Bad moon on the rise, but not for country music

I had radio keeping me company while I drove north just before Easter, and found lots of on-air time was devoted to the shock-horror news that Splendour in the Grass had been cancelled after just one week of ticket sales.

Apparently not even Kylie Minogue headlining could save one of Australia's largest and oldest music festivals.

It was pretty ironic because one of the things I was planning to do over Easter was be part of the audience at Countryfest at Bloomsbury, which had been rocked a month before it was due to open with the news that headline act John Fogarty of Creedence Clearwater Revival fame wasn't going to appear.

There was lots of speculation at the time - were they not selling enough tickets either, activating 'unexpected circumstances'?

Whatever it was, the difference was that this event wasn't cancelled despite the loss of a big name, and I for one was pretty happy about that.

It was a very relaxed day and night (you could spend three days there in your campervan or tent if you so desired) in a grassy paddock just off the Bruce Highway.

Food trucks were selling everything from Brazilian barbecue to sweet waffles, tents selling crafty wares from talented Prosperpine, Mackay and Charters Towers artists were all around, there were a couple of bars where you could watch the world go by and admire the range backdrop, and country-inspired music was blasting out the speakers.

It made me think on the other music festivals I've been to - the Big Red Bash outside Birdsville is the first one that comes to mind, along with its little sister that's growing up very fast, the Mundi Mundi Bash near Broken Hill in NSW.

Their atmosphere was very similar - people had travelled so far they were committed to having a good time and making it work.

It was similar at the Way Out West Festival in Winton on the weekend - a much smaller event, but the lengths people went to get there - hundreds of kilometres of detours to get round flood waters - showed that it really meant something to be there.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two other festivals with country at their core that seem to have a solid supporter base in this uncertain world - CMC Rocks at Willowbank, and Savannah in the Round, way up north at Mareeba.

The latter is even staging what's described as a once-in-a-lifetime "Savannah Sounds on the Reef" where Lee Kernaghan and Sheppard are going to perform in front of 100 community heroes on Reef Magic's floating pontoon on the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns, later this month.

That's part of an ex-Tropical Cyclone Jasper recovery plan, but isn't it telling that country music was their genre of choice.

I'll bet the festival promoters, which have US country music star Kip Moore as their star attraction, are happy!

I was interviewing Travis Collins last week and asked him why country music festivals were succeeding where conventional ones weren't.

"I think country music really treats its fans right," was his response.

The quality of the patrons who like country music has something to do with it as well.

People say festivals need to play to a niche to attract the paying dollar early - country music has known that all along.

- Sally Gall, North Queensland Register senior journalist

Talk of the Town is a weekly opinion piece written by ACM journalists. The thoughts expressed are their own.