Palegoldenrod

Last night Amos and I returned from our long weekend at the Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival. It was great!

We left Friday morning and wandered down the coastal route – past Sydney and Wollongong – right turn at the town of Berry and into Kangaroo Valley.

The road soon led us to Kangaroo Valley proper – a small town in the middle of the valley. One pub, one small corner grocery store, a few little restaurants, cafes and stores and a surprising amount of accommodation. I guess a lot of city-goers come down to the Kangaroo Valley farm villa’s for some R&R?

But the most important thing for the weekend was the showground, right next to Glenmarck Caravan park which we quickly made our home. The town was busy – mostly the festival, but also due to the APEC weekend – a lot of Sydney-siders were in town too.

I enjoyed the weekend a lot: the drive down; exploring Kangaroo Valley and Fitzroy Falls; the shows at the festival; the people gathering everywhere to make their own music; the food; the friends we made – all of it was great.

I’m a little ashamed to say that we had not even heard of most of the artists on the program, but I am happy that we heard a lot of awesome music and met some really cool people.

Pettibone

Now… what can I say about Pettibone except that I love them. Amos has also declared as much. Pettibone is a Wollongong band of four very talented young people, who play anything from modern folk/roots to jazz, bluegrass, and everything in between and around and on the other side. They play range of instruments between them: double bass; guitar; violin; clarinet; banjo; flute; cello. Most of them played two instruments in that first show. They all have great voices – Jamie especially (the lead singer) and seems to be able to play any instrument she puts her hand to. If ever you have the opportunity, check these guys out. Beautiful music, beautiful people, beautiful personalities.

After we caught our first Pettibone show we wandered around for a while and ended up at the Session Tent, where any old musician can sit down and play and have a beer. Some of the Pettibone guys were in there playing some bluegrass with some others, and we were standing outside the tent while Amos was having a smoke. We got talking to another young guy called Ryan, who was really amiable – one of those guys you sort of instantly get along with.

It turned out that Ryan is the beloved of Jamie (Pettibone’s Jamie) and he had come down to watch her play. So, with our new friends Ryan and Pettibone (and a few others we picked up along the way) we had some pretty awesome evenings

Tony Eardley

Tony sings what I guess you would call modern folk (or folk-roots music, maybe?). Two thumbs up for our first Festival artist.

Wheeze and Suck Band

Character! Ian “The Pump” Macintosh leads this group – some lively, rousing songs, some softer and moving. I really like these guys.

Mothers of Intention

Amos was a little disappointed that these guys (gals, actually!) didn’t turn out to be a Frank Zappa cover band (hehehe) but they made some beautiful music. I like them.

Black Joak Morris

I stumbled onto some Morris Dancers in the middle of town and was lucky enough to pick up some sorta cool photos of them doing their thing. These guys have a great sense of humour – the fun they were having was infectious and the crowd gathered around them were sharing in it too.

Poet’s Breakfast

Saturday we had breakfast at the Cafe Bella – it was a Poet’s Breakfast. Now, I’ve never been to a Poet’s Breakfast before. In fact, I’d only attended my first poetry reading a week ago at a Newcastle pub. I’ve since learned that a Poet’s Breakfast is a fairly common thing, and I’m glad we had a chance to catch it. It was hosted by Vic Jefferies, and was much more enjoyable than I found the recitation in Newcastle. The Poet’s Breakfast reading was not recitation – it was reading. The speakers were animated, expressing their poetry rather than reading it. One even dressed up and put on a voice to better present his story. In fact, he even got the crowd to chime in with sound effects on cue

The food was also pretty sweet, which added to the experience, of course!

Other things

What else did we get up to? Amos went to a Guitar Finger Picking workshop. We caught part of a songwriter’s workshop where I heard some beautiful songs from a few people who are so early in their journey that maybe they had only sung to themselves up until then. We went for a drive to Fitzroy Falls. We explored a nearby riverside campground (free) that turned out to be so great we declared we would have to come back sometime. We cooked lunch there on our camp stove, and spoke to the grazing wombats.

We bought some hippy clothes from a stall at the festival – I bought a shawl to ward off the cold, Amos bought a shirt. We listened to a few guys playing some Celtic music in a small room in the pub; we sang and danced with a few guitarists out front of the pub – and the 30 or so others that we doing the same until the wee hours of the morning.

We decided to try a different way back. Without consulting a map. We got there… eventually

An awesome time was had by all.

Kangaroo valley Folk Festival is held every year. Go there! Photos of the 2007 event can be found in my picasa gallery