2025 Festival

Wirrina Bluegrass & Acoustic Roots Festival

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The Wirrina Bluegrass & Acoustic Roots Festival 2025

Wirrina 2025

The next Wirrina festival dates are
Friday 21 to Sunday 23 November.

Pop it in your calendar!

 

2025 performance applications

Applications to perform at the 2025 Festival are closing on Anzac Day—April 25.


Please send an email  to wirrinabluegrass@gmail.com with your application to play as soon as possible before this date. If you’re a Bluegrass or Acoustic Roots performer please send us whatever you think we need to know about you! (For example, a short bio, links to a sound bite/video.)

Wirrina Music Camp 2025

The Wirrina Music Camp for stringed instruments is happening again in 2025.
Details here

Sponsorship

Ever wondered how a festival pays for itself? In the case of Wirrina Bluegrass & Acoustic Roots Festival, ticket sales cover the unavoidable administration costs and payments for performing artists —and these are more of a ‘honorarium’ plus travel and accommodation. Longer term, we’d like to attract somewhat larger audiences and be able to pay closer to their actual worth. The marquees, a major infrastructure cost, are sponsored by Wirrina Cove Holiday Park. The Young Musicians’ Award began because a festival supporter organised grant funding. That funding will run out after this year.

We all love this festival, its particular focus and format and we’d like to expand what is on offer. An example is our addition of the bush dance; there are possibilities of separate concept presentations/workshops being offered to us. These would add depth to our festival. But how do we fund these when we are already stretched to the limit? We are hoping there are people in our festival community that would like to make these ‘extra-curricular’ activities happen and keep happening. The cost is generally around $500 to $1500 per activity. An activity sponsorship could be financed by one or more people and sponsors can choose to be named in the program or remain anonymous. If you are interested in being involved in this way, please contact us.

We are always open to new constructive ideas to improve our festival both in enjoyment and sustainability and the best way to make contact is by emailing us at wirrinabluegrass@gmail.com

Performers 2025

The committee is excited to announce that Jeri Foreman with Grace Honeywell will join us from Glasgow at Wirrina this November!

Long -time Wirrina festival attendees will likely remember Jerri and her fiddle playing from earlier festivals —playing with Astro Cobalt and Andrew Clermont’s Supper Club shows. She was substantially involved in SA’s Folk, Bluegrass and modern string music for many years before moving to Scotland. Grace joins her with acclaimed expertise in fiddle, guitar and songwriting. Both have a solid teaching reputation with adults and youth, as well as impressive performance histories.

They will be performing, teaching and leading sessions at our festival (Nov 21—23) and also arrive Monday 17 to teach at the music camp beforehand (Nov 18—20). More information coming soon!
Jeri Foreman & Grace Honeywell

Runaway Dixie

This year Runaway Dixie join us for the first time with original Australian songs and Bluegrass classics. We welcome Virginia, Lynette & Jim to our gathering.
Runaway Dixie  music is traditional Bluegrass, Gospel, and vibrant Country classics plus the trio’s original compositions, and features Jim Hermel (lead Vocals) on banjo, Lynette Coad (Harmony Vocal) on bass guitar, and Virginia Coad (Lead/Harmony Vocal) on lead/rhythm acoustic guitar.
Runaway Dixie

Watershed Stringband

Cat & Clint join Dave & Wendy from The Cartwheels, to form Watershed Stringband — featuring red-hot fiddle and banjo, dreamy vocal harmonies, snappy guitar pickin’ and juicy double bass. This all-star lineup bring a unique blend of vintage country from driving bluegrass and old time dance tunes to western swing and Australiana.

Watershed Stringband

Sessions

There are many options for sessions and  jamming at Wirrina Festivals so bring your instrument/s and join in the fun!

Irish/Celtic, Bluegrass and Old Time sessions, plus spontaneous sessions of any style can be held in the Open Mic tent, the Workshop tent  and around the fire pits after the end of programmed events each evening.

During performances

Our performers come from far and wide and rehearse hard to play for Wirrina audiences. Please be aware that jamming, talking and other noise travels far, so we ask you to keep that in mind when near concerts on the main stage and open mic stage. Please turn mobile phones to silent, give your attention to the performers and move away from the stages for chatting and socialising— there is plenty of space for this that won’t disrupt concerts.

Many thanks for being mindful.

Get involved!

There are a variety of ways to participate in the festival.

  • Apply to play on the program
  • Bring your instrument/s and play at the black-board tent
  • Join in the hosted sessions
  • Attend an instrumental or vocal workshop
  • Run a workshop
  • Jam in the session area
  • Come to watch and listen as part of the audience
  • Volunteer on the festival crew; six hours of service = one free festival ticket!

Book accommodation at Wirrina

Please go to the Wirrina Cove Holiday Park website to book your accommodation for the Festival—camping, caravans, and cabins available.
www.wirrinacoveholidaypark.com.au 
Click on the Upcoming Events page, then scroll down to the Wirrina Bluegrass section. There you will see a link/button to access accomodation bookings.

Reducing waste at Wirrina

We ask patrons to spare a thought for the environment and the volunteers who clean up after the festival. Thank you for helping us to reduce the rubbish. Lets keep up the great effort in 2024!  Reduce, reuse, recycle. 

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Festival merchandise

There will be some new ‘merch’ and old favourites in 2024! We love it when you buy from us because it all goes towards running the Festival.

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