Not Just a Stage – Performers and Their Music Festival Experiences
By Sue Barrett
They’ve played Edmonton, Falcon Ridge, Glastonbury, Michigan, Newport, Queenscliff, Sidmouth, Port Fairy, Tønder, Fairbridge, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Woodford…
And now the bluehouse, Eliza Carthy, Jess Klein and Toshi Reagon share their festival experiences with FEMMUSIC.
| the bluehouse (Australia) has been playing original guitar and vocal harmony based pop music since the mid-1990s (after initially appearing as a cover band). The group has performed around the world, including in Scotland where they appeared on stage wearing kilts and on the front page of a daily newspaper wearing blue body paint. Jacqui Walter is the eldest girl in a large Catholic family, has worked as a body piercer and is a Virgo. Samantha Harley represented Australia in windsurfing, studied in Canada and the USA, still finds time to teach at university and is Aquarius/Capricorn cusp. Bernadette Carroll was born and raised in Sydney, attended and taught in Catholic and state schools, provided the kitchen in which the group’s name was created and is a Scorpio. Jacqui, Sam and Bernadette all live in Melbourne. | |
| Eliza Carthy (UK) was born in 1975 and grew up in Robin Hood’s Bay, North Yorkshire. In addition to her solo career, Eliza has worked as a duo with Nancy Kerr and as part of the Kings of Calicutt. She is a member of Waterson:Carthy (with her father, Martin Carthy, and her mother, Norma Waterson). Renowned for her performances of traditional folk music and for her fiddle playing, Eliza has branched out into songwriting. | |
| Jess Klein (USA) was born and brought up in Rochester, New York. And it was while studying in Jamaica in the mid-1990s, that she decided to pursue a career in music. Currently living in Boston, Massachusetts, Jess is both a solo performer and part of Voices on the Verge (with Beth Amsel, Erin McKeown and Rose Polenzani). Her songs are influenced by rock, folk, pop, R&B and roots and reflect her “deep, expressive soulfulness”. | |
| Toshi Reagon (USA) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1964. Her parents – Cordell Hull Reagon and Bernice Johnson Reagon – were part of the SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and members of The Freedom Singers. Pete Seeger’s wife, after whom Toshi is named, is her godmother. When she was seven, Toshi moved to Washington DC with her mother, who two years later founded the a cappella ensemble, Sweet Honey in the Rock. Toshi began performing in the early 1980s and released her first recording (Demonstrations) in the mid-1980s. Her music is a mix of rock, soul, funk, blues and folk and she works solo and with the band, Big Lovely. Toshi is now based in Brooklyn, New York. |
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FEMMUSIC: Can you tell us about the first music festival at which you performed? And whether you had any previous experience with festivals?
Jacqui [the bluehouse] The first big festival was probably the Port Fairy Folk Festival in 1996. We played in the Children’s Tent at 11.30 at night and then again the next morning at 9.30! That same year, we played the Edinburgh Fringe. And we did the Midsumma festival in Melbourne pretty early on.
Eliza Carthy The first festival I ever played was the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1989. I had been to a lot of UK folk festivals before as a child when my parents had been performing but this was my first experience of a large North American festival.
Jess Klein I first performed at the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival in New York state, in a sort of unofficial late night showcase on a wet field. The stage performances had ended and about six or seven musicians gathered together in front of the main stage and started to swap songs. We drew a pretty big crowd that way. They were all great musicians. I think that was the only time I’ve ever stood in the middle of a field and sang a song. Amazingly, people still come up to me after shows and say “I first saw you play at Falcon Ridge – it was late at night…it wasn’t really part of the festival…”. Before that I think I’d only been to the HORDE fest and something in my hometown called the Lilac Festival where they would always have this regional blues band called Spirogyra.
Toshi Reagon I’ve been at festivals all my life. My mother’s taken me to many of the places that she’s performed as a solo artist and with Sweet Honey in the Rock. But the first music festival at which I performed was probably Clearwater, when I was 17 or 18. It was great. I love the format of that festival because you end up playing a lot – you have your set, they have round robins…
FEMMUSIC: What do you enjoy most about performing at music festivals?
Jacqui [the bluehouse] I enjoy the diversity of the audience at festivals. At the Woodford Folk Festival, our biggest fans are kids – which is great – and the grey-headed brigade as well.
