Dreaming big as Nashville comes to Orange
This February sees the return of the American-themed country music festival ‘A Night in Nashville’, with some of Australia’s best young musicians performing the all-time greatest country songs from the USA.
Held over two nights, February 10–11 in the neon-decorated agricultural pavilion at the Orange Showground, the line-up includes Orange’s own rising stars Robbie Mortimer and CLancy Pye, who will be joined by up-and-coming country artists Jake Davey, Abby Christo, James Keith, Luke Furbank, and Bella Mackenzie.
“It's going to be a great show,” ‘A Night in Nashville’ founder, Tim Mortimer said. “We've invested in good artists and the music is going to be outstanding, we’ve got a seven-piece professional backing band this time around and the sound’s gonna blow your cowboy hat off!”
A local country music festival has long been a dream for Tim, but he said it was the COVID lockdowns and travel restrictions that gave the push for the inaugural ‘A Night in Nashville’ in December 2021.
“During COVID when everyone was locked down and couldn't see each other, and there was the element of no one can travel around the world for two years, so I thought, let's bring Nashville here!” Tim recalled.
“Let's create an event for the community to get together and people were so happy, they just couldn't believe that they were having beers with each other, it was the perfect weekend… I got a thousand handshakes that weekend saying, ‘thank you, this is amazing!’”
With a passion for music and seeing the potential of the event, Tim decided to do it all again and believes it could grow to be a real drawcard festival for Orange.
“Big time,” Tim said, who like to grow it into a week-long, multi-stage event making use of the showground pavilions and arenas.
“We just need to roll it on a few years I think but then if we can pull an American artist as a town people will swarm here, there's no doubt about it,” Tim said.
“So the goal is to get to that point where we can afford to pull an American artist… have a week-long festival there of American cars, and pageants, and things like that. there's a lot that can be done in that sort of theme.”
Drawing people to Orange is one of Tim’s main aims for the event, which he is deliberately holding during what is traditionally one of the least busy periods for tourism. He’s even offering a 20 per cent discount on accommodation booked through his property management business, BNB Made Easy.
“Orange is a pretty central hub, like Tamworth is to the north of New South Wales, and there's a lot of country fans in all directions from Orange — including Sydney,” Tim said.
“Whether February is the right weekend to put it on…. I'm not sure; you can only try.
“And hopefully, it becomes something like a Parkes Elvis Festival or a Van Fest for Forbes, but for country music in Orange. I do dream big, but I think that if we can persist and get the support of the community, it can grow — I've got no doubt actually!”
For more details and tickets, visit www.anightinnashville.com.au