As time passes I find it harder and harder to remember when things happened at Woodford. Fortunately, I had the foresight to write down my impressions of most of the bands I saw; unfortunately, my foresight was somewhat blinkered as I didn't take notes about anything else. Perhaps the final Tales of Woodford installment will be about all the unplaceable, un-noted things that I still remember by then.
By Monday, I had become almost blasé about the routine of waking up freezing at around 3am, then waking up again dehydrated and gasping some time around 6. I think this was also the morning I attempted to buy breakfast from the delicious-smelling ilovemushrooms stall prior to seeing my first band for the day, but got too confused about the ordering protocol and whether they were even serving people yet. Ah well, at least there were a few days left for repeat attempts.
Said first band of the day was Sunas, a pleasantly unassuming acoustic-Celtic-folk band whose four members indulged in a certain amount of banter onstage, most of it for their own entertainment rather than that of the audience. I enjoyed the tunes, although the performance felt more like a scattering of tunes across a lot of awkward remarks and silences - perhaps that can be put down to the early hour, or the beginning of the heat-induced wilting of everyone involved. Despite my apparent ambivalence, not at all a bad way to start the morning.
Unfortunately, I can't be as kind about my next stop, the "Learn to play tin whistle" workshop. Not only did the workshop-giving guy (David somebody?) treat the workshop as the second or third in a series despite the absolute beginners who were showing up,1 he seemed to expect people with no musical experience at all to be able to learn tunes by ear on a brand new instrument, and persisted in saying things like "you need more intensity in the breath" without explaining what that meant or how to do it when people were struggling to hit notes in the second octave. Honestly, although I had never played a tin whistle before I am convinced that I could have run a better workshop teaching beginners to play it.
Next, Roz Pappalardo and the Wayward Gentlemen livened things up with some energetic country-rock. I hadn't intended to see this band, but they filled a gap in my schedule and ended up being much more enjoyable than I had expected. Pappalardo was an unaffected performer (with an unabashed love for her electric guitar!) and the Wayward Gentlemen were much more well-behaved than their moniker might lead one to suggest.
Dev'lish Mary were a very bluegrassy sort of ensemble (their myspace offers the word "hilljilly", which I reproduce here without comment), four female singers with fiddles, banjos and a double bass. Technically very good, adept performers, but not my scene (although their cover of AC/DC's "You Shook Me All Night Long" in the style of an Appalachian waltz provoked a certain amount of giggling).
In the heat of the afternoon (and the absence of anything more exciting on my schedule) I took a gamble and went to watch the first heat of the Great Band Competition. The idea behind this was that anybody could put their name into a hat at the start of the festival, then get 24 hours to prepare a song with three strangers and peform it at the first heat. I had chanced to see some of the name-drawing the day before, and there were certainly some odd combinations; most of the adults who ended up in bands with younger people looked a bit dubious about it all, too.
As it turned out, all of the young kids2 were really good, from the thirteen-year-old soprano who brought tears to the eyes of a few audience members (and not just his doting stage parents) to the kid about as tall as his electric guitar. The quality of the performances in general was also very good, all things considered; the majority of the bands had one dominant member, usually with a pre-written song, who everybody else played along with, but there was also a band who played a cover of "You Are My Sunshine", and one named X-Y-Z-Boom (for the generations its members came from) who produced a bizarre sort of family hoedown.
After a delicious dinner I went and sat on a hill to listen to Murphy's Pigs, whose name in my head is always spoken with Dylan Moran's voice. They had a ridiculous number of musicians on stage - I want to say there were ten of them, but I don't think I counted - with instruments including bagpipes, accordion and bodhran (along with the obvious drums, fiddle, whistle, guitar, etc.). They played various traditional Irish and Scottish pieces, as well as a lovely lovely Billy Connolly song, and the jolly guitarist-singer who looked like someone's dad merrily announced songs in Irish and Scottish accents willy-nilly. Lots of fun, and I was sorry when the set ended.3
Next up, and conveniently at the same stage, came Kangaroo Moon. Kangaroo Moon were one of the acts in the festival programme that I felt compelled to see, even after I had failed to find any enticing examples of their work online. Apparently this was a grand reunion of sorts, band members having scattered over the last twenty years and some of them now based in London, and as the band had played at the very first of these festivals it was something of a momentous occasion. Some old-timers sitting near me on the hill mentioned early on that they seemed to have mellowed with age; certainly, they started out with some low-key, almost ambient sounds, ideal to relax to while watching a thunderstorm approaching across the hills.
