Overheard at the 2012 National Folk Festival

Blog the Second, Easter Saturday, 12pm

I suspect that ‘National Folk Festival’ may indeed be Old Norse for ‘’.

I started that sentence over two hours ago and got no further. Maybe it was the late-ish/actually not very late night the night before, or the fact the laptop battery was running down, or trying to construct barely intelligible English while half-listening to a bush poet’s doggerel, but the snappy gag I’d thought of early that morning would not leap back to mind.

Take II.

I suspect that ‘National Folk Festival’ may indeed be Old Norse for ‘permanent, insane grin’.

That’s not the original version, but it will do for now. Blogs, unlike magazine articles, are beautifully editable at a later, more inspired date.

Friday, Friday, Friday – what a wonderful day in the land of the National.

I did mean to mention the unseasonal weather. I’ve been at Nationals where the days have been baking, but as Queensland singer Lonnie Martin observed today, she’d be stood outside the Session Bar at 2am today, listening to a wonderful Irish session and having to remind herself, as she stood there in short sleeves that this was the National and yes, this was Canberra in mid-Autumn.

I never let adverse weather dampen my spirits (boom boom) at festivals, but fine, sunny weather does levitate the general mood and for the organisers, it does bring those half-inclined punters out of their warm Canberra homes at a time where they be more inclined to snuggle up to their Turbo 10s, and crack open the hot cross buns and truckloads of chocolate.

Screw that: kranskys and mulled wine all the way.

And bucket-loads of good music. Continue reading →