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“Hats off to Mal”; big numbers, smiles, at “Dusty Boots” country music fest By LUKE WILLIAMS IT was a country music hoedown, where everyone had a fantastic time. Fans at Narromine’s threeday Dusty Boots Festival over the weekend, were left with the old conundrum, why is it, that the music form that celebrates the struggles and heartbreaks of ordinary lives, is so uplifting? The answer might have something to do with an 85-year-old singer, who transformed the USMC venue on Sunday morning, with an enchanting performance of oldstyle yodeling. “The whole event went down a treat.” Event Organiser Mal Norton — the legendary disability support pensioner who funds the event out of his own pocket — enthused. “I think it was the best festival we ever had,” he said as hundreds of people attended each day. “I’m still on a high,” he told the Narromine Star days after the event, which he dedicates to his late father — the musician John Norton, renowned throughout the region for his uncanny Slim Dusty-like singing style. “When you put that much talent in one room together,
PHOTO: NARROMINE STAR.
and they are all there for you, and we have a terrific audience, and it’s all in keeping my Dad’s dream alive, I couldn’t ask for anything more.” The event, held in Narromine for the third time over
the Long Weekend, featured musicians from the central coast, Victoria, and Tasmania, including Gina Timms, Gayle O’Neill, Rob Breeze, and Lance Birrell, who has been the lead guitarist for Troy
Cassar-Daley. Justin Landers also performed, telling the Narromine Star he played a few original numbers, including in typical folk style, a song: “about a girl who I thought was my girl-
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friend, but she wasn’t.” “It was a girl I went to school with. She was a hairdresser, and I was a guy f lippin’ burgers across the street,”he explained. “I asked her out one night, and she said ‘yes’; then we might go down to the pub, I thought we were going on a date, but she brought her boyfriend along. It was very uncomfortable when we saw each other in the street the next day.” “That song is called ‘How about this Weather?’ because what else do you talk about when something like that happens — all we could talk about the next day, was the weather.” Bass guitarist Shane Saffy, told the Narromine Star, the weekend was “awesome” with “great crowds every night.” He described Narromine as “friendly” and said that the event: “was getting bigger every year.” Asked what the highlight was, he said it was “an 85-year-old woman yodeling this morning”. He was referring to Victoria’s Floreena Forbes, a community radio presenter who travelled all the way from Bendigo for the show. Continued page 3