Theatre, Saturday 14 Nov at the Australian Hotel in Ballina, and Saturday 21 Nov at the Byron YAC.
Byron Writers Festival returns with Trent Dalton
Byron Writers Festival has announced a series of three live events, starting at Byron Theatre on Tuesday 17 November, with Trent Dalton, the award-winning, bestselling author of Boy Swallows Universe, who returns with one of the most anticipated novels of 2020.
All Our Shimmering Skies is an epic odyssey of true love and grave danger, of darkness and light, of bones and blue skies. It is a love letter to Australia and an ode to the art of looking up.
Trent Dalton will be in conversation with local author, Zacharey Jane. The event will also include a short performance from local musician Bobby Alu. Tickets are on sale now via byronwritersfestival.com/whats-on. For those unable to make it to the live event, it will be streamed on-demand for a limited time the following day.
Closing Byron Film Festival!
While film festivals around the world have been forced to create virtual editions for 2020, the team at the Byron Bay International Film Festival have stepped up to the challenge and created a unique COVID response – developing a hybrid experience of a star-studded film competition, giving you the opportunity to experience a screening at Byron’s iconic lighthouse, and a selection of entertaining and provocative features, documentaries and short films, all to be viewed, as they were meant to be, on the big screen.
Closing the BBFF20 is the highly anticipated, new Australian feature Moon Rock for Monday, produced by Ballina local Jim Robinson, and written and directed by Kurt Martin.
‘Moon Rock For Monday really sings; while its technical achievements are all top-notch, it’s the emotion that really kicks. Sad, funny, heartbreaking and true, Moon Rock For Monday won’t release you from its grip for days’ says Erin Free.
On Sunday, 1 November at 7pm, (Palace Cinemas Byron Bay), with the filmmakers in attendance Inside the film: Moon Rock For Monday screens at the Byron Bay International Film Festival. Limited tickets available from http://bbff.com.au
BBFF2020 is running all week, so until Sunday go to the website to check out what is on offer!
Girls Light Up
This Sunday, the girls light up for Bay FM when Lucie Thorne and Sara Tindley perform together in one gorgeous shared show!
Locally-based Taswegian, Lucie, is no stranger here. She’s been a much-loved performer at many Mullum Music Festivals as well as other events over the past decade.
Sara has a wonderful gift for writing funny, true and tender songs, and a voice that sings straight to the heart. With four critically acclaimed albums, her songs have travelled around the country via radio, film and television.
A storyteller of the highest order, Sara combines the emotional honesty of country music with the unadorned melodies and musicality of Australian roots and folk. These are modern songs with a country lilt.
At the Brunswick Picture House on Sunday. Tix on brunswickpicturehouse.com
The Gleeson Club
Tom Gleeson’s Lighten Up Tour is back on! The last show he did was back in March, in Adelaide, where he won the Fringe Award for best show. He’s been in lockdown ever since… so grab a ticket to see the Hard Quiz host and Gold Logie winner, the master of comedy, perform his finest hour.
Monday 9 Nov–Friday 13 Nov at the Brunswick Picture House. Tix on brunswickpicturehouse.com
The Pat Davern and Phil Jamieson Experience
The collaborations of this duo were born in 1995 in Lismore. They have been writing and performing music together for the last 25 years. Now on stage for the first time ever as a pair, we welcome Spaceman Pat Davern to the Ballina RSL, alongside his creative foil – his left-hand man – Phil Jamieson. Songs will be sung, instruments will be played, jokes will be told, laughs may or may not be had. Guest support is the enigmatic singer songwriter, Sophie Ozard, also hailing from the Northern Rivers of NSW.
It’s going to be a really special night in Ballina, presented by Destination NSW ‘Great Southern Nights’ initiative supporting NSW live music performances throughout November. Tickets are extremely limited so be sure to book early. Pat Davern and Phil Jamieson, with Sophie Ozard, at Ballina RSL on Thursday 5 November.
Egypt on Screen
After the international success of the first Power of Sound – AFRICA, local producers Mark Robertson and Chris Liddell now bring their epic journey into the mysteries and peoples of ancient Egypt to the screen at The Byron Theatre this Saturday.
Deep-diving past the veneers of translation and interpretation, The Power of Sound – EGYPT offers insight and revelation direct from the wisdom-keepers and indigenous peoples of the Giza Plateau, Nile Valley and Nubian lands, along with Khemetian researchers, Sufi mystic musicians, Egyptologists and sound healing practitioners.
Saturday at The Byron Theatre. Tix from the box office or www.byroncentre.com.au. All enquiries to [email protected] or Mark Robertson.