Several flashes of sheet lightning every minute were persuasive enough to inspire movement off the hillside and under cover, despite the lack of rain or audible thunder. Kangaroo Moon were playing up a storm; as the pace picked up and they began to meld Celtic fiddle reels with droning didgeridoo and people started getting up to dance, the rain started pouring down. In the end the "dancefloor" was packed, plastic chairs being quickly stacked out of the way to make more room, and there was probably sixty years' age difference between the oldest and youngest people jumping about. Even the two brief power failures and the bogginess underfoot had no real impact on the festivities.
I have to say that seeing Kangaroo Moon gave me my first glimmer of understanding when it comes to those multi-day dance/electronic/doof music things that people go to out in the bush. I still can't imagine wanting to go to one, but I think I get why other people do now. Kangaroo Moon were, I think, what so many other (younger? more naive?) bands want to be: a melting pot of stylistic influences, but coherent and unique instead of derivative and uncomfortable. They mixed tradition and technology, folk and psychedelia, electronic and acoustic sensibilities, and were unlike anything I'd ever heard before.
Once Kangaroo Moon finished up I had to decide whether to brave the elements for the last three bands on my schedule, or flee back to the tent. I didn't have any way to keep dry, so as either choice would mean getting wet and I'd slept through an Evenish set earlier in the festival I splashed my way around in the dark for a while and ended up back at the Duck and Shovel.
Evenish were very nice,4 a trio (guitar/fiddle/whistle+flute+bodhran) playing Celtic folk-style music. The guitarist (who also plays a mean fiddle, as we discovered) and the fiddle player were engaged to be married, and Evenish played tunes that they had written for each other as well as various other original compositions. Seeing them play on stage I was struck by - well, not a vision exactly, but something like one, of the sort of quiet existence they would lead together in the middle of nowhere, making music and never having to raise their voices. The whistle player mentioned that the band had been rehearsing via YouTube because of their geographical separation, and I'm impressed that he hasn't succumbed to some kind of third-wheel paranoia; there did seem to be a certain amount of awkwardness onstage, but nothing that their nice music couldn't ease.
Yet another change of pace came with The Gin Club's set. Another of the not-really-a-folk-band-at-all bands that I assume are on the program to add some relevance for the young folks.5 The first band of the festival to get me wondering what it is that defines that particularly "Australian indie rock band"6 sound - the sound of bands that get played on Triple J radio, who grew up listening to You Am I. I'm convinced that there's a particular energy and style that makes that variety of Australian band identifiable as soon as the guitar chords start.
The Gin Club were pretty listenable, and obviously have a substantial fan base in Queensland; being a Brisbane band made up of competent young fellows, this is not entirely surprising. Unfortunately, I didn't find anything about their set especially illuminating or invigorating, and the constant swapping of instruments between band members became very annoying. Much as I appreciate musicians who have more than one string to their bow,7 I really think that it's overly disruptive to have everybody in the band switching around after almost every song. I don't think it's necessary to prove to the audience that everyone can play guitar, bass and drums as well as singing; more consistency would result in a more coherent performance.
By this stage of the evening I was close to nodding off in my white plastic chair, but decided to stick around for the Transbalkan Express as I wouldn't have a chance to see them later in the festival. Long before they started there were all sorts of exciting noises emanating from the backstage area, but soon enough came a distraction as the band filed on for the sound check. I don't know how many people there were in the band, but I don't think twenty would be too wild a guess. After what seemed like an eternity they started to play, and people in traditional costumes burst out of the backstage area, pulling civilians with them, and started an enormous circle dance.
Although the Transbalkan Express were very good, I may have been too tired to appreciate them properly, being constantly distracted by the incompetent bumblings of people trying to dance in a circle and the miniature melodrama being played out between a girl from the audience and one of the dancers. Lesson for the day: it is possible to see too many bands in a day.
- The festival programme did not suggest that these were anything but stand-alone workshops [↩]
- The youngest competitors were in their early-to-mid teens. This means that I have become Old, because I thought that they were much younger. [↩]
- Looking back, this is actually the first band of the day that I can say this about. That's a bit sad. [↩]
- I hate it when there's no other adjective I can use, but there it is. [↩]
- No pun intended. [↩]
- And I don't mean "indie rock" in the sense that, in the words of Andrew Bird, is "more about haircuts and fashion than about music". Get off my lawn! [↩]
- Intended, this time. [↩]
