A dream came true for a local student last weekend, when he got to play before a 4000-strong crowd at the Tamworth Country Music Festival.
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“Cam and Kent” - Cameron Sharp of Forbes and Kent van der Merwe of Parkes - were named in the top five in the busking championships out of a field of some 600 buskers.
Cameron made his busking debut at Tamworth last year, uploading a video of his performance to YouTube to audition.
The shop that hosted him last year was happy to have him back, with Kent, and they registered for this year again.
The boys, who play covers, struck a chord with audiences.
The pair had registered as non-country buskers but were actually named finalists in the prestigious country busking championships.
Then they had to find country songs from their song-list to perform on the big stage.
They settled on Mumford and Sons’ “I will wait” and Green Day’s “Time of your life”.
“To be playing on the same stage as Lee Kernaghan - he played the night before - was a bit overwhelming,” Cam said.
“We were nervous but the minute we walked on stage we were fine.”
The audience of 4000 was by far the biggest the duo has performed for, but they were well received.
“They gave us a really good response,” Cam said.
“Before we went on there were a lot of very good artists but they sang their own songs, we sang covers that people knew.”
Just where their music will go from here, Cam and Kent aren’t sure. Cam is starting year 11 at Parkes Christian School and Kent commencing university studies in paramedics in Canberra.
Cam and Kent now have their own Facebook page - Cam and Kent - and there’s a link there to a video of their performance on the main stage, or they can be found on Youtube.
