With a name like his, you would expect Reggae Ellis to be involved in music somehow. The longtime member of the Thredbo Chamber of Commerce says Thredbo began organising music festivals as a way of attracting tourists during the non-ski season. The first event for 2016 is the Thredbo Blues Festival, from January 15 to 17.
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Ellis says, "We have more than 20 different acts over the three-day festival ... The thing I like is that you get to see some artists you haven't heard of who blow you away with their talent."
Among the artists to be featured are The Voice's Gail Page, American blues singer Andy Just, blues-rock group the James Southwell Band and The Pearl Show, celebrating the music, obsessions and passions of Janis Joplin.
One of the headliners at this year's festival is Australian music legend Russell Morris, appearing for the second time.
"I did it last year," Morris says.
"The band really, really loved it."
The Australian Record Industry Association Hall of Fame inductee had a string of hits from the 1960s including Somebody's Image and The Real Thing. In 2012, he toured Australia with the successful Long Way To the Top tour and the same year released the album Sharkmouth, a collection of songs written about Australian historical figures such as boxer Les Darcy and gangster Squizzy Taylor that was a critical and commercial success, winning the 2013 ARIA award for best blues and roots album.
In April 2014, he released Van Diemen's Land, continuing the Australiana theme with characters and stories such as Breaker Morant and the Eureka Stockade and featuring guest artists such as Rick Springfield and Rob Hirst. It was also a hit and won best Australian blues album 2015 and best male vocalist for Morris at the Australian Blues Music Chain awards.
And this year he released Red Dirt Red Heart. It forms the third instalment in his blues and roots trilogy,
"The first one was urban," he says. "Gangsters, gambles, a gritty album."
Its title track – and indeed, the series as a whole – was inspired by a photo of con man Thomas "Shark Jaws" Archer that ended up making the cover.
Morris loved blues music but realised he couldn't write in an authentic US Mississippi Delta-style. Archer, he says, seemed to be saying, "What about me?" – why not tell Australian stories through music? So he did, in his own blues-rock style, and it worked.
The second album, he says, looked at the broader scope of Australian history and the latest one is about "the people who were here 40,000 to 50,000 years ago ... it's the most cohesive and focused".
He will perform several songs from Red Dirt Red Heart at this year's Thredbo Blues Festival. Also planned for next year are a performance at Byron Bay Bluesfest in March and a visit to the US in the middle of the year to play at South by Southwest in Texas – his first time performing in America.
"I'll be interested to see what they think of it. They have no preconceptions, no ideas about who I am ... we'll have to see how we go. I've got to get in the pool with the big boys and see if I can swim."
Morris says he's enjoyed performing in Canberra over the years and hopes some fans from the nation's capital will make the journey to Thredbo to hear him and his band play,
They might also be coming to support a local talent, Dorothy-Jane "DJ" Gosper. The Canberra singer performed at Thredbo in 2011 with her band but this time she's doing an acoustic show accompanied by Richard Steele on acoustic and resonator guitars.
Gosper says, "This is bare-bone blues ... We'll be playing a mix of original and traditional blues."
The 51-year-old says she's been writing songs since she was seven years old. Sounds like she was precocious.
"I was in a way, yeah – and just a little bit rebellious."
Much of her material is drawn from her own life and experiences. One of her new songs, Shutdown, is, she says, "about the uplifting topic of depression and anxiety and the process of not wanting to engage with people unless I'm on a stage".
Being on stage, she says, "is one of the few places where everything feels OK – it's like I'm in my own little world. I think I just get the feeling I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing."
She doesn't suffer from stage fright, she says: "I think I suffer from life fright – I feel more carefree when I go on stage."
But even a blues singer has lighter moments: one of her numbers is Oh You Engineer, sung by the wife of a train driver who's been having a little too much fun with the ladies down his line.
Gosford grew up in the town of Merriwa and moved to Canberra when she was 20.
"I followed a boy," she says. The relationship didn't last, but she did become a mother and also gained plenty of inspiration in her writing.
"Some good songs came out of that," she says. One of them was called Three Lousy Beers.
When her son was four he was given a harmonica for his birthday but wasn't interested in it, so she picked it up and started taking lessons and also studied singing.
"It wasn't until I was 28 that I was encouraged to sing publicly. Playing harmonica was the impetus for me playing in public."
She joined the Campbell Blues Society and had some jam sessions and formed her own band. She's had ups and downs in her life – a battle with breast cancer, a new partner who also inspired a song, Rock Solid Man – but they've all fed into her music.
She's keeping busy with concerts and says: "I'm honoured to be part of the Thredbo Blues Festival. I'm in very fine company indeed."
The Thredbo Blues Festival is on from January 15 to 17. See: thredbo.com.au.
