National Folk Festival

 

Canberra, Australia

 

 

I’m headed home after the Australian tour, flying from Sydney to Los Angeles. It’s one of those mind-bending thirteen hour flights where you arrive before you left.  …?

For the last few days I’ve been performing at the National Folk Festival in Canberra, Australia’scapital city (nope, it’s not Sydney). I played this festival six years ago and made some good friends, and many of them were there again, so on top of all the great music and general festival fun, I got to spend some good relaxed time with some good relaxed people.  

One family of three actually flew in all the way from New Zealand to see me play. Pretty cool. Little Brianna brought me a necklace that I’ll show you if you catch me at a show some time.

 

And now I get to go home to Deanna and spend the rest of her school vacation with her, so life’s good. We’re still not sure where we’ll go, which is the best way to take a break as far as I’m concerned.

My old friend Liz Frencham and my new friend Vincent Bradley sat in with me for all three of my festival shows, which was a treat. Liz plays upright bass and sings, and Vincent, a.k.a. ‘Cenzo (pronounced Chenzo), plays trumpet, flugelhorn and harmonica, sings and plays a mean bubble solo on S.S. Bathtub. The first two shows were to capacity crowds of over 1000 and the last one was in the 2500 seat auditorium, and it was full. 

That was great, of course, except that I couldn’t tell jokes about how musicians act on big stages, given that I was on one and all. I’ll have some video clips up soon, so stay tuned.