From Elvis to Dolly: Festivals where music legends live on

Dolly Parton wanted a party rather than a traditional public memorial and now plans for DollyFest have us looking at the extraordinary festivals where fans still gather to sing, dance, dress up and celebrate the artists who provided the soundtrack to their lives.

There are statues, plaques and museums, there are streets named after famous people and glass cabinets filled with costumes they once wore, and then there is Parkes in January.

For five days, a country town in central-western New South Wales fills with rhinestones, pompadours, Priscillas and enough white jumpsuits to make you wonder whether Elvis Presley ever really left the building.

The Parkes Elvis Festival began with just 195 people in 1992 and today it attracts more than 20,000 fans and stages more than 200 events across five days.

Almost 50 years after Elvis died, people are still travelling enormous distances simply to be among others who love his music.

He is far from alone.

The announcement of a new festival celebrating Dolly Parton has put the spotlight on the celebrations that have grown up around some of the biggest names in music.

Some are enormous, others take over tiny country towns, and some are serious pilgrimages for devoted fans. Others involve a suspicious number of wigs.

All have one thing in common: the songs still pull a crowd.

DollyFest: The party Dolly wanted

It seems entirely appropriate that Dolly Parton’s memorial will involve a party.

Following her death at 80 on last week, Parton’s estate has announced DollyFest, a two-day celebration to be staged across two consecutive weekends in Nashville and London in 2027.

But DollyFest wasn’t dreamed up after her death.

Parton had been planning it herself.

The event was originally scheduled for Nashville around her 80th birthday in January 2026, with Parton due to host and perform, but plans were shelved after she stepped back because of health problems.

Her longtime manager Danny Nozell said Parton did not want a traditional public memorial, making the festival she had already conceived a fitting way to celebrate her life.

Dates, artists and ticket details are still to be announced.

You’d imagine Jolene will get a run.

Parkes Elvis Festival: The King rules country NSW

There is no obvious reason why Parkes should have become one of the world’s great gathering places for Elvis fans.

Elvis never visited the town and, in fact, he never visited Australia, but that hasn’t stopped Parkes.

Local Elvis enthusiasts Bob and Anne Steel held the first festival at their Gracelands restaurant in 1992, attracting 195 people. It has since become one of Australia’s best-known regional events.

For five days there are concerts, competitions, a street parade, renewal-of-vows ceremonies, a Miss Priscilla competition and Elvis tribute artists everywhere.

Then there are the ordinary punters.

Some spend months getting their costumes right, many appear perfectly happy to put on a black wig, sunglasses and whatever white clothing they can find and call the job done.

The 2027 Parkes Elvis Festival runs from January 6-10 and carries the theme Elvis on Tour.

The festival is officially endorsed by Elvis Presley Enterprises in Memphis.

For one week of the year, Elvis remains very much in the building.

International Beatleweek: Back where it all began

Liverpool doesn’t exactly need an excuse to celebrate The Beatles, but every year it gets one anyway.

International Beatleweek brings fans and musicians from around the world to the city that gave us John, Paul, George and Ringo. (Ringo and Paul are still alive and well, of course).

Naturally, much of the action happens at the Cavern Club, but performances spread across Liverpool.

The 2026 festival featured seven days and nights of live music, more than 400 performances and artists representing more than 20 countries.

There are concerts, special events and plenty of opportunities to visit the places that formed part of The Beatles’ story.

More than 60 years after Beatlemania erupted, Liverpool is still doing very nicely out of four young men who started playing together there.

Trundle ABBA Festival: A country town finds its Dancing Queen

Population: only a few hundred.

Number of sequins when the ABBA festival comes to town: impossible to calculate.

The tiny NSW farming community of Trundle has created one of Australia’s more unlikely music celebrations when, for a day, the main street fills with flares, platforms, wigs, tribute performers and visitors prepared to have a crack at being Agnetha or Frida.

