TAMWORTH and Nashville artists will come together in the spirit of the sister city relationship at both cities' major country music festivals.
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In Tamworth, Nashville artists will perform on a stage at the Big Golden Guitar Tourist Centre on Friday, January 27 for a lunchtime gig.
"This is going to be the start of one of the initiatives that we are looking at," Tamworth artist and sister city committee member Lawrie Minson told The Leader.
"We'll be able to stage something similar in the June festival in Nashville which will enable Tamworth artists who are visiting Nashville to perform."
Mr Minson said it was a "wonderful opportunity" for the artists to have a venue to perform at, and where better than the home of country music, Tamworth.
"Every year we do have artists from Tamworth who are visiting Nashville and I also see some Australian artists based in Nashville included on the stage in Tamworth," he said.
"We will be inviting artists like O'Shea and Sam Hawksley and anyone else who would like to perform.
“Garry Jackson is the head of the Nashville Sister City Committee for Tamworth and has been out here for the past two festivals and will be out again in January and he's the first confirmed artist on the bill."
Mr Minson attributed the idea for the initiative to his wife, Shelley, who is also a singer-songwriter and member of the sister city committee in Tamworth.
"Nashville people have responded in a very positive way and are going to find a venue for us," he said.
"It's really great to have something positive to work on.
“Nashville have a relationship with Belfast and they have been running successful songwriting festivals, so they have put that suggestion to us as well, but we are just looking at what is feasible."
The multi-instrumentalist and singer-songwriter said he saw the sister city relationship as having "a huge amount of potential".
"I want to include a tourism component with what we do with the sister city relationship," Mr Minson said.
"Tourism should go hand-in-hand and in our case we want to promote musical activity and we would like comment and idea from the broader community. The whole concept is quite broad."
If you have any contributions to make, contact Mr Minson on lm58@bigpond.com.
