Vonda Last is a Ngaanyatjarra (Western Desert) singer-songwriter living on Kaurna land. In 2021 she performed in First Nation Voices, voted the Adelaide Fringe Bank SA Best Music Award and the sold-out Grandmother’s Songs at the Adelaide Festival Centre in 2020. Her original songs are honest and melodic with a strong sense of the Australian landscape and way of life. She released her EP Home/Ngurra in August and is officially launching it at Trinity Sessions on 2 December. For this show Vonda is accompanied by Alain Valodze (guitar) and Enrico Mick Morena (drums) and Jamie Harrison (Double bass) and Julian Ferraretto (Violin); a band of multi awarded artists and unparalleled musical talent.

Music is a powerful medium and Vonda uses her musicality as an expression of her culture and what her family, their stories, her home and country mean to her.

Russell Smith, with special guest Glenn Skuthorpe, will be supporting Vonda for this EP launch. Russell is currently working with Paul Kelly as the Didjeridoo/Yidaki player for the “Red Hot Summer Tour 2023” and has toured with Rodriguez and the late Archie Roach amongst other Australian and international artists.

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Bar from 6.30pm, Doors from 7pm, Music 7.30pm

Tix $30 

Eric Bogle is an Australian institution: a Member of the Order of Australia, 2001 Australian Humanist of the Year and a UN Peace Medal recipient, Eric also sings songs.
For forty years Eric has toured the world with his music, inflicting his songs on innocent bystanders from outback Australia to the streets of Edinburgh, New York and many places in-between.
Having toured North America eight times and Europe eleven times, on top of innumerable tours of Australia (and four previous visits to New Zealand), Eric has performed at many of the world’s major folk and music festivals and countless folk, footie, bowling and social clubs and arts theatres all around the world.
Eric has recorded seventeen studio albums and eight live albums in his long and outstanding career. He’s perhaps best known for his anti-war songs: The Band Played Waltzing Matilda – his tribute to the ANZACs of Gallipoli (“One of the world's greatest songs“– Pete Seeger) – and No Man’s Land (aka The Green Fields of France – name-checked by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair as his favourite anti-war poem), but he has also written some of the funniest songs you’ll ever hear.
A number of Eric’s songs have become international classics and recorded by Joan Baez, The Fureys, Mary Black, Donovan, Slim Dusty, June Tabor, The Corries, John Williamson, Billy Bragg, The Pogues and many others.
An open-hearted writer and performer with a self-deprecating side – and an irreverent streak – Eric’s songs frequently focus on the human condition, injustice or inhumanity, and give a voice to the voiceless.
Joining Eric for this concert will be Emma Luker and Pete Titchener. Eric will be doing the whole concert with an interval.

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Bar from 6.30pm, Doors from 7pm, Music 7.30pm

Tix $40 

‘She’s the urgent, pulsing, compassionate talent this world desperately needs.’  The Observer

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Protest singer Grace Petrie has an army of loyal fans across the alternative, folk, political and comedy scenes.  She’s toured to UK arenas with Frank Turner, Supported Billy Bragg on a UK tour, has supported comedian Hannah Gadsby, toured the UK and Australia with comedy phenomenon The Guilty Feminist, has done a prestigious live session on the BBC Radio 2 Jo Whiley Show and reached the top 40 in the UK album charts in autumn 2021 with her new album ‘Connectivity’.  Festival appearances have included The Acoustic Stage at Glastonbury Festival, Port Fairy Folk Festival in Australia and Vancouver Folk Festival in Canada among many more.

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‘A millennial’s Billy Bragg’ Songlines 

More than a decade after first emerging, protest singer, LGBTQ+ activist, comedy audiences favourite and folk star Grace Petrie stands out as one the most important songwriters working in the UK today. ‘An effervescent charm-bomb of a performer’ - The New Yorker

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Supporting Grace will be Kelly Brouhaha.

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Bar from 6.30pm, Doors from 7pm, Music 7.30pm

Tix $35

Tasmanian born Aaron Thomas, now based in Adelaide joins up with US musician, songwriter, artist and author Billy McCarthy for an afternoon of songs and stories. 

Aaron Thomas is a Tasmanian born, Sydney bred songwriter who spent 10 years in Madrid, Spain where he released 3 albums (Follow the Elephants, Made of Wood and The Blues and Greens) as well as an EP and film soundtrack before relocating to Adelaide, South Australia in 2016. His second album, Made of Wood, was recorded in Iceland and produced by Valgeir Sigurddson (Bjork, Bonnie Prince Billy, Sam Amidon, Coco Rosie, Feist). Aaron has performed at international music festivals such as SXSW (Austin), CMJ (New York), Popkomm (Berlin) and London’s Concrete and Glass as well as appearing at WOMAdelaide in 2017. Musical influences include Bonnie Prince Billy, Camille, Father John Misty, Elvis Perkins, Feist, Big Thief, Angel Olson and Andrew Bird and his songs are a mix of old style folk/country with dark, alternative bends and with melodies that wrap their knuckles around love, loss and despair. 

