2024 Festival Guests overview

Tableau of seven photos of musicians

Wellyfest guests 2024

We’re thrilled with the guests for Wellyfest 2024. There’s someone for everyone in this year’s lineup with a diverse range of folk music styles on show.

The guests are:

Fred Smith

Australian Folk Music Awards Solo Artist of the Year, “Fred Smith is simply the best folk/country musician working in this country… he has created a repertoire that is wry, literate, witty, powerfully emotional and insightful.” (Bruce Elder, Sydney Morning Herald). Fred and a handful of New Zealand’s finest will be playing songs from his rich back catalogue and his new album ‘Look’, as well as his stunning song cycle ‘Sparrows of Kabul’ written following a stint working on the evacuation of Kabul. We’re stoked to have Fred Smith back at the Festival again.

Nicola Mitchell

Nicola Mitchell is a folk/country singer-songwriter based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. She has a strong connection to te ao Māori and whakapapas back to Tainui iwi, and incorporates the reo into her work wherever she can. She has worked in multiple family bands singing with her twin Maegan in a duo called The Mitchell Twins, as well as playing across Aotearoa and Australia with her older sister, Jenny Mitchell. In 2023 she was nominated alongside co-writers Maegan Mitchell & Tami Neilson for APRA Best Country Song with her song Find a River (performed by The Mitchell Twins) also in 2023 she won the Female Vocal Solo Section in the NZ Gold Guitar Awards

ACAPOLLiNATiONS

ACAPOLLiNATIONS will present a multi-lingual, compelling collection of folklore songs, where archaic musical systems are reimagined for three vivacious voices. In this performance, Tui Mamaki (French-Kiwi), Gabrielle Young (Belgian-Kiwi) and Sally Howe (Cook Island-Kiwi) interweave songs from their grandmothers – both genetic and imagined – with a bespoke repertoire issue of Tui Mamaki’s love affair with Bulgarian Folklore. Evocative melodies, stirringly close harmony and stories of longing, harvest and transcendence.

The Kist

The Kist (Jude Madill, Rusty Tönz and Pat Higgins) present sensitive, authentic songs, channelling the human condition through music, with the most soulful songs we can find. The group’s music is rooted in Irish traditional, Gaelic, Te Reo, American old-time.The sound is acoustic, and sensitive for the most part, but with a smattering of up-tempo numbers. The Kist will be happy after a gig, with a reflective nod of recognition, that says “Yes. That’s what life is, love, loss, life, death, grief and joy.”

Elyssa Vulpes

Elyssa Vulpes is a globe-trotting Italian multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter with over a dozen albums under her belt. She has performed at festivals around the world, including the Edinburgh and Wellington Fringe, the Wellington and Auckland Folk Festival, Wellington Gardens Magic Festival and won 3rd prize at the Biella Festival in her home country. Soaking up the cultural elements of the Celtic Folk Traditions of Ireland and Scotland and the celebrated Italian singer-songwriters of the 1970s, her music showcases a variety of musical hues that go from sombre to comedic, offering the listener songs of passion and transformation, shining a light of hope in our troubled times.

Vox Ethno

Vox Ethno is an ensemble of five female singers accompanied by a five-piece band featuring contemporary and traditional instruments. They perform mostly original arrangements of traditional (ethno) folk music from the Balkans and across Europe.

Rough Town

Party time! Hailing from Auckland, New Zealand, Rough Town is a powerhouse ensemble on a mission to ignite the folk scene with their fun, infectious blend of traditional tunes and irresistible grooves. Grasping the universal elements of dance music with both hands, and encouraging their audiences to bridge the gap between Irish dancing, ceilidh dancing, and club dancing, Rough Town is a continuation of the modern Trad Disco movement, drawing inspiration from iconic bands like Four Winds, The East Pointers, Imar, and Lunasa.