Samantha [the bluehouse] I like it that they are just such music loving, appreciative people. For them it is a real three-day or five-day time of their life and they are so excited…and you get that back from them.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] A lot of people who go to festivals are looking to discover something that they haven’t seen before. So the bush telegraph works really well at festivals.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] At the Fairbridge Festival in Western Australia, it was amazing. Nobody knew who we were, we played in a little hall…
Samantha [the bluehouse] There was this march of people. And other people were asking, “Where are these people going?”. And people were saying, “It’s someone we’ve ever heard of, so let’s go there.”…
Bernadette [the bluehouse] …and it ended up that this hall was packed.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] At regular venues, people might go for the booze or to catch up with friends and sometimes you can be background noise. But at festivals, people have spent a lot of money to be there and probably travelled an enormous distance. And they get excited about having a find.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] Another thing about festivals is that because there is such a large group of musicians, you get to catch up with old festival mates or meet new musicians that are inspiring and just talk about your own experiences. If you play events by yourself or with a support group or whatever, the only people that you travel with is that group. But festivals are great for getting contacts, networking. And you can mix bands.
Eliza Carthy I like being outdoors and being with other bands. I find it hard to leave a festival when you’ve just got there and you have to leave straight away.
Jess Klein A festival is a place where people want to have fun, or actually, they’re going to have fun, whether you want to help them or not. So you might as well step out there and make your music. People love the combination of sunshine and great music. So you can just ride that vibe. And feel the outdoors bolstering you on.
Toshi Reagon What I enjoy a lot about festivals is that you get the opportunity to see other artists. As an artist, you’re performing all the time, so unless you’re having down time, you don’t really get to go to shows. At a festival, if it’s programmed well, you should see a lot of people who are not like you and who are doing different things. And I absolutely adore that…Festivals are also a great place to see friends. And it’s usually the only place that you see the staff who work festivals each year – after you’ve been doing it a long time, that becomes a very warm, cool thing.
FEMMUSIC: And what do you find most difficult?
Jacqui [the bluehouse] The most difficult things are tents, heat, lack of sleep, feral drummers ’til six in the morning next to your tent and no mobile phone services (but I don’t mind the mobile phones not ringing during our gigs!). Another bad thing is getting caught “under the weather” in a toilet queue with a lot of festival goers who all know who you are and you need to get to the front of the queue rather quickly. But that’s also the advantage…
Samantha [the bluehouse] …they’ll let you in! And then you go to the toilet and on the back of the toilet door there’s some gossip about YOUR band!
Eliza Carthy The most difficult things about festivals for me are the short soundchecks, or no soundcheck at all; some of the smaller festivals also can’t afford proper accommodation or artist transport, which can make work harder. In an acoustic lineup sometimes the stages are so huge that you feel lost on them and try to overcompensate. The smaller ones can have dodgy PAs sometimes too…
Jess Klein For me, the port-a-potties are bad!
FEMMUSIC: Are music festivals “just another gig”? Or do you perform at particular festivals because of such things as their history, geographical location, food, target audience?
Jacqui [the bluehouse] Festivals are much more than a gig, especially if you’re going for a few days. You get into a way of life that’s different to the way that you live in an urban centre. In particular Woodford is a really loving community of people, where as a woman you can feel safe walking around the compound at three or four o’clock in the morning unaccompanied. So it’s a tremendous community experience, as well as a musical one.
Samantha [the bluehouse] Woodford is like a mini Utopia for those five days. There seems to be an incredible tolerance for every class and every religion and every race and every sexuality and every musical style. It’s quite amazing.
Eliza Carthy You definitely get to know the festivals you always say yes to and the ones that are going to be a pain. I will do small folk festivals and charge less sometimes so that I can stay in touch with the folk scene, see what’s going on.
Jess Klein Yeah, I wouldn’t say festivals are just another gig. I like knowing that I am part of a tradition of great music at all the festivals I’ve played, and that I get to meet other bands and musicians I admire.
Toshi Reagon Festivals are little towns. People work all year round to build a little town for two days or three days or a week or whatever it is and then they invite you to come and stay at their house…So when I have to leave quickly [before a festival is over], I really feel as if I’ve missed something.
