National Folk Festival - Day Two - 21/03/08

Wahoo!

We headed out just after lunch as I had to go to the police station to report the accident on Thursday - being a leased car and all, I can't really mess around with it so had to go through all the official channels (which will proddly p!ss the other girl off to no end, but it wasn't my fault!).

We stopped in to see Allez-gator playing the dance hall, and sat down with some gozleme to circle our interests in the program (this was the only time youngest bro showed any real signs of irritation - his preferred method being to stumble upon people rather than know when some of the ones you like are playing). We caught a little of Women in Docs, some more of Genticorum and the end of Mal Webb (why would they have three of my favorites so far playing at the same time?!) before heading over to see King Curly (catching Cloudstreets Green Man song again!). Unfortunately, all I could really gather of King Curly was that they took a long time to get the sound right, and then the sound wasn't right when they finally started playing! Had the levels been a bit better we might have stayed longer, but we only lasted three songs (it didn't help there was a guy sitting in front of youngest bro with an akubra on, a lady sitting in front of my with a headscarf with a giant top knot, and a lady sitting on the worlds creakiest chair rocking and playing with her baby - once you notice these things, you just can't ignore them!!). On the way out we walked past this girl - walking barefoot on glass (ooch):

We headed over to the Budawang to hear the start of the 666 ABC Conert - the place was absolutely packed out and we started a trend by picking up some chairs from a pile out the back of the hall - everyone started doing it and sitting in front of us! Pacific Curls played first and that's when I realised my purpose in life is to learn to play the drum seat and these cool little spinning drums that she had - I've got a blurry photo below, basically you spin them in patterns to change the timing that the balls hit your hands to change when the 'beat' happens - a soft little thud:

We caught Mal Webb again who did the Carrot/Stick song again - it's still so amazing the way he manages the crescendo of that song! We made a quick exit after him and headed over to the Infinite Grease competition - I remember Ampersand Duck talking about how good the competition stuff is, so I wanted to be sure to catch it. The opening choir was okay, these guys (I'm unsure who they were!) did a pretty good combination of songs from Grease, Xanadu, Saturday Night Fever and Zorba's dance (we predicted there would be a few Grease/Greece jokes):
There was also the Fiddle Chicks (who were okay), Liz Frencham (who did a haunting version of Rizzo's song), Mal Webb (who did a good combination of a lot of Grease songs), the Fourth Realm (who get my vote for their amazing Amazing AMAZING lead vocalist!), a Bush Poet (who made good ocker Olivia N-John) and a band who did 'Peace is the word' (in place of 'Grease is the word') who came out wrapped in Tibetan flags and got quite bossy about trying to get the audience to hold up their hands in peace songs and say 'Peace' loudly... I'm all for Tibet BUT I don't think a bossy folky demanding we call out louder is going to help them.

We caught up with a friend couple of mine outside the show and wandered around a bit, walking past these whistling people where one of their promoters mentioned that each person only plays a second note - that is, they have to pair off and take turns for each note:
We stopped for a baked potato *yum* and then headed in to the Budawang to settle down for the evening. Phil Manning was being interviewed on the stage - he was in a few bands, designed a guitar that was quite sucesful and spent a lot of time stoned, which was interesting. He's also fond of a ramble, and my friend is quite keen to check him out at one of his shows. After Phil finished up, the Eddi Reader band came on. I had circled her after reading her blurb, and she was quite good - a lovely little Scottish lady who seems to have a back problem (?) and likes to fiddle with the mike stand a lot. She was supported by an accordian player who liked to pull lots of funny faces and get his volume switched up or down a lot (and who totally rocked out on the last song!) and a guitarist that kinda looked like Chuck Norris' brother/ the guy from Mythbusters:

The second biggest surprise of the night? She wrote 'Perfect' - I know you know it!! The biggest surprise of the night? Youngest bro had NEVER heard of it... we are now those old people who rock out to nostalgic hits.

And then? Mr Rory McLeod!

He played for almost an hour and a half and didn't dissapoint - my friends hadn't heard him, said he wasn't what they expected, but they enjoyed it nontheless and borrowed my CD! We had pretty good seats to see him too:


He did one of the songs he did last night (and in the last Canberra show) about a girl with a newborn that I don't think is on any of his CD's but is really lovely as well as Huge Sky, No More Blood for Oil and London Kisses (which I love because he makes a kissy noise in the mic) and the one he wrote for his mum Shirley.

After he finished (noo!) The Duhks played again - they have the worls cutest violin player - she makes me want to wear my hair out and wear cute chunky heels (she also has a forearm tattoo - awesome!!):
And they were made double awesome by bringing Rory out to play the trumpet (and he added some harmonica too!):
They are definitely the sexiest group on the circuit - each of them are supercute! The drummer was doing awesome things with cymbals and the guitarist was changing the tuning of his guitar back and forth mid song (as well as producing some of the loudest booming feedback I have ever heard!). The lead singer was just as hawt as last night, and the banjo player managed to get everyone up to dance by getting us to strech up and back, shake our hands, move ours hips side so side and voila! Instant dancing crowd!

Heading out again now - hope you're all having a lovely long weekend!