2010 Tamworth Country Music Festival:Holy Keith Urban do Australians love them some country music! Don’t believe us? Check out the Web site for this year’s Tamworth Country Music Festival. According to these folks, their event is “[p]ossibly the biggest party in the whole of Australia…a mighty, large beast” which “almost doubles” the population of its host town, bringing in “more than $40 million to the local economy.” It seems like just about any band with even the vaguest hint of a twang can play—provided, of course, that the artists can get themselves to Tamworth, New South Wales. Basically, it’s a very South by Southwest. For country music. In Australia. Except there’s a rodeo.

And you won’t have to spring for a $600 pass if you want to have the option of going to every event. Nope, the honchos who run this thing have opted to make you pay for each individual show. Although we’re not sure which pay scheme would be the better bargain, we will say that the quaintness of traveling to a little place in Australia trumps the quaintness of traveling to Austin. ‘Course, we do live in Texas…

2010 Noise Pop Festival: We here at Festival Watch are very stoked about the forthcoming Four Tet album (click here for a preview). And we are generally stoked about the city of San Francisco—even though our special lady’s brother has now moved from his North Beach digs that used to grant us a roof-top panorama that stretched from the Golden Gate Bridge to downtown. (We mean, shit, there are still Amoeba Records locations.) Anyway. In late February, the awesomeness of both Four Tet and San Francisco will be united under the auspices of the 2010 Noise Pop Festival. From Feb. 23 to March 1, various venues in that city will host the likes of that former member of Fridge, Atlas Sound, John Vanderslice, We Were Promised Jetpacks, and some band called Magnetic Fields. We’d like to think we could scrape together the dough for plane fare and the $150 that it’d run us for a festival badge. But then we’d have to write two Festival Watches a week for the next six weeks. And we don’t think that’s going to happen.

2010 Sasquatch! Music Festival: According to its Web site, the 2009 Sasquatch! Music Festival is, for the first time, offering its would-be attendees a chance to secure “a special discounted 3-day festival pass.” Like their colleagues over at Lollapalooza, the honchos in charge here are hoping that the lack of an official line-up announcement, with the exception of headliner Pavement, won’t interfere with the desire of festivalgoers to slap down $183.20. If they’re right, and you’re ready to make a relatively blind commitment, you have until the end of December to do so. If you’d rather wait to see who’s going to populate the Gorge Amphitheater over this coming Memorial Day weekend, you can follow developments through the festival’s Twitter feed.