The Trundle ABBA Festival began in 2012 and at its peak attracted around 6000 people. After disruptions caused by COVID, floods and funding problems, it returned in May 2026 under community management.

The formula isn’t complicated. Put on ABBA, dress accordingly and dance.

You don’t have to be Swedish and you certainly don’t have to be able to sing.

Knowing the chorus to Dancing Queen helps.

Freddie Days: Mercury by the lake

Freddie Mercury has an enduring connection with Montreux in Switzerland.

Queen recorded extensively in the lakeside town and Mercury owned a home there. Today his famous bronze statue stands on the waterfront facing Lake Geneva.

Around Mercury’s birthday on September 5, fans gather in Montreux for Freddie Days.

The event traces its beginnings to tours of Mercury-related sites in 2001, followed by the first official fan gathering in 2003. What began as a one-day event eventually expanded into a multi-day celebration.

Over the years it has included concerts and tributes, with fans gathering around the Mercury statue.

There is also the Queen Studio Experience at the former Mountain Studios in Montreux Casino, where Queen recorded extensively.

It’s difficult to imagine a better backdrop for a Queen song than Lake Geneva with the Alps behind it.

Johnny Cash Heritage Festival: Before the Man in Black

The Johnny Cash Heritage Festival takes fans back to the beginning rather than the height of his fame.

Cash was three when his family moved to Dyess, Arkansas, in 1935, part of a New Deal agricultural resettlement community established during the Depression.

He remained there until graduating from high school in 1950.

His boyhood home has since been restored, and the Johnny Cash Heritage Festival began in 2017 with the involvement of Arkansas State University and the Cash family.

The festival has combined music with exhibitions, talks and the history of the community that helped shape Cash’s life and work.

Long before Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison Blues and the famous black clothes, there was a boy growing up in a small farmhouse while his family worked the cotton fields.

Winter Dance Party: Back to the Surf Ballroom

On February 2, 1959, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson performed at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.

Hours later, all three were dead when their small plane crashed shortly after take-off in the early hours of February 3, a tragedy Don McLean would later describe in American Pie as “the day the music died”.

More than six decades later, fans still return to the Surf Ballroom for its annual Winter Dance Party.

Thousands make the pilgrimage to Clear Lake each February, with the Surf hosting live music celebrating the sounds of the 1950s and the musicians whose final performances took place there.

The event is already scheduled to return in February 2027.

For rock ‘n’ roll fans, there aren’t many rooms with more history in the walls.

Dublin Bowie Festival: Still doing things differently

A David Bowie celebration was probably never going to consist of a tribute band and a few old records.

The Dublin Bowie Festival has grown into a multi-day celebration of Bowie’s music, art and influence.

Its 2026 edition ran from February 24 to March 1, marking 50 years since Station to Station and 10 years since Blackstar. The program included live music, exhibitions, talks and Q&As.

The festival has already confirmed it will return in 2027, with details still to come.

Australia has its own Bowie celebrations too.

Richmond’s Odeon in Melbourne staged its second annual 5 Daze of Bowie festival in January 2026, with live performances and an exhibition featuring art, photographs, albums and memorabilia.

Not bad for a man who once sang about life on Mars.

The songs take us back

There is a reason these festivals can survive long after the artists themselves are gone.

The songs come attached to memories for many fans. You hear one and suddenly you’re back in the old family car or another takes you to a school dance, and there are songs that belonged to particular summers, relationships and people.

That’s why someone will travel halfway around the world to stand inside the Cavern Club, or why thousands of Australians head to Parkes in January wearing Elvis sunglasses.

Dolly Parton appears to have understood the appeal.

Her manager says she wasn’t interested in a traditional public memorial and a festival was much more her style.

So, in 2027, fans will gather in Nashville and London, the bands will play and inevitably someone will launch into Jolene.

Dolly won’t be there to sing it with them, but you can be fairly certain they’ll know every word.

Also check out Dolly Parton On Grief, Healing, and Why She’s ‘Still Workin’ at 80