Judge Judy Small returns to her folk roots to headline Kiama music festival

Small started performing in 1973 and subsequently produced twelve albums, hundreds of songs (many in the vein of feminism and politics) and spent 16 years on the road touring internationally and nationally.

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In 1989 she graduated as a lawyer and stopped performing full-time to concentrate on her new career, eventually choosing to give it away completely when she became a Family Court Judge on the Federal Circuit Court of Australia.

"While I was a practising lawyer I was still singing part-time - doing gigs and festivals on weekends or touring in my holidays ... I still loved being able to do both for the 14 years that I was a lawyer," Small said.

"However, once I became a judge, I felt obliged to retire from singing because judges don't have political opinions that they express in public. When I took all the politics out of my music I was left with some pretty songs, but if that's all there was it would have been pretty dull."

For the next eight years she said she hardly sang at all: "not in public in Australia ever, and only once overseas at a tribute concert for Ronnie Gilbert [a female US folk legend] in 2016."

Small never intended to pick up the guitar where she left off, but an invitation to sing at a Victorian festival post-knee surgery meant she was loved up "high on drugs" and accepted.

She said she enjoyed performing so much she would happily let the music play if asked to do so.

Folk By The Sea organisers invited Small to perform at last year's festival, but it was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions, thankfully she was still available for the 2022 edition.

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"People can expect what I've always done: me with my guitar, singing stories and 'songs of social significance' with a large dollop of fun and humour - old favourites, revived relevant songs, and a couple they might not have heard before," she said.

Small will be joined in Kiama by a lineup of 24 national and local acts headed by celebrated Indigenous singer-songwriter Shellie Morris, award-winning Irish-Australian singer-songwriter Enda Kenny and hoedown band The Button Collective.

Tickets are available at www.folkbythesea.com.au.

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