FEMMUSIC: How is your pay and conditions determined for festival performances? And do you tend to have different pay and conditions for festivals than for other performances?
Jacqui [the bluehouse] You look on festivals as being less of a fee and more of an opportunity to sell merchandise. And the fee can be lower than what you’d make on a venue circuit. People at festivals are into buying product – probably more per capita at festivals than at a venue. They come armed with that sense of discovery and they want to take something home to remember that by. At festivals like Woodford or Edinburgh, we would probably shift more product in five days or a week or two weeks, than we would doing a similar size venue circuit.
Samantha [the bluehouse] When you factor in that there are three people plus a sound engineer and you’re at work for five days for 24 hours a day and you’ve got air tickets and a hire car and all your gear and everybody’s paying their rent at home, then it doesn’t make much sense. But there are other those things, like it’s a chance to play to new people and to have a great time.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] At festivals, everyone gets their program and they go, “Well, we’ll see them once”. And, although you get repeat people, there will be a whole new audience practically every time you play. And at Woodford, one of the shops had signing times – so you could go up and talk to the artist if you didn’t get a chance to see them after a show. It’s great.
Toshi Reagon Basically when you go into a festival situation you know that festivals are trying to bring a lot of people in, bring a lot of people together, for as little bit of money as they can because they don’t want to charge the public such an outrageous amount of money that they can’t come…You don’t play music festivals for the money. You try to get a good fee, but it’s one of the few things where you decide that you want to be at them and then you hope that you can work it out so that it’s affordable.
FEMMUSIC: In what ways, if any, has performing at music festivals improved your
performing skills and/or enhanced your career?Bernadette [the bluehouse] We got a lot of new material from festivals. In order to get a name sometimes at a festival, we played around on stage a bit and that got incorporated into the act. Festivals push you more. You just go that one bit further than you thought you could go.
Samantha [the bluehouse] It’s like a little Olympics of the arts – so you’ve got to stand out. In Edinburgh, for example, there are 13 000 other performers – so you go, “Gee, I’d better perform at this gig better than I’ve ever done” and it’s the same at the next gig and the next gig. ‘Cause one bad review and you can kiss it goodbye at something like Edinburgh.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] Going to Edinburgh helped us greatly as performers. We went there and we had a time limit, we had to get the best songs done the quickest and with as much enthusiasm and the biggest audience as we could find.
Samantha [the bluehouse] We did 31 gigs in 19 days!
Bernadette [the bluehouse] And it really sharpened everything up.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] People commented when we came back to Melbourne on how much our playing had improved.
Toshi Reagon At festivals I’m usually playing in front of a bigger audience than what I normally play. So, with some of the festivals, you get a set in front of 5000 to 10 000 people. And those people are from all over the country. And the festivals have gotten really good at establishing a place where you can go and buy CDs. So the audience takes you home with them.
FEMMUSIC: Music festivals can provide an opportunity for performers to meet, listen to and perform with other performers. What do you do when you’re at a festival?
Eliza Carthy Go and see people, drink beer, play tunes if there is somewhere to do it, sit in the sun if there is any!
Jess Klein Try to hear other bands as much as possible. It’s so cool to be on a bill with bands you admire, and a lot of times that happens at festivals first.
FEMMUSIC: Can you tell us about some of the behind-the-scenes things that you have to do, find and/or arrange at music festivals?
Bernadette [the bluehouse] There are millions of things! You find the media team to see if you can get on any radio that might be there. You try to get into extra venues – like chalkboard sessions.
Samantha [the bluehouse] You’ve got to manage your merchandise with the store and promote it with posters and whatnot.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] You have to find your…
Samantha [the bluehouse] …tent!
Jacqui [the bluehouse] …your crew – which is the people who are in charge of production. And usually you try to meet the director of the festival as early as you can. And you try to get a really good relationship with the volunteers – ’cause they are the ones who do it for love – and if they know that you appreciate them, they will look after you as an artist…
Samantha [the bluehouse] …and you’ve got to make sure that they have a good time.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] You’ve got to figure out how long you’ve got until soundcheck, what time you need to be at the venue and where the venue is.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] And where you can put your instruments that is safe…
Samantha [the bluehouse] …and where the weather won’t get at them. And the best coffee.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] And the toilets.
