On 26 and 27 October, Badlands Brewery will be launching Backroads Brews & Blues Fest, a brand-new festival blending craft beer and blues and roots, in Orange, NSW.
With a focus on promoting small and regional breweries, stallholders will include fellow Central West breweries Reckless Brewing Co., Three Tails, and Welders Dog, alongside smaller metropolitan breweries such as Mountain Culture, Wildflower and Willie the Boatman.
Joining the brewers will be prominent blues musicians, including ARIA winner William Crighton and Band, Claude Hay and the Kung Fu Mustard, and Ebi Nori, aka Phoebe Parsons.
Backroads Brews & Blues will be held in the centre of Orange, in the carpark behind Badlands Brewery’s new taproom. Though Badlands will not be exhibiting during the event, the taproom will be open exclusively for ticketholders over the weekend.
Badlands Head Brewer, Jon Shiner, said that moving into the new taproom mid last year meant that the brewery had capacity to host events such as Backroads Brews & Blues Fest.
“We’ve been going for 14 years, but we’ve only had our retail space for a couple. We did it the hard way first, trying to go it solely wholesale. As a little brewery, that’s been a tightrope walk our entire existence. Last year we moved right into the middle of the Orange CBD, and we have this great space with a public carpark right on our doorstep. The first step was the opportunity, that we have this space, and we thought it would be great to activate it for an awesome community space,” he said.
The main motivation for Backroads Brews & Blues Fest is to provide exposure for regional brewers.
“Regional brewers don’t get the hype and they don’t get the press that some of these inner city and Northern Beaches brewers get. They have an area that they can leverage, whereas we don’t. It was about trying to give back to the industry by creating an event that small, independent, regional brewers like Badlands can be a part of, so that other people can discover them. You can explore the backroads of New South Wales for the weekend by coming down to Orange,” Shiner said.
With the region seeing more music festivals and live shows, the blues and roots element is another drawcard for consumers.
“As far as I know, we are the only festival that combines music and beer on an equal footing. Normally, festivals focus on one or the other, but we’re trying to do something a bit different, and we have an awesome lineup of music,” Shiner said.
Tickets are now available for the festival, with early bird pricing ending this Friday.