National Folk Festival 2009
Our club is proud to have been selected to play at the 2009 Australian National Folk Festival in Canberra at Easter.
About a dozen of us have been practicing and rehearsing the performance set over the last several weeks, with the occasional additional get together to iron out the wrinkles.
Thanks so much to Linda and Cathy for bringing us all together to a cohesive performing group that did us all proud at the National.
The Journey
We sent an advance party to set up our campsite in the performers' area early in the week, with the majority of us flying in after work on the Thursday.
Those who went received a partial subsidy from the club. A great example of the benefits of joining.
The hub of our little community was settled right in the centre of the performers' camping area along with other SA groups like Garida and the Fiddle Chicks close by.
The Gigs
The main performance was on Saturday morning and we had 'fine tuned' ourselves nicely at a rehearsal in the campsite the night before.
Our performing venue was quite a large tent and we commenced our performance to an audience of around 50 or so.
The audience included Ian Fisk - Adelaide-based prolific photographer - who we thank for these photos.
L-R: Linda, Jeri, Hayley, Renate.
Small group perfomance: Linda, Ali, Cathy, Tom.
L-R: Ali, Ted, Jeri, Tony, Sherilee
Over the next 40 minutes lots of people came past and, after sticking their heads through the door, mostly came in and sat down.
At the end we had around 200 people in there!
We received a rousing call for an encore - which we delivered - and the audience reluctantly let us depart to make room for the following act.
After quite some negotiation - and with Renate waiting in the line for us so she could put our name down - we managed to score us another performance on the Sunday. A much more intimate venue this time, but with just as enthusiastic audience.
Later that day we all attended a workshop where Linda taught a couple of tunes. Once again, the venue, although intimate, was filled to capacity.
Unfortunately, we had to vacate that venue right on time to make way for the workshop that followed.
Cathy Fraser certainly had a busy weekend with her performances with Duncan Smith, and with Eilean Mor as well as with us!
Even as the advance party arrived on the Wednesday, Cathy and Duncan were performing in the only venue open - the Troubadour.
She was also part of the collection of the top fiddlers in a concert one of the major venues as well as running her workshops.
The Sessions
The session bar was in full swing for most of the day and night - actually more during the night than the day. Some of our younger members discovered the beauty of hitting the sack at 5:30am and being up for a 10am gig!
As was mentioned earlier, our campsite was right outside the back gate near the rear of the session bar. It could not have been easier to come and go.
All in all it was a great way to spend Easter and the club certainly raised a few eyebrows with their performances over the weekend.
