National Folk Festival - Day Three - 22/03/08

Saturday was a bit of a late start - it's actually quite tiring being out and about all day - mumsy and dadsy were planning on coming, but somewhere along the line dadsy picked up a case of the sulks and didn't want to come out, so convincing him took some time. I must say, the whole exercise shined some light for me on why/how I sulk, and also provided a terrifying insight into that whole 'women picking men like their fathers' type thang.

All four of us made it out there and made our way to the Fitzroy (after stopping at the nut stand, the Gozlem tent, the hot dog tent, the veggie burger tent, the slushee tent, the baked potato tent, the hippie headband tent and a handbag tent (I totally woulda indulged in a supercute little square bag, but the handles were leather!)) to catch The Duhks - youngest bro and I had talked them up a whole heap, and they didn't disapoint. The sound in the Fitzroy, however, did. The only thing I noticed at the time was that it wasn't quite as awesome as the other shows of theirs we'd caught so far, and I thought part of it might have been the fact the show was earlier, but in retrospect - definitely the sound in the hall. Which was a shame. But they were still awesome - and mumsy agreed with me that they were definitely the cutest group of the festival.

From there we headed over to the musician's tent where Rory was doing a signing (mumsy and dadsy also picked up two Duhks CD's and a Liz Frencham CD) - the four of us did a super job of being super lame and in super awe! We made some small talk (I told him one of my favorites after I totally blanked out on all of the others I love), we told him we saw him in Canberra last time and would come to see him again next month, and youngest bro requested the Singing Copper for dadsy (who was a policeman for over a decade). Then we shuffled out of the tent, took our jumpers off because we were all quite flushed and gushed over the photos on our cameras (see facebook for mine!).

After all that excitement we headed over to the Flute'n'Fiddle to see Mal Webb - it was stupidly overcrowded and I HATE crowds. We'd run into my two friends from the day before and I was following them to sit up the front, but there was physically no room to move and I ended up sitting on the floor behind a row of chairs next to a girl with one of those earring bars that goes through the top corners of your ear that I think I would like, unable to see a thing. He had some special guests which were good but I didn't think it was one of the better times I'd seen him (though mumsy and dadsy thought he was pretty fantastic).

I got up and out through the crowd just in time to see Rory McLeod for show number three - I think the sound crew were having an off day because there was a lot of crackle and fizz all the way through, and they had the sound tech guys come up twice to fiddle with his stomp board and his guitar. He didn't dissapoint - did another fantastic show:
We were all feeling a bit festive after Rory, so we headed over to the Coopers bar for a few rounds while we watched some of the traditional Columbian dancing - it was pretty good, actually! Although the vodka might have helped, it was really interesting to think about what it would be like to have such a culture - there were families of the dancers standing in front of us, dancing along in the dark to the music, swapping partners and laughing.

We headed over to get some Hari Krishna for dinner (I recommend asking for non of the slimy sweet stuff and getting extra Kofti instead - yum!) and listened to some traditional music that was written/performed around the Holocaust. Hauntingly beautiful. But it made me think - who are these young people that decided to get together to perform the music of the Holocaust? I wish I were a musician...!

After dinner and a few more drinks, we headed in to see the Pacific Curls again who did another fantastic show. Mumsy really enjoyed them and dadsy did until he headed out to catch up with a friend who's a bit of a regular on the circuit - to think he didn't want to come out at the start of the day!
After the Pacific Curls had finished, mumsy and I headed over to see Dev'lish Mary whilst youngest bro and dadsy sat a while longer at the beer tent with dadsy's friend. They were a bit late to start, plus were missing one of their bandmates due to a delayed flight, plus one of the main ladies had laryngitis! So it was okay, but not as good as mumsy and I had hoped (I think she wants to be a Liz Frencham stalker).

And with that, it was hometime - another day, another 11pm finish!