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SIERRA FERRELL WINS BIG AT AMERICANA AWARDS IN NASHVILLE AHEAD OF AUSTRALIAN TOUR AND OUT ON THE WEEKEND APPEARANCE

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SIERRA FERRELL‘S October Australian visit will cap off a banner year for the artistl that includes winning Emerging Act of the Year at the 2022 Americana Music Association’s Honors & Awards, which took place last week at Nashville’s storied Ryman Auditorium. Prior to her win, she and her band charmed the crowd with a rousing performance of “At the End of the Rainbow.” Watch it HERE.

 “Honestly, I was totally floored to win the Americana Music Association’s Emerging Act of the Year award,” she marveled. “This is such an honor for both me and my band. Just performing at the ceremony itself was a big deal for me. Then to win and be recognized in front of so many friends and true musical legends made for such a magical evening at the Mother Church of Country Music. I’ll never forget it.”

 Jed Hilly, Executive Director of the Americana Music Association, has long been a champion of Ferrell’s music. After her win, he commented, “Sierra embodies the free spirit of an Americana artist and her win reflects the bright future of our community.”
 
In the year since her Rounder debut Long Time Coming was released, Ferrell has racked up an impressive list of accomplishments that includes sold-out tours of the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom, and collaborations with artists including Billy Strings, The Black Keys, Diplo, Early James, Shakey Graves, Ray LaMontagne, and Old Crow Medicine Show. Her song “In Dreams,” a longtime fan favorite, has recently become a viral sensation on TikTok and across numerous streaming platforms.

In early October, Ferrell and her band will travel to Australia for a run of tour dates, and on November 5, she will appear alongside country music legend Tanya Tucker, Nikki Lane, and the Guthrie Girls at Willie Nelson’s Lucktoberfest in Spicewood, Texas. 

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Already a favourite figure on Australia’s burgeoning alternative-country scene thanks to two appearances (in 2018 and 2019) at Melbourne’s Out On The Weekend Festival and shows with C.W.Stoneking, West Virginia-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter SIERRA FERRELL returns to Australia this October with her band. Special guest at most shows will be the legendary musical innovator, original leather craftsmen, and recent LA realtor, the one and only JONNY FRITZ.
 
Sierra’s latest visit follows her long-awaited Rounder Records debut Long Time Coming, which was released to much acclaim in August 2021. The album and its singles including “In Dreams” and “Bells of Every Chapel” gained traction on ABC Country (including Album of the Week), Kix-Country and CMT in Australia, feature album on Melbourne’s 3PBS, and some excellent press. Sierra has just completed a sell-out UK and European tour, and her October visit will be her first here with her band.
 
While the prospect of seeing Sierra with her band is undoubtedly exciting, what remains most striking about this artist is her voice. “Her voice,” as Pitchfork has said, is what “made Ferrell go viral in the first place. (Her) singing has clear antecedents—Loretta Lynn’s holler-raised twang, Dolly Parton’s effortless melodiousness, Bessie Smith’s confident rasp—but her nods to those legends always feel heartfelt, never academic. Already, she’s learned to sound only like herself.”
 

October will see Sierra return to Out On The Weekend – Australia’s original and best alternative-country/Americana festival – as the headliner. With fellow OOTW favourite Jonny Fritz in tow, she will also play side shows in  Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Eltham, Melbourne,  Meeniyan and Adelaide.

SIERRA FERRELL BAND, ON TOUR IN OCTOBER
With Special Guest, JONNY FRITZ

FRI 7 – GREAT CLUB, SYDNEY , NSW with JONNY FRITZ – TIX
SAT 8 – OUT ON THE WEEKEND, MELBOURNE, VIC   – TIX
SUN 9 – CANBERRA THEATRE, ACT with JONNY FRITZ – TIX
TUE 11 – THE ZOO, BRISBANE, QLD with JONNY FRITZ – TIX
WED 12 – ELTHAM HOTEL , NSW with JONNY FRITZ – TIX
THU 13 – THORNBURY THEATRE, MELBOURNE, VIC with JONNY FRITZ and EILS & THE DRIP – TIX
FRI 14 – MEENIYAN TOWN HALL, VIC Sierra only – TIX 
WED 19 – THE GOV, ADELAIDE, SA Sierra only – TIX 

