The Festival Explored

Aside from the amazing music there is art, cabaret, ceremonies, circus, comedy, debates, films, food, forums, poetry, shopping, street threatre, walks, workshops and more…

There are also numerous venues for forums and presentations on all topics from A-Z; like alternative health, healing, the environment, politics – the list is varied and endless. Or you you’re a hands-on type of person you can (amongst many other things) learn to: basket weave, dance (in many styles & nationalities), fire twirl, or even play the tin whistle. Something for everyone!

Some further explanation of events:

Klownsville
Excerpts: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” “Do not enter if you are timid and don’t wish to be confronted with the freaks that live in Klownsville.” “Watch for the weird and wonderful, the unusual, the obsessive and the manic.” “… but be careful, you may never leave.”

The Tiny Top – Sideshow show
Excerpts: Gasp in Horror! Laugh with amusement! Real People Doing Real Things! It’s a variety of freaks, natural born oddities and trained humans performing elegant stunts of daring and dexterity

Woodford Street Procession & Performers
Every night in the festival streets there is a single file, silent parade, this year featuring “the Festival lantern boat project”.
As well, many performers roam the streets interacting with the crowd, such as Big Rory, The Giant Seagulls, the Butt Hunters, the Unicycle crew and many more.

3 Minutes of Silence
Quote: “The whole Festival comes together before the New Year to experience something special at the Woodford Folk Festival – a shared silence. Light your candle and ponder the past and future.”

Fire Event – Safe Journey (Closing Ceremony)
The closing ceremony takes place New Years Day evening, up at the Amphi. This year the fire event “theme” was a large lighthouse which was burnt.
Quote: “Climb aboard and sail away with the artists, actors and musicians of the Festival’s Closing Ceremony – The Fire Event – as they leave the shore for the voyage to the unknown.” – Paul Lawler, Director

Those marked “excerpt” or “quote” above from Woodford Folk Festival site – see for further details.

Of course there’s also such a fantastic peaceful feeling to the festival, the performers, the volunteers and the crowd. It is by far the nicest festival I’ve had the privilege of enjoying.

Some Woodford stats:

• 6 days and nights
• 340 acres
• Over 130,000 aggregate festival goers (avg 20,000 each day)
• Over 2000 performers and 400 events in 20 venues
• 40+ food stalls/cafes

• ??? campers

Anyone know a reliable figure for how many season campers Woodford takes? I’ve heard 15,000, I’ve also heard 25,000 – but I have no idea. There are hundreds of same-looking streets in the season camping area in which to get lost so… Would love to hear if anyone knows the answer to this.

x0x

Time to welcome in the New Year

It’s now officially 2008, the silly season is supposed to have come to an end. New years resolutions have been made (will they be kept?). Many are sleeping off the effects of the previous evenings events, or, even continuing on?

Woodford Folk Festival has another tradition of welcoming the first sunrise of the New Year with a ceremony on the hilltop amongst the Tibetan monks and many festival goers. The only downside was that the sun didn’t show itself. Now, we know it did rise (one of life’s certainties), it just wasn’t very visible. Never to mind, surely it doesn’t mean that our year will be in clouded in doubt as well??

Guess I’ll have to wait for another Woodford festival to experience this.

Musical highlights of our last day – Day 6:

• TeTe (Fra) – self taught musician sometimes called the “French Jeff Buckley”
• Dick Desert & The Shotgun Country Club (Aus): Dick mixes upfront and honest political views with comedy in lyrics. Genre? uhm… avant garde punk (outlaw) country?
• Bablyon Circus (Fra) – 10-piece blend of raw energy ska, punk, afro-beat, folk and reggae

Another highlight (no), experience – was keeping out of the rain in an almost empty bar when all of a sudden we were surrounded by about 30 clowns… Luckily, I don’t have a clown phobia, however, you still couldn’t help but feel you were a part of Stephen King’s “It”, or “Killer Klowns from Outer Space” or something… weird! Of course, there was a logical explanation – Woodford’s Klownsville had just closed for the festival.

The rainy yet spectacular closing ceremony will have to wait another year as well — 6 days of rain have tired us. Or was it the festival itself?

