February Club Night
Alan Musgrove & His Watsaname Band, with Amanda Broberg support

Our first Club night of the year was a beaudy.  Amanda Broberg's long-awaited solo debut at the Club was a real delight.  With a relaxed, warm presence, her singing was carried by guitar arrangements that ranged from delicate picking to a real earthy and gutsy beat.  Her bracket of ballads, with both new and old favourites, was enjoyed by us all.  Great stuff.  Come back, Amanda!
Thalia and Alan Musgrove then performed their "Interplay"……… Thalia's remarkable poems set to music and song.  Doors opened in my mind and a tidal wave of images swept through.  Thalia's stirring and imaginative poems range across themes like the Aussie Dry (I swear my throat felt dusty) and urban decay, to the unique and personal.   The performance ended with Thalia's passionate homage to her roots in the Greek community - a portrait of her father's dancing and drinking in the late night cafes of Melbourne's shady underworld.  Wow!
After supper we settled down with Alan Musgrove & His Watsaname Band.  Bob McInness, the "grand old man" of our folk fiddlers, with Stuart Leslie on the squeezebox, played sets of great old tunes with a superb sweetness.  Alan's old-style picking accompaniment, subtle and steady, also supports his strong, clear singing style.  We had little more than a small glimpse of his Gi-normous repertoire as he sang old songs like "The Waterwitch" that he's helped to rescue from obscurity, taking us back to the old times and places of our real and mythical past.  His quietly informative introductions were often laced with a wry humour.  Their finale?  How could these fellas have known, when we called for more, that their choice of an encore had also been the Club's theme song for so many years?  The spirits of Harry Anderson, Burns, Tate, Spencer and Co. joined us as we sang out the night with "Boozing".  A truly great performance, and we look forward to their return.

                                                                                Review from Julie Castles



April Double Concert
Colum Sands & The Beautiful Losers

It was a warm and muggy evening in early April that saw the NHVFC host a great double header concert featuring Colum Sands and The Beautiful Losers.  The humidity challenged the tuning of instruments, and Colum was battling a lurgy he picked up in Queensland (not to mention the one hour time difference!) but in spite of this, we all enjoyed a fantastic night!
Colum Sands is well known to folk audiences all over the world for his warm, witty and quirky songs and stories, many of which are drawn from his life in Ireland.  He plays on his Irishness in a way which is never sentimental, revealing the idiosyncracies of his people in a way which reminds us all about our inherent humanity.  Listening to Colum perform live is like walking through a grassy meadow on a sunny day, and the 70-strong audience was entranced – especially the group of kids that clustered at his feet through out the performance.
Congratulations to NATF Wildlife Rescue Service who enticed him to perform for this benefit concert!!
The Beautiful Losers are, of course, well-known Newcastle favourites Kent Daniel, Larry Hughes and Bernadette Lannen, ably assisted on keyboard and fiddle by Steve Roberts.  As testament to their popularity with local crowds, they pulled an even bigger audience than Colum Sands, and they did not disappoint with their expansive repertoire of both original songs and folk covers.  My only criticism of their performance is that we did not get to hear Kent sing enough!!!!  In my humble opinion he has one of the best voices in Australian folk circles and we don’t get to hear it enough, especially since he has not made any recordings that I am aware of.  Bernadette sings beautifully, there is no doubt, but so do you, Kent!
Thanks must go to the hard working crew in the kitchen who produced the yummy curries we enjoyed for dinner, and also to Pete Smith who entertained the dinner crowd with his lyrical guitar playing between the main acts (those of us who didn’t go off to the pub, that is!)

                                                                                Review from Jane Harding



June Mid-Year Bush Dance with 'Bushfire'

Yooohooo!  What a great night we had with Bushfire (Kent, Steve, Gary and Bill ably assisting on tin whistle).  They sure stirred up a firestorm of great bush dance music that had many a foot tapping and a lot of us panting, puffing and gasping for breath.  Hey fellas, we aren’t as young as we used to be!  The dancers soon warmed up and cool water was much in demand.
We had a wide range of dances from easy (even for novices) to something more challenging.  We danced to reels and jigs and a waltz or two as well.  There was something there for everybody and no excuse to not give it a go.  Okay, yes we always seem to have a disproportionate number of "Ladies” versus "Gentlemen” (maybe one or two of these) but they’re used to it and believe that anything the men can do, they can do better.
The local Scottish, Welsh, Irish and bush dance groups all support the dance and always enjoy themselves and are keen to help newcomers as well: Like poor Bob, came at the invitation of some of his (so called) friends, arriving a little late, just when they needed a few more dancers for a set.  Unknowingly he sat down (however briefly) amongst a group of Scottish dancers, and very soon found himself with multiple "ladies” dragging him on to the floor.  So much for just coming for a look see!!!  Thanks for coming Bob, we hope we didn’t scare you too much and we’d love to see you come again.  Likewise all the others who came for a "look see” as well.
The event was well organised by the Folk Club and special thanks to Lainey making it a night to remember.  We had a wonderful supper (thanks to all those who brought something) we may have been regretting that last piece of cake as we launched into the dancers dance, Levi Jackson’s Rag.  It was lively and a bit on the wild side as ladies flew everywhere only to be grabbed by one of the (not so) gentlemen and steered in the right direction.  Well, most of the time anyway!  Amazingly the band had learned the tune from watching YouTube, so I was informed.  Thanks guys!  The music was spot on and the tempo heart-racing.  Is it true that Kent said he’d renamed the dance Michael Jackson’s Rag in memory of that infamous singer, dancer and highly incomprehensible entertainer who left the planet that week?
Oh, a quick plug for the monthly bush dance workshops on the third Sunday of each month between 2pm & 4pm at New Lambton.

                                                                               Review from Bill Propert