'Let's get this party started!' Tamworth primed and ready for festival

Council staff and volunteers were busy bees on Thursday, working through the occasional shower to put the finishing touches on the biggest festival of the year.

"Our excitement is climbing as it all comes together. It'll peak during the festival while everyone has fun and then it'll plummet in 10 days when we have to take it all down again," a parks and gardens worker told the Leader.

The 2024 Tamworth Country Music Festival (TCMF) is shaping up to be one for the books, with crowds of close to 30,000 people expected to move through the CBD each day.

The festival kicks off on Friday, January 19, with the opening concert in Bicentennial Park at 7pm featuring big names like Amber Lawrence, Andrew Swift, Lyn Bowtell, Luke O'Shea, and many others.

The concert will mark the beginning of the festival with a huge firework display at 9:30pm, but there's plenty of other things on earlier in the day that'll get you in the toe-tapping spirit.

The first buskers will be setting up as early as 7am, and from around 9am you won't be able to take two steps through Peel Street without hearing a country tune.

There's also free concerts in Tamworth Shoppingworld, Tamworth Square, and nearly every pub in and around the city; from the Bendemeer Hotel down to the Peel Inn in Nundle.

Check the TCMF official online guide for the full list of musicians, concerts, and venues.

A perennial favourite, festivalgoers will have the chance to learn how to crack a whip from a professional whipmaster every day of the festival at 10am outside the Ray White office on Peel Street.

Also from 10am those with a penchant for collectables will be able to purchase official TCMF merchandise on the corner of Peel and Fitzroy streets, as well as get the first iconic festival straw hats from the Toyota Zone tent nearby.

Straw hat sales will open every two hours at 10am, 12pm, 2pm and 4pm each day during the Festival. Hats are only $2 each, with funds donated to emergency charity Lifeline.

In the centre of all the action is the Fanzone Stage in the middle of Peel Street, which has free concerts throughout the festival.

The first acts on that stage will be three of the 2024 Star Maker Grand Finalists at noon.

At 3pm, the official merchandise store will close, but will re-open in Bicentennial Park from 6pm to 8pm for those keen on getting a souvenir from the opening concert.

After the opening concert the party kicks on at venues throughout the Tamworth CBD with the latest acts kicking off at the Tamworth Hotel [10pm], Wests' Diggers [10:30pm], and the Tamworth Services Club [10:30pm].

The very last performance to start on the festival's first day will be the Jimmy Craz Band at 11:59pm on the dot in the Courthouse Hotel.