Hope you’ve enjoyed our shared experiences and musings. If some things I’ve mentioned over the past 6 days have baffled you, check out Woodford – Not Just Music – or drop us a comment below.

Cheers

x0x

Let’s celebrate the last day of 2007

Well, we took the opportunity of lazing at camp over a cooked breaky and some cool beats, knowing we had a big arvo/eve ahead of us! This meant that we forgot about James Morrison onstage – who we hear was an absolute stand out for Woodford 07/08. Shame on us!

By four days of rain, it also meant that we could take our time and have the hot showers to ourselves for a change – whilst trying to devise methods for getting back to camp with minimal mud impact. Sinking back up to your ankles after a shower is just “not cricket”!

(Day 5 pics of the camp site below – see Day 1 to compare)

Also, having a fantastic lineup at ‘The Grande’ venue today meant we could just set up camp there lunchtime onwards and relax ~ rather than ducking to and from venues.

Highlights for Day 5 – NYE

• Overall feeling of NYE expectancy and high energy of the growing festival crowd
• More Unicycle shenanigans, cricket on the green, Big Rory and the Giant Seagulls and other street performer scenes (some pics below)
• The Kin (US): Brothers originally from Oz, now New York, who have a charismatic stage presence and sing a mix of indie rock and soft love ballads – beautiful music. Crowd participation: The boys invite game audience members to join for their “chorus” front stage.
• The distinctive and soulful sounds of Mia Dyson (Aus)
• Moshav (US): Of US descent but raised in Israel, the band were brought up around music, resulting in heartfelt rock, folk and indie tunes.
• The Red-Eyes (Aus) (an aptly named band for the NYE timeslot?) – a solid 12-piece dub/reggae outfit from Melbourne who certainly know how to get the crowd moving.

At 11.30pm, the traditional candlelit three minutes silence ~ to honour absent friends and to think about the year past and year ahead ~ gives a nice non-commercial feel to the whole New Year’s Eve malarkey. It proves hard for some to remain completely quiet and still for the 3-minutes, usually only those who are partaking in much too much festive cheer though.

You would imagine that with a crowd the size of Woodford, the volunteers have their work cut out for them getting around the entire festival village site to hand out candles – but they are in abundance. As tempting as it may be, just take one!

Hot Tip: Burning candles drip burning wax

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Go To: Woodford Day 6 - the Happy New Year

Photos from Day 5: (click thumbnail for larger size)
Street Performers & Lantern Parade -

Mudfest – Day 1 vs Day 5 in the camping grounds

Food glorious food

When the weather is inclement, what better way to pass the time than browsing and buying from the unlimited amount of Woodford shops and of course, sampling from some of the 40 odd amazing food stalls.

Some of our Woodford favourites – Woodfired pizza, Langos, Poffertjes, Burger Bar, German Fare, Turkish Pastries – hmm, making me hungry again!

Day 4 Highlights:

• TaikOz (Aus) – unbelievably high energy Japanese styled drumming. Quote: “athletic dynamism that will leave you breathless” as might their upper body strength Pics below
• Wild Marmalade (Aus) – blending the ancient sounds of the didjeridu with grooves of the present; high energy dance music
• Maiden Speech (Aus) – 80’s inspired avant-garde poetry-pop (great 80’s costumes, themes and references) – Pic below
• Poetry Slam finals – with contestants performing short pieces and being judged by select audience members
• We saw The Go Set (Aus) for 2nd time in as many days – a mixture of celtic, folk, punk rock combining bag pipes, accordion, electric guitars and political passion. Crowd participation: J Keenan (lead singer), calls everyone down to the front, turns off the amps/pa, sits down on the stage edge and plays an acoustic. Pics below courtesy of Chris Converse
  

We were disappointed to have not been able to get in to see both The Space Cowboy, or the Comedian’s Debate. Both were well and truly packed out half hour before the performances – a sign that they were definitely proving popular.

Note: You’ll be proud to hear that by night 4 we could find our campsite even in the muddy dark We thought our next challenge should perhaps be to try catching a bus back?

x0x

Go To: Woodford Day 5 - As we celebrate the last day of 07

Photos from Day 4:
Taikoz:

Maiden Speech:

The Go Set: