This is what the last morning of 2008 looked like. I couldn't tell you what it felt like, because I've left writing this post until more than six months later.
This is Ange Takats. According to her introduction she won the 2008 National Folk Festival award for vocal excellence. That sounded appropriate enough to me; her voice was lovely. Her songs didn't do so much for me, although I was charmed by her self-deprecating tales of googling ex-boyfriends and making inept life choices.
Next came Jack and the Giant Killers, a slightly funkier variant on the Triple-J-rock staple. Good energy on stage, a not unpleasant listening experience - and then some giants showed up. Stilt-walking normal-sized humans, to be more accurate.
Jack and the Giant Killers did not live up to their name.
I have no pictures of the next thing that happned, mostly because I was too busy having an excellent time. I went to a vocal workshop run by The Kin, who turned out to be giant hippies of the raised-from-birth variety. They talked about singing with reference to chakras without batting an eyelid. They also asked the participants to stick our hands down our pants in order to dig our fingers into our pubic bones, and appeared surprised at the awkward giggling that ensued.
In the end, though, they got a tent full of people to start with making funny noises and work up to singing loudly, melodically (in tune, even, and in two parts!) and confidently, and I enjoyed every moment. It made me think, not for the first time, about seeking out singing lessons, the aim being to gain a better physical understanding of how I make sounds and thus (I hope) some form of confidence.
I showed up to see Psycho Zydeco with a certain weariness, mainly because I thought they were another gypsy/balkan-influenced band that I would struggle to differentiate from all the others like them at Woodford. This was completely unjustified, of course, as zydeco music hails from the southern USA and leads to people wearing washboards and performing cowbell solos.
Psycho Zydeco reminded me a little bit of the Blues Brothers, but not because of the style of music they played. They seemed a little older than most of the musicians playing loud music at Woodford,1 and also a little bit out of place - no "gypsy influences", no 20-something guys with hair product and guitars, no wistfulness or political content. Despite a relatively small and lukewarm audience, they had a rollicking good time making music that would have made anyone less dance-oriented than me get up and dance.
This post threatened to sprawl oppressively and indefinitely across my Drafts folder, so I am turning the first part loose. Still to come: The Quills, The Ellis Collective, and more.
- There were plenty of old folkies, but I'm not counting them. [↩]
