Duelling fiddles!
The Majors Creek Folk Festival was – as usual – quite an experience! After the fun and games of finding a campsite before a rear tyre went completely flat, then finding the spare tyre was also flat, I could sense this would be a memorable festival… But then the State Emergency Services came to the rescue with a small air compressor and things started to look up. Good blokes the lot of them – even if they do wear orange jump-suits 🙂
The sessions were good this year, starting fairly low key and then building rapidly. At one point I was playing a reel full pelt, and then someone tapped me on the shoulder – I glanced round and there was Tony Pyrzakowski – the fiddle player from Wheeze and Suck Band and Mothers of Intention. I keep running into this amazing guy and folk festivals, and when we do: it’s on!
We are well matched as musicians and we lark around a lot, playing at being competetive rivals – actually he knows more about playing fiddle than I’ll ever know – but then I know more tunes than he does :-p And it all makes for a great show for anyone who happens to catch us in the mood – especially after a few pints of the good stuff.
Anyhow, after the fire show – Eve hired me to MC the Will o’ the Wisp Fire Circus – it was off to the session bar for a few tunes.
Saturday was a real highlight as Tony and I got going – both of us trying to look casual while the rosin dust fairly flew off the strings. We played some great tunes and the crowd just kept getting bigger as the tunes got faster and faster. That’s the stuff festivals are made of and this year’s Majors Creek was one of the best this year!
Sharon did a special tribute by stitching one of the pictures of us playing! What an amazing piece of embroidery!
There was another great session late on Saturday night when the singers had sunk to Goodnight Irene and the pace was quiet, along came Davydd McDonald – a great young Brisbane musician and it was on again – Da Eye Wifey, Maggies Pancakes and then into some great jigs and reels. Davy stayed with us between festivals and he did me the great tribute of writing me a reel – Jerry’s Reel – so I said to him in my best imitation of Michael Caton from the movie The Castle: “That’s going straight to the website!”
The weather held until Sunday when the wind came up – we managed to get the campsite stowed before the rain set in – and after sitting in on a few concert sets we headed off back to Canberra.
Cheers
Jerry