Billy McCarthy is a musician, songwriter, artist and author. As the former frontman of New York bands Pela and more recently Augustines, Billy’s lyrics and vocals have won him acclaim as a master of live performances, selling out venues across the United States, Europe and beyond. His lyrics explore the backstreets of the human condition, delivered with an unapologetic truth that both excites and resonates as familiar. Following sold-out success of solo tours across Europe, McCarthy released a second solo album Wild Eyes, and is currently working on new music projects and continuing to perform internationally.  

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Bar from 4pm, Doors from 3.30pm, Music 4pm

Tix $30

Catch local singer songwriter Ryan Martin John launching his new album 'Goodness Gracious Graceless' with his crack band and special guest Alana Jagt.

Expect indie folk flair with a sizeable amount of alt-country flavour peppered throughout the night from Ryan Martin John and his band comprising Kyrie Anderson, Tom Kneebone and Dave McEvoy.

Alana Jagt has just released her new album and she will be showcasing that with her instinctive, distinguished songwriting, and with their deft shape-shifting ability, Jagt can (and will) play a tiny gin bar one night and Brisbane's coveted Big Sound festival the next.

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Bar from 3pm, Doors from 3.30pm, Music 4pm

Tix $30

After a sold out show at Trinity Sessions Mahalia Barnes is coming back; don't miss out.

Mahalia Barnes has been in and around music her entire life. Throughout her childhood years she was exposed to everything from Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett to Ike + Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Donny Hathaway and Stevie Wonder, all of which helped shape her into the powerhouse soul and blues vocalist that has jaws dropping every time she picks up a mic. Mahalia and her band, The Soul Mates, have released three albums (including "Ooh Yea! - The Betty Davis Songbook" with Joe Bonamassa) and consistently play to capacity crowds around the country.

In addition to her solo projects, she has performed on various international tours with Bruce Springsteen, The Roots, Mavis Staples, Bryan Adams and Tom Jones.

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Bar from 6.30pm, Doors from 7pm, Music 7.30pm

Tix $40

African influences blend seamlessly with blues-infused melodies & soaring vocal harmonies in the music by singer songwriter Miriam Lieberman. Her songs are soulful collections of stories, beautifully told through kora, guitar & Miriam's unmistakable voice. Miriam is joined by Lara Goodridge (Baby et Lulu, FourPlay) on violin. Think Joni Mitchell/Paul Simon.

Miriam Lieberman's music presents themes of love for the natural world, stories of transformation, motherhood, love, loss and the power of imagination. The music is coloured by Miriam's transformational time studying in Latin America & West Africa that have left an imprint on her musical style though contemporary in its tone. Featuring feathery-soft strings that evoke hauntingly beautiful memories, Miriam's music is a mesmerising ride that vibes Kate Bush, but also sounds completely modern - if you're not swaying are you even listening?

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“Lilting folk tunes overlaid with sprightly Kora (West African harp) playful strings and dreamy harmonies as though Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon had convened in a Bamako back street.“ - The Guardian December 2021

 

 

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Bar from 6.30pm, Doors from 7pm, Music 7.30pm

Tix $40

Acclaimed Australian singer – songwriter Robert Forster (The Go-Betweens) launches his 8th solo album ‘The Candle And The Flame’ at the intimate Trinity Sessions. Robert Forster is one of Australia’s most literate songwriters, with a solo repertoire drawn from a deep well of ideas and imagery, delivered in a conversational tone and impossible beautiful melodies. In 1978, with Queensland University friend Grant McLennan, he co-founded the acclaimed pop/rock band The Go-Betweens. The group, based in London for five and a half years, recorded six albums, toured extensively, before breaking up in late 1989.

In 2000, reunited with Grant McLennan, The Go-Betweens recorded their seventh album, and would record two more albums, one of which, ‘Oceans Apart’, was awarded the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association) Best Adult Contemporary Album of 2005. 

From 2005 to 2013, Forster was the music critic for Australian politics and culture magazine The Monthly. He won the Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism in 2006, and a collection of his music writings was published in 2009, titled, ‘The Ten Rules of Rock and Roll’. In 2015, Forster received an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from Queensland University. The following year, his memoir, ‘Grant & I ’ was published, winning the Book Of The Year award in Mojo and Uncut in 2017. His memoir was also translated and published in Italian and German.

Between 2007 and 2019, Forster recorded three albums of original material: The Evangelist (’08); Songs To Play (’15); Inferno (’19). On February 3, 2023, his new album, ‘The Candle And The Flame’ will be released.  

Robert Forster will be undertaking tours of the UK, Europe, and Australia in the first half of 2023. He is currently writing a novel, and preparing the release of Volume 3 of The Go-Betweens Boxset series, ‘G Stands For Go-Betweens.’

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Bar from 6.30pm, Doors from 7pm, Music 7.30pm

Tix $48