his Sunday June 22, will be a great day of entertainment in Cohuna as four hours of free music gets underway from 2pm at the Big Cohuna Stockyard, headlined by the up and coming band Velvet Bloom as a part of their debut album launch tour.

This is the first in a series of gigs at venues in the region after the organisers, Northern District Community Health (NDCH), were unable to secure funding for the larger Summerwave Festival earlier in the year.

Matt Allan, the youth programs coordinator for NDCH said that the idea is to still present the quality of artists, just on a smaller scale and in more local settings.

“Instead of having a big festival in Kerang, we are having multiple smaller music events across the Buloke and Gannawarra regions,” he said.

“Velvet Bloom was suggested by a young person. They get a little bit of airplay on Triple J and they are an Australian band that are in the midst of a national tour taking in more than 25 dates and Cohuna is one of those, so that is fantastic for the region.

“They are bringing Jay Jerome, who is doing some of the dates with them and we have added a couple of local artists to round out the line up including Deaken Fawcett, who is a Kerang boy, and he is performing with Georga Carusi.”

This is just the beginning with other events being organised for other venues across the region.