Out of darkness and into the light, Australian blues guitar dynamo Nathan Cavaleri will step onstage at Echuca Moama Winter Blues Festival in regional Victoria this July.
For his second outing at Winter Blues Festival, Nathan shares the line-up with a smorgasbord of Australia's finest blues acts, including 8-Ball Aitken, 19-Twenty, Cass Eager, Karl S. Williams, Nick Charles and Sweet Talk, among others."I played there about four or five years ago and that was a period when I was coming out of this real long, dark walk through the woods with mental health issues that I was getting beyond," Nathan says.
"I remember it being a festival that gave me some great memories that still to this day I draw on anytime I get nervous or start to doubt myself. So, I'm very much looking forward to returning in a different capacity."
So far, 2025 has been a productive year for Nathan's creative output, releasing a series of singles including 'Mamma's Comin' and an unexpected cover of Whitney Houston's 1987 smash hit 'I Wanna Dance With Somebody'. "That was an accidental release," Nathan laughs.
"I stream on Twitch quite regularly where we take love songs on Valentine's Day and do a version of it, try to bring it in to the now with my own flavours.
"'I Wanna Dance With Somebody' I wasn't intending on releasing, but my audience was so vocal about me putting it out that I took a step back and thought, 'it can’t hurt, let's see what happens'. I'm really chuffed with how it turned out."
Nathan says he'll be performing solo this time around at Winter Blues Festival, offering a stripped-back but amped-up live set left open to interpretation. "It's hugely electric and I touch on lots of different moods," he says.
"There are deep and meaningful moments and there are some moments where I rock out. It covers all bases, I reckon.
"Even if you have set songs, I like to leave parts of those songs open to spontaneity and that's when you can embrace whatever feelings you have in the moment and whatever the crowd is feeling, maybe lean into that."
Eager as he is to perform, Nathan is also excited about attending Winter Blues Festival as a punter and perhaps even sharing the stage with some of his blues peers and contemporaries for a spontaneous jam. "There's so many great acts this year," he says.
"All of the time I'm looking forward to playing any festival I'm booked for, but every now and then you'll be booked on a festival where you look at the artists that are playing and you choose to go there as a punter even if you weren't performing.
"I love the setup of the festival, because it spills out onto the street. I love a street party, anything that's street festival, it's just such a great feeling. You can bunny hop between pubs and venues to see your favourite acts.
"I feel like now more than ever a lot of us crave that community spirit and this festival I feel like is a catalyst for that. It's hard to get a whole community together, you need something to bring people together and that's what I love about [Winter Blues Festival]."
2025 Winter Blues Festival takes place at various venues throughout Echuca-Moama 24-27 July. All venues are free entry.
Winter Blues Festival 2025 Line-up
8 Ball Aitken19-Twenty
Bill Barber & The Holding Cell
Cass Eager
Checkerboard Lounge
Collard Greens and Gravy
Doc Halibut
Ingrid & The Ministers
Jimi Hocking's Blues Machine
Karl S. Williams & Sally Wiggins
Kathleen Halloran
Liza Ohlback & The Mercy Train
Madi Colville Walker
Marshall & The Fro
Nick Charles
Phil Coyne and The Wayward Aces
Rambal
Rod Paine and the Fulltime Lovers
Sweet Felicia & The Honeytones
Taya Chani
The Mojo Corner
Second Artist Announcement
Bek JensenClaude Hay & The Kung Fu Mustard
Eddy & the Exciters
FOOLS
George Macfloyd Blues Band
Glenn Skuthorpe
Louise MacGregor
Luke Harrington
Mike Elrington
Nathan Cavaleri
Oscar LaDell
Paul Buchanan's Blues Xpress
Pete Cornelius
Phil Para
Salt & Steel
Smoke Stack Rhino
Sweet Talk
The Rory Phillips Trio
The Windsavers