Samantha [the bluehouse] And the shortest queue for the shower.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] And once you’ve done all of that, you take a walk around and familiarise yourself with the area and what is going on…
Eliza Carthy Most big festivals will not allow you to sell your own stuff but some will have outlets you can take the CDs or T-shirts to and they will sell them for you at a percentage. Some festivals will lay on transport to and from the festival site but as I mentioned before not all of them can afford this. Some festivals will provide food in a big canteen, some will expect you to pay for your own at the food concession stands or give you meal tickets. If you are lucky you will get beer tickets too. Warm up space is not something I’ve ever had the pleasure of but it is nice to have a dressing room with a mirror. Soundchecks are good when you get them, they can range anything from a line check to half an hour, but mostly you don’t get them. Some large festivals have instrument repair on-site, if they don’t you have to get sorted out in the nearest town which can be easy or impossible depending on the town! We always ask for water on stage. Sometimes you are lucky enough to have an on-site masseur, there to sort your RSI, they are usually very busy…
Jess Klein Most of the festivals I’ve played at have been really well run with good sound and on-the-ball stage crews. Backstage often involves a trailer and a separate food tent, sometimes a lot of mud. They usually have backline so your band can hop right up and rock the vibes with just a line check. Most of the behind-the-scenes things are done by my tour manager, so I just try to warm up alone somewhere or go for a walk and take in the scene.
Toshi Reagon I’ve found all of the festivals to be different. Some are very urban – you’re going to stay at this hotel, that person’s going to pick you up, you are going to drive in here, you’re equipment’s going to be there…Others are different. With the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, you fly into Grand Rapids, then you drive for two and a half hours, you go up onto the land and you might be camping out. The Vancouver Folk Festival was really funny because they don’t use paper products at the festival – they rent plates and you have to buy your own cup. When I was there, I had to go find a little booth and buy a cup so that I could get some coffee. It’s just a blast!
FEMMUSIC: In relation to music festivals, what say do you have in such things as when, where and what you perform, the length of your set, who performs before or after you, ticket prices, entry conditions, accessibility arrangements and crowd control?
Eliza Carthy We have control over what songs we do and that’s pretty much it.
Jess Klein I don’t have a lot of say in those things at my level. Most of these bigger festivals don’t see me as a big pay check; I’m kind of small potatoes to a promoter at this point, but my manager and booking agent think about those things and fight the good fight for me.
FEMMUSIC: What are some of the differences between performing at night and performing during the day and performing indoors and performing outdoors?
Bernadette [the bluehouse] Every performance is different – there are so many variables.
Samantha [the bluehouse] I like to see the audience. I often find in the daytime that I can see the entire, whole audience and this is fantastic. Then the next gig is at night-time and you’ve got lights in your eyes and you can’t see anyone and I find it easier to relate to the crowd because of the daytime gig.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] Playing during the day may affect the content of the gig – we’ve done some gigs where we were a lot mellower. You look out there and you see all the oldies and the kids and you don’t want to knock them over. And we are very last minute set writers – so we generally check out what the gig is doing before we write the set list. We usually try to customise the gig, based on the audience and to cater for their mood. And during a gig, we’ll still be monitoring how it’s going.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] I find outdoor gigs harder…
Samantha [the bluehouse] …the energy goes all the way out…
Bernadette [the bluehouse] …and tent gigs are different again.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] If you’ve got a wicked cross wind across the stage, you’re going to find your voice affected by the end of the gig by trying to put out your vocals really hard against a weather problem.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] And often outside stages are built for huge bands and there are humongous rigs and we are these three little girls, standing so far apart that we can hardly see each other!
Samantha [the bluehouse] And the crowd might be 20 metres [22 yards] away. And we like them right at our feet because we interact with the crowd.
Eliza Carthy Some people really hate to play during the day because you don’t get the same intensity as when it is dark, but I don’t mind. I prefer indoors to out though, probably because most of the festivals I went to when I was a kid it rained. It does that in Northern England.
Jess Klein In Winnipeg I played on the main stage at night twice. Once with my friend Alejandro Escovedo and his band, and once solo. The festival is held in a clearing but surrounded by wilderness and the entire time I was playing guitar, huge moths were hitting my arms. I didn’t know if they were poisonous or what! It was pretty funny. I just tried to keep going.
