Harry Manx at Katoomba Folk

Harry smiles into the March mists of Katoomba each time he visits. His sympathetic strings roll in like a Megalong shroud and notes resonate. Some sun breaking the approaching blueness of winter. Marquees glow with the warmth of the Mohan Veena. For more than a festival moment we glimpse songs that find their mark here. As if strings divined laylines. As if a guitar could find true north when spun on local stones. This is the third time I have sat in a Katoomba autumn and listened to this finely wrought tool peal through festival aisles as a mystic axe should. Poised notes dance. Harry is also a charmer with a banjo that plots out smiles in the air like a sextant plotting star charts. His interest in instruments gives us more tones to describe, and colours the intervals between them to life. Homespun, well traveled and cosmic lyrics combine and walk through the searching lines spoken from the necks of instruments both exotic and familiar. His touring company is tight, playing in Katoomba after such unassuming rehearsal facilities as the Port Fairy Folk Festival they were ready and Harry delivered again. I like his unaccompanied moments too. Less the sound becomes too easy, always the danger when facility meets métier, I’d dearly love to hear extended instrumental blues/ragas on the Mohan Veena. Ragas, Chops and licks, ascending and descending, 12 bars and further, there is great promise in the mix and Harry’s humble delivery sits best with it. It is through this connection, these airs, that we lend an ear to the songs. We come to hear it.