Scan the QR code to listen to The Riv talks... podcast, starting with the chat with blues-roots singer-songwriter Geoff Achison
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The Riv talks… podcast has done a deep dive into the Echuca Moama Winter Blues Festival, starting with chats from 2025 featuring 19-Twenty lead singer and guitarist Kane Dennelly and Nathan Cavaleri.
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This was followed by conversations with Geoff Achison, Cass Eager, Frank Sultana and Kathleen Halloran.
These artists have played the Echuca Moama Winter Blues Festival multiple times and were asked what keeps bringing them back, about their influences, what they have been up to and what we could expect from their festival set?
In this The Riv talks... episode, an Echuca Moama Winter Blues Festival 2025 retrospective, Kane Dennelly talks about how the festival launched the band into the Victorian festival scene.
“The first one we played, I think we did six three-hour gigs, which is something that we've never done,” he said.
“Actually, we did it the year after, but it's something we'd never done to that point, and it’s madness.
“I'll never do it again, but it put us in front of a lot of people.”
Nathan Cavaleri finds the festival has its own magic, playing solo shows in the past that “bang pretty hard”.
“I would say my set is probably even more bluesy than what the studio recordings are, because the production and all the different sounds that take it somewhere else,” he said.
Nathan Cavaleri in action.
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Geoff Achison is looking forward to his solo show at the Echuca library as part of the 2026 festival, he tells the podcast.
“Because it is a library, it is a listening environment and perfect for sitting there with the acoustic guitar, playing some tunes and telling some stories,” he said.
“Whereas, The Soul Diggers, we turn up and rock out, so that is a very different vibe.”
Geoff Achison.
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In the next episode, Cass Eager talks about the festival having its own personality
“I don’t know of any other festivals that I go to and play that are mid-winter and it is just such a beautiful setting.”
“It is a co-ordinated effort by the whole town to bring it alive; you hear music playing in the streets, in the venues, and it is wonderful.”
Cass Eager.
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It is more than likely you will find Frank Sultana having a coffee and ‘a bit of a catch-up’ with his fellow blues artist at the festival.
“There is something really nice about playing in venues in the town, walking around town; the whole town becomes quite alive from it,” he told the podcast.
“There is no missing that there is a festival on; everyone’s very engaged and it is just fun.”
Frank Sultana.
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Steve Huntley
In the last episode, which focuses on the Echuca Moama Winter Blues Festival for 2026, Kathleen Halloran feels right at home with all her blues friends.
“Love the festival, I love the people who organise it, and they feel like family,” she said.
“It's a whole weekend of music, every single corner of Echuca, it's just buzzing with blues, and all my peers playing.”