Toshi Reagon Indoor festivals have more of a feeling of a regular show. At outdoor festivals, especially during the day, you’re soaking up everything. But when it’s too hot, I can’t stand it. The audience is just dying, ’cause they’re outside and it’s 100 degrees. And the stage is like 120 degrees. And it’s very hard to get anything going, other than just sitting down and playing nice music. We played at Summerstage, here in New York in Central Park, and it was so hot that we had to put towels on the effects pedals and cover the guitars. And all of the LED lights were freaking out. It was unbearable. I tend to like to play in the evening, as it’s getting darker. I like to connect with the audience – I like to see them and I like to see if they’re having fun and just lying on their arse drinking beer.
FEMMUSIC: How do music festivals differ between different regions or different countries?
Eliza Carthy The festivals tend to be the same really wherever you go. The audiences are different: playing to a crowd in Glasgow is very different from playing to Canadians, for example. North American crowds tend to want to be pleased and have a good time, whereas Europeans and the Brits want them to convince you.
Jess Klein The Fuji Rock Fest in Japan was the best organized festival I’ve seen. Everything ran according to schedule, the music was incredible. They had a lot of Japanese and Korean bands there I hadn’t heard before, like Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her, which deserves a Grammy just for its name, but was also a great rock band. There were five stages, and because I was there solo I got to do several spots on the main stage in between other bands like the Foo Fighters, Elliott Smith, Sonic Youth and Fishbone. It was the first time I’d played to so many people, about 12 000 I think. I’d never played in Japan before and the promoter of that Festival was named Mr Hidaka. I found out later that the MCs had introduced me (in Japanese) as “Hidaka-san’s secret weapon”! That was pretty amazing. I didn’t know what they’d said, but they said it with total monster truck voices and then I walked out onstage and played two songs on my acoustic guitar. Crazy.
Toshi Reagon It really depends on who’s producing the festival and if the people are rooted in the region. [Within the USA], I think that a lot of festivals are booked by the same people, so they can take on a same flavour. There is definitely a difference between Vancouver and Michigan and a difference between the Playboy Jazz Festival and Newport. Vancouver and Newport have great water around the festival, so it’s extremely beautiful. And LA is LA!
FEMMUSIC: In what ways do your festival performances differ from your other performances?
Jacqui [the bluehouse] At festivals, you don’t get very long to play, you’re lucky if you get an hour. At the conference that we played at in Texas [in 2001], we had 20 minutes per performance to pull something out of the bag. We vary our content depending on the festival. When we played at the Point Walter Festival in Western Australia, they came up and made a specific request that we keep it clean because it was a family festival.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] In America, we’ve had to explain certain words in songs. “When we say ‘swinging on the backyard line’ [in the song, ‘In Deep’] that means a Hills Hoist and a Hills Hoist is…”.
Samantha [the bluehouse] And the word “jumper” [in the song, ‘#19’] – we have to explain that it’s a sweater.
Jacqui [the bluehouse] We consciously have to work on slowing down our speaking voices. Americans find it very hard to follow the speed with which we speak.
Samantha [the bluehouse] So do the English…
Bernadette [the bluehouse] …and the Scottish – they find us hard to understand too.
Eliza Carthy My festival performances differ from my other performances in length mostly. We travel with the same amount of people and gear: sound engineer/tour manager, and the band. I have done acoustic and electric gigs at festivals; again, it depends on the festival. The audiences are cool because they can comprise people who maybe wouldn’t come to see you in a closed paying venue, but that can go either way. They can turn nasty…
Toshi Reagon At festivals, I’m usually on a bigger stage, with bigger and more equipment and a full lighting rig. Festivals tend to be very strict about time – you have 45 minutes and that really means 45 minutes.
I played at the Playboy Jazz Festival in LA, which is incredible. It’s at the Hollywood Bowl, draws 11 000 people and the best jazz musicians from all over the world play at it. But they have you on a circular stage that moves 360 degrees. They have it split in half and on one side there’s band A and on the other side there’s band B. When it’s time for you to play, you stand on the stage and they spin you around and you face an audience. Then when it’s time for you to finish, they spin you around and you’re backstage again. So if you’re not finished on time, you get spun off. And I was, “Okay, I’m not going over my time at all.” I got through six songs and then I ended it five minutes early!
