QMF 2019 announces its first line-up

AFTER selling out its last three years, the Queenscliff Music Festival is back for its 23rd year with a killer first round line-up of local and global artists.

Icons performing on the Bellarine this November are a mix of solo sensations and chart-topping bands.

Multi award-winning singer-songwriter Missy Higgins and multi-talented musician, broadcaster and sometime actor Clare Bowditch will be flying the female frontrunners flag, and country music star Troy Cassar-Daley and blistering blues-rocker Ash Grunwald will bring the songbook swag.

New Zealand is lending legend Tim Finn, who will bring his adored back catalogue of hits from Split Enz to solo days, and British percussive guitar master Newton Faulkner will perform his latest and greatest with gusto.

Spectacular showmen The Cat Empire and Melbourne’s own future soul quartet Hiatus Kaiyote will bring the big band sounds, along with folk trio stalwarts The Waifs and fan favourite intergalactic rockers The Delta Riggs.

Another flock of eclectic entries on the international front are coming coast-side in 2019 too.

Canada’s Juno Award nominated artist and producer Alysha Brilla will showcase her crosscultural roots, Southern Californian surf rockers Allensworth are perfectly placed to bring the coastal grooves, while Nashville-based touring troubadour and cult-followed entertainer Steve Poltz will once again grace our shores with his dynamic and dexterous on stage antics.

More Aussie acts rounding out the announcement are adored satirical singer-songwriters Paul McDermott & Gatesy, Rhiannon Atkinson-Howatt’s indie-pop alter ego Merpire and Americana eightpiece Fools.

Also, six piece rhythm n’ roots outfit Amaru Tribe, Sydney jazz trio Brekky Boy, danceinducing Dubarray from the Sunshine Coast, Tamworth-raised, Sydney-based singer-songwriter Charlie Collins, Tasmanian folksinger Claire Anne Taylor and 18 year-old indie, rock and soul upand- comer Stevie Jean have been announced to perform too.

The festival team are also incredibly aware of their environmental footprint as an event that sees about 20,000 people come through each year and are immensely proud of the 90.07 per cent of waste they were able to divert from landfill in 2018.

The Queenscliff Music Festival have recycled all plastics into picnic tables and benches, so attendees of this year’s festival will most likely be sitting on and eating off the results of this great initiative. The 23rd Queenscliff Music Festival will run from November 22-24.

For more information, head to qmf.net.au.