Worth Their Weight in Gold: How Barry Harley became the driving force of Tamworth Country Music Festival

HE'S a giant of the local country music scene and the driving force of the Tamworth Country Music Festival.

But festival manager Barry Harley admits he's never really been a big country music fan.

Instead, he grasped the importance of Tamworth owning the genre from early on.

"I learnt very early the value of the country music capital branding for the town," he told the Leader.

"I learnt how valuable that was to an inland city that had no natural attraction... we could then build the ability to keep attracting people to come back to Tamworth at the hottest damn time of the year, in their thousands, because we were identified as country music capital."

Mr Harley's involvement with the festival began in 1975, when he got his first gig as a stage design artist for the Golden Guitar awards.

"Before that in the late 60s and early 70s I worked reasonably close with the radio station 2TM from a freelance perspective," he said.

"When 2TM first started touring country acts, I designed a lot of the posters that they used, which led to me being asked to do the awards set."

In those early days Mr Harley had picked up some skills through working as a visual merchandiser at Myer in Tamworth, and he continued doing stage sets until the early 2000s.

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Eventually, he went on to serve two decades as general manager of Rural Press Events, overseeing key elements of the festival such as the official guide, Star Maker and Capital News.

"Over those housing years of the 90s and early 2000s it was a practical demonstration of everyone from a variety of backgrounds all working towards a common purpose, and that was a successful festival," he said.

"Now over the ensuing years as those companies have changed hands, it more and more has fallen into the hands of council.

"In a lot of ways council should be responsible for the preservation of country music history and the preservation of the elements of the festival."

In 2015, Mr Harley became the man at the helm of the festival when he was appointed council's country music manager.

"The main purpose for me joining council was to maintain that stewardship, effectively the festival has been under a secure stewardship of similar people," he said.

The festival could have just stayed a small operation back in the 70s, Mr Harley said, had it not been for the ability of the festival's founders and stakeholders to grasp the wider vision.

"It was the building of those elements like the bronze statues, or the Hands of Fame in the park or the Roll of Renown out at TRECC, all of those elements were designed to add to the collateral base of country music all year round," he said.

"Even without live music, people still come to this city and know it's the country music capital."

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