FEMMUSIC: And some final thoughts...
Jacqui [the bluehouse] I think that, for audiences, discovering someone makes their festival.
Samantha [the bluehouse] For us, as performers, festivals are a chance to be entertained. We can go to see stuff in between our gigs and you actually get inspired.
Eliza Carthy And at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, they provide lovely big caravans with air conditioning and chilled drinks and hors d’oeuvres!
Jess Klein It’s great to be on stage with other performers as well and learn about their music that way.
Bernadette [the bluehouse] Festivals are a musicians’ convention really, with an audience watching.
Toshi Reagon And when you’re coming around a little bit later playing at clubs in front of, say, 200 people, there’s always someone in the audience who saw you at one of the festivals.
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More About The Performers
THE BLUEHOUSE
Plans for 2002
Tour the USA/Canada in the middle of the year. Find some free time to experiment with their home studio. Watch the new Hollywood movie (rumoured to star Suzi Quatro’s niece!) that includes a bluehouse song.Recent CDs
Big (1999)
6 Minutes of Breathable Air (2001)ELIZA CARTHY
Plans for 2002
Make some more records, move house, launch own record label, take walks, watch more TV and write a tune book.Recent CDs
Eliza Carthy: Angels & Cigarettes (2000)
Eliza Carthy & Nancy Kerr: On Reflection (2002)JESS KLEIN
Plans for 2002
Start recording a new album by summer.Festival Appearances in 2002 include
April: Voices on the Verge – WAM! Festival, MA (USA) [www.wamfest.com]Recent CDs
Jess Klein: Draw Them Near (2000)
Voices on the Verge: Live in Philadelphia (2001)TOSHI REAGON
Plans for 2002
Release self-titled new album.Recent CDs
The Righteous Ones (1999)
Toshi (2002)_____________________________________________________________________
More About The Festivals
AUSTRALIA
BRITAIN/EUROPE
NORTH AMERICA
Canadian Folk Festival Websites
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Sue Barrett is an Australian music writer. Festival performers that she has interviewed over the years include Judy Small and Kerrianne Cox (Australia); Deborah Romeyn, Shari Ulrich (Pied Pumkin) and Heather Bishop (Canada); Faith Petric, Cris Williamson and Cathy Fink (USA); Maddy Prior (Steeleye Span) and Eddi Reader (Fairground Attraction) (UK).
Sue’s highlights from the recent National Folk Festival in Australia included Alix Dobkin, Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton, Penelope Swales, Jodi Martin and the Unforseen, Rebecca Wright, Rachel Hore and Ember Swift.
ALIX DOBKIN (USA)
Alix is still a terrific fighter for lesbian visibility. And she says that she was Bob Dylan’s favourite female folk singer in the early 1960s – until he heard Toshi Reagon’s mother sing.KATE BURKE AND RUTH HAZLETON (Australia)
This young duo is injecting new life into traditional music (and Kate provided vocal and instrumental support on Judy Small’s CD, Let The Rainbow Shine).PENELOPE SWALES (Australia)
Penelope continues to be a powerful and down-to-earth performer, with wonderful song introductions, technological innovations and a parallel career making mandolins and guitars from gourds.JODI MARTIN AND THE UNFORSEEN (Australia)
Jodi is a insightful singer/songwriter, who grew up in the remote town of Ceduna in South Australia. Her “funky bass playing sister” Robyn provides harmony vocals, bass guitar and a song about Woolworths (‘Fresh Food Men’).REBECCA WRIGHT (Australia)
A young Queensland performer, who is planning to record her second CD at the end of the year. And let’s hope that it includes her song about a not-so-rosy relationship (‘All Wrong’).RACHEL HORE (Australia)
Rachel was a long time member of the vocal group, Arramaieda, and is a performer of charm, compassion, wry humour and, not surprisingly, fine vocals.EMBER SWIFT (Canada)
An incredible Canadian trio, consisting of Ember Swift (guitar), Cheryl Reid (drums) and Lyndell Montgomery (violin, bass, bowed guitar). Folk meets classical meets jazz meets punk! And according to Lyndell, their friends get invited over to hand fold the amazing CD booklets.Copyright: Sue Barrett, 2002