Boolarra Folk Festival 2009
Short and Sweet (and damp!)
The Weather Bureau predicted clearing showers for Saturday and they got it right. Instead of temperatures in the forties it struggled to reach just over twenty degrees.
I was going to take two guitars, but whittled that down to using just the Beard Road-a-Phonic lap steel. You'd be amazed at how many people ask "What's that?" and point at the lap steel. Ah the role of an educator.
I arrived around 11:00 and found a nice little niche between a cheese vendor and a fairy floss vendor. Commercially it was a good spot, a food area, I had trees behind me to keep the sun off my back but no over cover and that proved to be my Achilles Heel. Over the next hour four light showers that lasted five to ten minutes came through and I covered up what I could and I soldiered on. But a reasonably heavy shower came through around 1:00 that made me think maybe I should leave , so I abandoned the busk. Everything was going from damp to wet, including me.
I was using a small Fender Acoustasonic amplifier and a PDA, hence 120/240 volts, I'm quite sure they didn't appreciate the moisture.
There's an anecdote I read somewhere that when it gets damp it's the fiddle and dobro players that leave first. I think it's true.
I caught up with quite a few people that I hadn't seen for awhile and that was good.
At 12:00 the drum battle started and that shook a few things and raised the background sound level for about forty five minutes.
One of the organisers approached me and asked me to play on the other side of the vendor area, away from the main stage. I said I would, but of course that never happened.
Sold a few CD's, collected enough spare change for dinner and generally had a good time.