Festival of Small Halls ft. Fru Skagerrak & Liam Gerner & Dan Hopkins

Fru Skagerrak

The music of Fru Skagerrak takes you on a journey through Scandinavia; from lowlands to mountains, from slow airs to lively polkas, in major and in minor, and everything in between. Fru Skagerrak – ”Lady Skagerrak” – are three master musicians, one from each Scandinavian country: Maja Kjær Jacobsen from Denmark, Elise Wessel Hildrum from Norway and Anna Lindblad from Sweden.

In 2011, these three globetrotting musicians met for the first time at Tønder Festival, Denmark’s biggest Folk Festival, in a roaring session that had engulfed the backstage bar. Through the mayhem of tunes you could feel a certain Scandinavian groove, and in that moment the connection between these three fiddlers was clear. After meeting at Tønder Festival for three consecutive years, Fru Skagerrak finally saw the light of day in August 2014.

The trio brings together the diverse traditions from each of their homelands, which surround the Skagerrak strait. Through a repertoire of traditional tunes, new compositions, and songs in their respective languages, they express their kinship and love of their shared heritage. The result is an explosion of the sounds that exist in Scandinavian music today.

Liam Gerner

Steeped in blues and country music, Liam Gerner left the Adelaide Hills to try his luck in London. The young guitar slinger quickly made a strong impression and earned a crust opening for Paul Weller, Jason Isbell, Drive by Truckers, Paolo Nutini and many more. Liam then headed to the US, joined Texan country rocker Ryan Bingham’s band and experienced frontline American roots music. Returning to Australia in 2014, Liam released his debut album ‘Land Of No Roads’, a startling collection of original songs he composed while touring with Bingham and cut with some of LA’s finest players and his follow up ‘Liam Gerner and the Sunset Pushers’ (2017).

Since then Liam has been touring relentlessly throughout Australia, New Zealand and the USA. Now based in Melbourne, Liam has developed his songwriting, collaborated with local musicians and formed The Sunset Pushers, a band as fluid and soulful as his songs. Liam tours extensively in Australia/New Zealand and is an in-demand guitarist working touring and recording with The Eurogliders, Pnau, Pnau & Elton John, records with Empire Of The Sun, and Vika and Linda Bull.

Dan Hopkins

Australian Blues|Roots|Gospel artist Dan Hopkins plays a punchy brand of modern roots that has a distinct delta flavour with gospel overtones. Dan creates an experience that could be described as Ash Grunwald, Eric Bibb and Paul Kelly meeting down at the crossroads. This culminates in an emotionally driven journey down a sweetly plucked but often dirty slide guitar borne road across the Southern blues idiom.

Dan's smooth rich vocal tone, his dynamic finger style blues and dexterity on the slide guitar mixed with poignant lyrics create a highly versatile performer not to be missed.

Bookings are direct with Woodfordia and tickets are $25, Under-12 free.
MVAC Members get a special price of $20 per ticket!

BOOK TICKETS HERE!