Maldon Folk Festival 2001

Played away on the Saturday afternoon and caught up with stacks of people which was great. The Davidsons, Skip Sail, Andrew Claremont and quite a few members of the Gippsland Acoustic Music Club (Strat [Great to see you - I've got a gig to go to, see ya!] and Alan Chambers to drop a few names) as well as people I have met over the years. The new Bose speaker system and JBL amplifier work very well - a really balanced sound. The Paul Beard Road-O-Phonic sounds very sweet played through the system and lots of people came up to me with the same comment. It's certainly a lot easier playing with a bit of sound reinforcement as I don't have to play so hard and that certainly makes for a better tone and is easier on the fingers. Because the sound travels up and away from the people, they don't get to hear the full sound of the instrument like I can. Well, today they did.



Me at Maldon with my new Paul Beard Road-O-Phonic guitar

Yes it does look like the De Gruchy has shrunk :)
If you look real close you will see the tops of my new Bose Acoustimass 5 speakers
(Just follow up the chrome stand up from the nut of my guitar)
A mini PA by any other name - What a wonderful sound.
It's taken me years to reach this stage. Boom boxes, Multimedia speakers(x2), Bose are the best!

Not that many Buskers and the numbers of people were a bit down. I was told that Sunday would be busier as that's when the 'Melbourne people travel to Maldon. I finished up a bit earlier than I had planned as a large collection of players put on a public show not far from where I was and I guess they were more interesting than me. Hard to compete with drums and brass instruments (and the twenty people). I ended up playing to the cars driving past. That wasn't much fun, so I packed up and set about searching for a room for the night. That didn't go to well either. Nothing in Bendigo, Castlemain, Ballarat, Bachus Marsh and after going through Melton I gave up and drove home. A very frustrating search. So much for Sunday! Hmmm ... maybe I should have booked a room before I left home!