Paul Kelly

Awarded the Order of Australia in 2017 and with 17 ARIAs and five APRAs, few songwriters find ways to keep that creative fever burning for as long and as brightly as Kelly. The country of his birth, its emotional interior and geographical landscape, its heroes and villains, our hopes and failings, have all been a constant in Kelly’s long list of Australian-set songs: ‘To Her Door’, ‘Leaps and Bounds’, ‘From St Kilda To King’s Cross’, ‘How To Make Gravy’, ‘When I First Met Your Ma’, ‘Dumb Things’, ‘Before Too Long’… the list is endless. He has written about the country’s greatest cricketer, ‘Bradman’, and its most infamous bushranger, Ned Kelly, in ‘Our Sunshine’. ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’, co-written with Kev Carmody, has taught more Australians about the history of the battle for land rights than newspaper headlines ever could.

In Australia, Kelly will be joined by special guest Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit. Possessing “one of the strongest, truest voices in American roots rock” (Allmusic), six-time GRAMMY winner emerged from Alabama as a member of Drive-By Truckers, before going solo with 2007’s Sirens of the Ditch. Together with his collective, Isbell’s latest release – 2023’s Weathervanes – won Best Americana Album at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards. Written while he was an actor on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, the album features the rolling thunder of Isbell’s fearsome live band the 400 Unit, who’ve earned a place in the rock ‘n’ roll cosmos alongside the greatest backing ensembles, as powerful and essential to the storytelling as The E Street Band or the Wailers.

Opening proceedings in Australia is 2x ARIA and 9x CMAA Golden Guitar winner Fanny Lumsden, whose gone from growing up on a sheep farm in western NSW to playing Glastonbury. Her album HEY DAWN debuted at #1 on the ARIA Australian Album charts and was the fourth-highest selling country album of last year. Says The Australian, “One of the genre’s most esteemed performers”.