Worth Their Weight in Gold: Tamworth Country Music Festival co-founder Max Ellis reflects on the rise of the country music capital

HE'S known as the man behind the "country music capital".

In the late 60s, industry icon Max Ellis was part of a small group at 2TM who coined the title with a big vision of putting Tamworth on the global map.

As station manager, and later with Max Ellis Marketing, he went on to develop many of the activities that form the core of the famous Tamworth Country Music Festival today.

He was the driving force behind the Hands of Fame, Roll of Renown, Tamworth Songwriters Association, Country Music Awards and Australia's monthly country music newspaper, Capital News.

Extraordinarily, Mr Ellis said he was never a big country music fan. But over the past 50 years, he's lived and breathed the genre, its people, and the event that has become the core of Tamworth's fabric.

"The pleasure that country music and the festival has brought to so many people over the last 50 years is extraordinary," he told the Leader.

"It's incredible how many people come back year after year. They treat all the stars as their families and it's a wonderful feeling to know that I, and others, have developed this event to such a degree that it's their event rather than ours."

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Take a look around Tamworth and you'd be hard-pressed to find a country music attraction Mr Ellis didn't play a role in establishing.

In the 80s, he was the director of the company that built the Longyard Hotel, and along with business partner Warwick Bennet, established the Country Collection wax museum and the iconic Big Golden Guitar.

He was even the driving force in the establishment of the giant Tamworth Regional Entertainment and Conference Centre (TRECC), which opened in 1998.

Over the decades he's seen many changes to the festival, one of the biggest being Tamworth Regional Council coming on board as the key organiser.

"We've institutionalised some areas of the festival, which is both good and bad of course, because it's a very individual, personal event," he said.

"But I think it's certainly given us the opportunity of stabilising the future of the festival, because we know now that it's supported, funded and run by the council, and it's not going to disappear because someone drops out."

Today, he still has an ongoing interest and involvement in the Australian country music industry, and an active passion for preserving its history.

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