Mozaik

Fine folk enjoying the night, drinking it in.

A Mozaic of sound

Mozaik kick started the festival well for us on the Friday night. Nothing like a bit of talent to impress you at the end of a working week. And heartening to see others just beginning their work as you unwind with a brew. Anyways they seemed to be unwinding themselves as the set went on, enjoying their work no doubt. Presenting some fine tunes and some agile blends, Irish and Appalachian, swinging mid song into Balkan/Macedonian, even seemingly Greek rhythms and modes, then back again, without any hint of garishness, Mozaik works. These are not laborious efforts but light and playful, felt numbers. In fact songs that vivify the life of the listener with fine playing and discursive influences sit well together in their sets. The story telling in the songs press home the playing handsomely. Durrell once said parts of Greece were ‘like Ireland towed down into the Mediterranean’. Their qualities of attitude being somewhat similar in many respects. It must be true of Bulgaria too. The easy dovetail of Balkan elements with Gaelic cadence and playing as done by Mozaik is testament to the strength of both traditions. Budapest, Rotterdam, Dublin or Dubbo; their sound is proof of the innovative and living traditions the band speaks from. The song “O’Donoghue’s” mentions bouzouki coming to Ireland. Australians have witnessed recent exchanges between our own music traditions and those studying early Gaelic music. The boys of Mozaik bring home the point of invigorating music with healthy hybridity by simply enjoying themselves up there on the stage. What a virile bunch they look, being so cross-fertile!

Truckstop Honeymoon's Blue Mountains Honeymoon Stopover

Truckstop Honeymoon

When the richest sentiments are expressed without pretension, there is gold. Truckstop Honeymoon are capable of this. They made rooms full of people happy on a regular basis, at Katoomba Blues and Roots + Folk Festival. The idea of them made couples in the room feel stronger; they are beautiful, earthy and clever; the show they bring out is clever, the protest they suggest in their songs is a beautiful blow. The mountains were richer for their presence.The Honeymooners are alive with good song and the lyrics spot on. The drive in their music hard to resist. Populating their songs with the sometimes good sometimes scary voters, taxpayers, cheque-collecters and unconsidered others they meet and live amongst, they speak ably. I caught them twice, it worked both times. Bought two albums and envied their prospects, which are very good on current performance. I suspect these discs will keep me good company for a long while, whether driving or rocking, waltzing or chewing. Songs like “Magnolia Tree” stay with you long past the next festival, affecting and simple. Truckstop honeymoon write songs that will go straight into the songbook. If barefoot stringpickin honest songs are kept by our young, these will be amongst them.
I wouldn’t wish upon anyone to live out their life from a suitcase forever, but if they can sustain it, and baby gets an education, we won’t be the poorer for it.

Hillbilly or swampfolk, I see them in the pantheon with Woody, but not forever beholden to him. They pull it off, as it were! This is one dangerous marriage. This union takes the wind out of rednecks. Or rather they breathe oxygen into the sound. They replace the cocky moonshine, pickups and shotguns with consciousness worthy of the name. Their work is increasing the repertoire of possibilities available to connoisseurs of banjo and upright bass, whomever that might be. And in their humour is insight that dismantles cliché one verse at a time. What they proffer I prefer. “Capitol Hill (I’m tired)” is a sharp tool hammering a good point home. Little bits of magic stick with you, though, like the “Weeki Wachee Mermaid”, brought to us at Katoomba accompanied by a charming, tap dancing, babysitting northcoast n.s.w. talent, name of Aileen. I felt stupidly happy that one of us was up there with both of them. (or possibly 2 of us). The folk festival is doing its job by bringing us this pair.

Talent like this won’t wilt in the face of life but grow richer with it, I hope we hear more.

Honeymooners

Nice Moments.

Ein Volk

Waiting for Guinness, tired in the ‘toomba and still letting the blood run free, or A lonely lost night of mariachis in the haze of festive fatigue.

Someone, somewhere was heard to say, at considerable volume “ Oh come on, don’t go you tie-dyed jeans wearin’ hippies ! This is Australian music, genuine, isn’t that right Ulrich Horchmiester ?” or was it Dirkland Kruithoffhiemer, or something of equal ethno-woggish wonder.

