Southern Highlands and Tablelands artists to take stage at Sydney Folk Festival

The three day event featuring more than 35 acts will be held in two festival hubs in Surry Hills with a special focus on the creativity and diversity of folk arts and artists from across NSW.

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Headlining the all-star line-up are award-winning Trans-Tasman duo We Mavericks, Fred Smith and his band, Queensland's Penny Davies and Roger Ilott, along with the Miriam Lieberman Trio, Australian Celtic outfit Austral and Victorian singer-songwriter Michael Waugh.

There is also a few local acts making the trip to the city, including Mutual Acquaintances, Dave Johnson and Don Brian.

The Mutual Acquaintances are a four-piece band with uillean pipes, Scottish small pipes, accordion, tin whistles, guitars, bass and percussion, as well as voices.

The band plays Irish, Scottish and Australian traditional folk, as well as contemporary folk music.

Band members Ian Barker, Lucas Critchley, Brett Guyer and Michael Spencer have variously performed with Taliesin, Lucid Dream, Oran Mor, and Highland Piping Bands in Goulburn, Canberra and the Southern Highlands.

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Dave Johnson presents a wide range of material drawing on his wide knowledge of the Australian tradition, with guitar or concertina and taking up the fiddle for the dance tunes.

His recent publication 'Songs of Australia' contains some 320 songs including the classics and some new settings of poetic treasures.

Always keen to encourage younger players to explore their traditions, Dave leads The Saplings through a repertoire of old, and not so old, songs encouraging them to use unaffected natural voices.

Whether performing solo, with a band backing, leading workshops, arranging bush dance music, conducting bush orchestras, scripting musical plays, or just busking on the streets of Bowral, Dave's passion for Australia's musical heritage is abundantly clear.

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Don Brian is a singer of traditional Australian songs, he was also a one time member of the Tin Shed Rattlers when he lived in Wagga Wagga.

He remained a valued member of the Roaring Forties though his five years of self-imposed exile on Norfolk Island and has also been in a duo with Margaret Walters called Southern Cross Trawlers. Both associations have resumed since Don's return.

So, whether you like your folk big and rowdy or simple and spare you'll be spoilt for choice from August 19-21 at the Sydney Folk Festival.

The festival will be held between the NSW Teachers Federation Conference Centre and the Gaelic Club, each within 700m of the other, and both just a short walk from Central Station.

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