May 1 2025
COOMA’s Australian National Busking Championships has produced many musicians who have gone on to great things, including Felicity Kirchner who won the Toyota Star Maker competition at the Tamworth Country Music Festival this year.
Now, the ANBC has made a formal connection with the world famous Tamworth Country Music Festival, by securing Toyota Presents Best of the Buskers coordinator, Kyle Kash, as a judge for both its Cooma regional heat and its national grand final, both to be held in Cooma for the first time over one big weekend – 15 and 16 November.
As well, Tamworth-based music publicist and journalist Bec Gracie, who works with many Tamworth country music stars, will sponsor a major award for the best Masters Muso (a musician over 50).
“I’m really proud to sponsor the Masters Muso Award,” Ms Gracie said.
“There are so many amazing artists over 50 who are sharing their stories through music. I want to celebrate music being made by people of all ages and I think that passion and persistence deserves to be recognised.”
“Securing Kyle is a huge boost for the ANBC,” president and founder Allan Spencer said. “We are absolutely thrilled to have him onboard. And we welcome Bec back again, this time sponsoring the Masters Muso prize for the national grand final.”
Mr Kash is employed by the Tamworth City Council to coordinate the massive busking competition run at the Tamworth Country Music Festival and has a huge amount of experience managing and supporting buskers and working in the music industry.
“He seems to be happy to do some judging for us and apparently is very keen to go for a hike to Mt Kosciuszco while he is here,” Mr Spencer said.
Mr Spencer said the ANBC board was particularly excited to build a connection with the Tamworth festival given so many ANBC participants and winners who had started out busking at ANBC regional heats and the national grand final were now part of the Tamworth scene, busking and performing in the festival and taking part in the CMAA Academy of Country Music’s junior and senior programs.
“Charlotte Rose, now Charley Castle, won the Australian National Busking Championship in the Open division in 2021 and this year, she won the Best of the Buskers in Tamworth with her new band, The Boys in The Well, beating out more than 530 other buskers for the honour,” Mr Spencer said.
“As well, we have Bombala and Bradden Secondary winner Ruby Holden from Queanbeyan, Owen Smith, Bradden second Open placegetter and nationals third placegetter Gabi Forman making Top 100 of the Tamworth buskers, regular winner Leilah Baines at the Academy and performing , The String Family, 2019 winners Haystack Mountain Hermits now performing at Tamworth along with their breakout band, The Inadequates, former ANBC winner and 2025 Starmaker Top 10 Felicity Dowd, Ruby Jane, Lily-Grace who has moved to Nashville, all having started out with us.
“We also have our junior champions, LilG and Noah Robertson who have been touring the US in 2024.
“The ANBC is a great opportunity to lift people’s profile to a bigger event. The two events compliment each other perfectly.
“We are all about the buskers and giving them a chance to go to the next level and there hasn’t really been anything like that before.
“It is a quite a unique opportunity.”
To add to the excitement, Mr Spencer said more towns had recently come on board to join the current seven running regional finals – Uralla in NSW (one hour from Tamworth) and Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills South Australia,
Mr Kash, meanwhile, said he was very excited to join the ANBC family.
“I have become very passionate about buskers and cannot wait to meet them in Cooma and see how the ANBC all works,” he said.
“In my current role with Tamworth, I am very passionate about making sure everyone is safe and well looked after.
“Now i am meeting people who are new to the industry and have no idea what to expect. It can be a very difficult space to navigate especially for younger people and their parents.
“I have access to 1000s of artists and I love being able to help them work towards realising their dreams. Some people are born in to that world, I identify with the ones who were not, coming from a poor background.”
Mr Kash’s job requires him to coordinate the Tamworth competition, liase with buskers and busking spots, run the top 100 on stage show at TheCourthouse Hotel, organise judges and the Top 10 on the Toyota stage.
In Cooma, he will work with two other judges to decide the winners of primary, secondary, open and other categories and make prize presentations.
MEDIA ENQUIRIES
Karen Forman
ANBC Media Coordinator
0425675555
Allan Spencer
ANBC President
0407384590