A singer implored late night rows of festival goers and sitters, to stand as one and dance in the true spirit of fiesta, (after all it was only night 2 of the festival). …and indeed provoked, some enthusiastic damsels rose, a distinct lack of valour or perhaps folked out fug meant that those dancing girls went without partners. But then, women are so often braver than men. Perhaps it was the enveloping fog or the venue being short on dancing / swinging space but there appeared to be a lot of waiting and too little Guinness, on the audience’s part. [I have seen WfG play to a hotter tent in the humidity of a Bellingen spring, also full of hippies, where the crowd jumped and danced till the rows of seats were pushed back by the sheer power of the possessed moving to those devil’s songs] Katoomba was in peril this evening of looking staid.

A lack of festiveness at the festival could be a demographic prob, maybe. (see Babyboomeration article), those who danced, those who made the move to be festive were young and exceptional of spirit perhaps.

The word Australian was cast about like a searchlight in quest for an answer; the multiethnic reality of myriad national musical styles mixing with seven different shades of showmanship presented something brilliantine and confoundingly unique when strapped together with distinct antipodean idiom and Australian accents. Were we a nation of people whom marked and celebrated our own development in cultural terms, we would hail and resound with this talented mob. Bugger it, Let’s do it anyway ! They were tops! Yes, tops !

Anger flashed through the air as a point was put that the song being sung was written by Irishmen who died for the writing of it, not by a once a year puffy hat wearing ‘ kiss me I’m Irish’ chancer. “ I’m not staying here to be yelled at..’ bemoaned one mug, and left. Celtic sensitivity suitably inflamed by ‘irish pigs’ being berated by Irish currency lads, the evening dived into a seedy Brechtian standoff between the player and the assembled punters.

The lead offender seemed to be going through what appeared to be the drug induced equivalent of hyperglycemia, “I will start punching something very soon”, the uber-titles said, “ … and if I am not fed soon, I will eat my audience. I will not be held responsible for my actions!” Certainly some had disappeared already, and whilst his comrades tried to quell the disquiet of the quiet, the effront-man surveyed us all with hunger in his eyes. The clever in the public seats were keeping a cool eye on the exit points available to them; this dynamic was creative, artistic maybe, but what was being created was in doubt to quilted nannas looking on admirably until the frontman grabbed his balls and announced the equal separation provided by his besuited member! The gauntlet enunciated, the knowing nannas smiled on, staunch. The ice cracked in this gentle way, and the audience edited in this gentle way, a point of no return was reached for the throng. The ones remaining were not letting each other off the hook.

The less sensitive punters called the showman’s bluff and stayed on regardless, shouting “Play the Lost Mariachi !”, a circus event ensued as the trumpeters strolled through the tent and blew merry serenade into the crowd, guitarists mounted the shoulders of alto saxophonists, or was it piano players surmounting the string section, I really can’t remember. A waltz was danced before the stage, and the carousing thing was done! A good time was had by all those who danced, and the humoured whom watched on good humouredly.

The challenge of local radical music is not that you were changed for life by it instantly, but that you were awake enough to recognize it when you were there. Musicianship and energy (especially the energy that comes of Weilish desperation) needs to be more than heard or seen, it needs to rake across your better judgement. Without it we may be trapped in the land of the boring four/four, forevermore. Something passing strange happened there in the tent. Verfremdungseffekt or killkennyred effect, a moment was witnessed at the festival.

Mt.VicMist. 2006

Wailing for genius

Guinness tent of records

Romanza

Carnival Sideshow of the mephistical...

A folked up night of nightsweats

Waltzing our Guinness in the night

The Lost Mariachi wandering in Katoomba

Epilogue, or Guiness regurgitated.

The very next day, they played again, and we stumbled upon them playing the same venue again for some reason. But this time there were youth there dancing ! Up the back on the grass admittedly, on the only space available to them, but dancing to it nonetheless. The sarcasm of the front man was once again admirable in the face of the indifferent, but the teachers in the audience could still enjoy it, despite being able to spot another garden variety case of undiagnosed adhd/odd at one hundred paces. His introduction to ‘Mr President try something else’ explained as the alternative careers of John Howard, Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush was useful to us all. Amazing what a coherent moment from an mc on only his first beer (perhaps) will do to engage an audience.

Mt.VicMist. 2006

***

[If none of this article makes much sense get your hands on a copy of their first album somehow, listen to ‘keeping out the riff raff’.]

Under the shade of a Guinness Marquee

Rougish against the day

Ein Volk ein Ripper Mate !

I will add more as time comes to hand. I am answering a lot of emails and stoof at the moment, and thankyou to those generous interlocutors (read people), I am glad to hear from you.

Here is the news. The Fest was a goodly event.