What once was a one-day knees-up of music, performance and bevvies packing out the pubs and bars of the legendary King Street drag in Newtown has exploded into a three-day weekender bender. The Inner West’s annual King Street Crawl has evolved into the King Street Carnival, with the inaugural fest taking over the whole town.
Like all great plans since the great unpleasantness of 2020, King Street Carnival has had multiple post-ponements and wild natural mishaps thrown its way. After the original dates set for January were unfortunately called off due to the Omicron outbreak, the inaugural festival is set to be back with a vengance from March 11-13.
Due to extreme weather, the organisers of King Street Carnival have cancelled the outdoor stages for this weekend at Sydney Park and Camperdown Memorial Rest Park, but the event will forge on in the pubs and bars of Newtown. The Duke of Enmore will host a fully-fledged Rock and Blues exposition over three days, with Delta Riggs headlining on Saturday night, queer party Heaps Gay are staging a full venue takeover at The Bank, and there's loads more fun happening out of the rain.
In a statement posted to Facebook, festival organisers said: "Although Outdoor stages are cancelled, we will still push ahead with all the in-venue Crawl style programming and hope to make it just as a spectacular weekend as we originally envisioned. We are currently working hard with the artists who have been directly affected to find alternative spaces for them to perform, so please keep a close eye on our socials as there will be some amazing shows popping up across the weekend."
A slew of new artists are playing the fest including Young Franco, Ngaiire, Tropical Fuck Storm, King Stingray, and Budjerah. A majority of the initially announced artists are also still on board, with headliners Yothu Yindi, You Am I and Confidence Man joined by big hitters like Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Horrorshow, Middle Kids, Sarah Blasko, Stella Donnelly and more.
While a couple of previously secured acts including Amyl and the Sniffers, Hiatus Kiayote and Jess B have dropped off with the great reshuffle, that's still a pretty bonza festival you have there, if you ask us.