 

 

With her spellbinding voice and time-bending sensibilities, Sierra Ferrell makes music that’s as fantastically vagabond as the artist herself. A lifelong singer, she got her start performing covers in a local West Virginia bar at the young age of seven.“There was this little dead-end bar nearby that my mom and I would go hang out at during the day, and I’d get up and sing Shania Twain songs,”she recalls. “There’d be hardly anyone in there, so I’d have free rein of the place.”

Later on, while living in a trailer park, Ferrell had a chance encounter that would soon turn out to be life changing. “I met all these homeless kids who were traveling all over the place and playing amazing old songs, and I wanted to be a part of that,” says Ferrell. “The music they were making was so honest, so pure. It seemed important to bring that kind of music back, and it’s been with me ever since.”

Sierra left home in her early 20s to journey across the country with these kids, playing everywhere from truck stops to alleyways to freight-train boxcars speeding down the railroad tracks. After years of living in her van and busking on the streets of New Orleans and Seattle, she moved to Nashville and soon landed a deal with Rounder Records on the strength of her magnetic live show and a series of viral YouTube videos on the GemsOnVHS channel, including one for “In Dreams” which has amassed over six million views.

On her highly anticipated label debut Long Time Coming, which was co-produced by Australian Stu Hibberd and 10-time Grammy Award-winner Gary Paczosa (Alison Krauss, Dolly Parton, Gillian Welch), Ferrell was joined by a knockout lineup of guest musicians (including Jerry Douglas, Tim O’Brien, Chris Scruggs, Sarah Jarosz, Billy Strings, and Dennis Crouch), adding entirely new texture to each of her gracefully crafted and undeniably heartfelt songs. The result was an album beautifully unbound by genre or era; one that instantly transporting her audience to an infinitely more enchanted world.

While the wayward sound ofLong Time Coming is in many ways a perfect echo of Ferrell’s free-spirited nature, there’s also a much deeper intention at play: a desire to expand her listeners’ capacity for wonder, so that they might uncover some enchantment in their own lives.

“A lot of us are taught to wake up, go to work, make money, eat, sleep, rinse, repeat,”says Ferrell. “It’s so easy to get caught up in that nine-to-five routine, and end up numb and dulled-down to everything. I want my music to help people break away from that — to get lost in their imagination, and start seeing how magical the world can be if you just pay attention.”

“Nashville’s best album in decades.” – Americana UK

“Meet West Virginia’s Sierra Ferrell, now in Nashville and newly signed to Rounder. She’s been wandering the country busking and adventuring, and she’s got a tremendous voice that’s joyously lilting, and at once vintage and contemporary. She sings with abandon, with a huge repertoire that spans jazz, country and cowboy music, with undertones of the blues.” – NPR Music

“It’s clear that no one, and I mean no one, is doing what Ferrell is doing, be it in her songwriting, arrangements, or delivery.” – No Depression

“Sierra Ferrell’s dazzling debut album on the Rounder label takes the listener on a journey around the world while delving into the depths of heartache and a search for home—wherever, whatever, and whomever that may be.” – Adventures in Americana

FOLLOW SIERRA FERRELL
Website https://found.ee/SFWebsite
Facebook https://found.ee/SFFacebook
Instagram https://found.ee/SFinstagram
Twitter https://found.ee/SFTwitter
TikTok https://found.ee/SFTikTok

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Mick Pacholli

Mick created TAGG - The Alternative Gig Guide in 1979 with Helmut Katterl, the world's first real Street Magazine. He had been involved with his fathers publishing business, Toorak Times and associated publications since 1972.  Mick was also involved in Melbourne's music scene for a number of years opening venues, discovering and managing bands and providing information and support for the industry. Mick has also created a number of local festivals and is involved in not for profit and supporting local charities.        

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