The touring festival is a series of shows where some of the best folk and contemporary acoustic artists perform in tiny halls all across regional Australia. The 2019 summer tour began on January 4 in Stanley, Tasmania and will play its last show in Bowenville, Queensland on February 3, visiting 19 halls in between. 

This year, the tour will will return to St Saviour’s Cathedral Hall and also visit the Cygnet Folk Festival and Illawarra Folk Festival. Last year’s summer tour had a successful show at the hall and festival presenters are excited to return. 

Woodfordia Inc’s executive producer Eleanor Rigden said that “regional folks put on the best kind of show”. 

Australian blues and country music talent Liam Gerner and Scandanavian trio Fru Skagerrak will headline the tour. 

“The opportunity to enjoy musicians of this quality just isn’t regularly available in regional towns,” Ms Rigden said. 

Goulburn’s Selena Bates, 13, will open the show for the Australian and international artists, with a 20-minute vocal and ukulele performance.

Selena regularly performs at the Goulburn Regional Conservatorium and plays in a Mulwaree High School band, but has never opened a festival before. Her love for music comes from being surrounded by sound, growing up with musical parents. 

“It’s a pretty cool opportunity and I just want to connect with the audience,” Selena said.

Attendees can expect to hear a broad range of songs from Radiohead, to Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl, lyrically adapted to Selena’s I Ate a Pig. “I like changing styles of music into another genre,” Selena said. 

Selena wakes up at six o’clock most mornings to practice and, with such great talent in her early high school years, may be headlining the festival in a few years. “It might be cool to tour with the Small Halls festival one day,” she said.

It’s not just people from regional communities who love the Small Halls festival: people from cities are joining in on the fun, too. “More new friends are leaving the cities to get out and see what it’s all about,” Ms Rigden said.  

The festival continues to grow in popularity with the support of the Goulburn Mulwaree Council, Goulburn Regional Conservatorium and “dedicated regional communities lighting up their local halls,” Ms Rigden said. 

Tickets are available online or at the door on the night for $15.