Woodford in review: Day Three

30 December 2009 by Max Easton

Three days of festival have now passed at the Woodford Folkie with three more to go. Soulshine have a trio of staff keeping tabs with the festival for daily updates, as Max Easton writes.

It's hard to imagine sometimes that if this were one of many other festivals, Woodford would be over by now. Instead, we're only halfway through, meaning there's twice as much to see and do. That's pretty damn daunting when you've done as much walking, jigging and drinking as we've done in the last few days. Of course, it's equally as comforting in the event that you didn't make it far enough away from the home built bar at camp to see anything, but I digress.

Day Three consisted of catching full sets of people we've only partially enjoyed and a few new artists making their way onto the timetables. Add to that some breakdancing stiltwalkers and you've pretty well filled out your day. Amongst the better performances were New Zealand songwriting legend Don McGlashan, frontman of the Muttonbirds. Playing completely solo with a loop pedal was a strange decision, sounding like the set was aching for the full band sound that the Muttonbirds are so well known for. That aside, the highlight of the set was a reindition of 'Dominion Road,' a song that, if it weren't for those pesky Finn brothers, could be the forefront of New Zealand anthems. Comedy trio Tripod and Woodford favourite Mr. Percival broke up the day before great performances by Timothy Carroll and Ryan Meeking.

We closed out the night with a trek to the Amphitheatre, an exercise which was finally dry for once, and one which was rewarded with another awesome set by the Middle East and the bizarre new iteration of Clare Bowditch. Bowditch played a swag of old favourites, breaking it up with the Europop inspired disco tracks that are to appear on her new album...something which is very, very hard to come to terms with, but something that is entertaining as hell. She seems to be loving the fact that she can stand up on stage, wear 3D goggles, sing into a teapot and press play on a Casio Tune's auto-beat as the focal point of a song. The latter event coincided with her guitarist running through the crowd for the duration of the song followed by a spotlight and a rapidly growing conga line of excited youths. If anyone were to tell me I would see any of those things at a Clare Bowditch gig a year ago I would have had them committed. Things change.

And so, with that providing the conversation for the stroll back to camp, the day closed with an early night in preparation for today, the day of our annual Woodford Pub Crawl which sees the visitation of each and every bar in the festival culminating in a dash to the Amphitheatre's Outpost bar. It's this event that we usually end up making the most unexpected musical discoveries, so keep your eyes on the website tomorrow morning for news of the results; those musical and those concerning our wellbeing, or lack thereof.

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