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Wednesday 5 October 2011 - Monthly Club Night
Our Club Nights occur monthly and provide members and guests with an opportunity to
share their music in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. These night's attract novices
performing for the first time outside of the comfort of their bedrooms, and
seasoned artists. Many friends are made and ongoing collaborations are established.
If you are not a muso, you are welcome as well, you can come along and
listen and enjoy the music and friendship.
These nights, like most Bendigo Folk Club events are now conducted at our venue in the
excellent Sandhurst Football Clubrooms, Under the Grandstand at the Queen Elizabeth Oval
in View Street. This building is more than 100 years old. The interior includes ancient
red bricks, stained timber, great acoustics, excellent ambiance, no smoke, no background
noise, comfy chairs, reasonably priced drinks .. excellent all round.
Come along, listen or participate. All in exchange for a gold coin donation.
Under the Grandstand, Queen Elizabeth Oval View Street, from 7:30pm.
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Friday 14 October 2011 - The String Contingent
The String Contingent’s self-titled debut melds the raw wildness of Scottish folk, the organic
dynamism of American bluegrass and the refined acoustic sensibility of the classical string
trio. Chris Stone (violin), Graham McLeod (guitar) and Holly Downes (double bass) have
produced a collection of original acoustic music that retains the spontaneity of free
improvisation within the structurally integrated ethos of the chamber ensemble.
Enjoying a year of itinerant wandering from their native Australia, Chris and Holly got to
know Graham while playing with his band, Modhan, providing music at Ceilidhs (traditional
Scottish dances) in 2008. Brought closer together by a shared love of both traditional
Scottish folk as well as the mainstays of the New Acoustic movement in the US such as Bela
Fleck, Edgar Meyer and Chris Thile, Chris had ‘an inkling that [the three of us] might sound
good together’ and so after a week’s frenzied composition and rehearsal the newly christened
band performed their first gig at the Leith Folk Club which was ‘probably rubbish, but felt
bloody brilliant!’ After returning to Australia, Chris and Holly tempted Graham to join them
with the prospect of travelling around the country and the band set about assembling their
first album.
After testing their newly written material in a whirlwind tour of Tasmania, the band decided
it was time to record. Wanting to capture the casual intimacy that characterises their live set,
they selected St Mark’s Church in Fitzroy, Melbourne as possessing an appropriately warm,
natural acoustic, the space acting ‘almost like a fourth member of the group’. Resistant to the
use of overdubbing, cutting, drop-ins and other digital recording techniques, the band
decided to record ‘live’ in whole takes, believing that, as Chris puts it, ‘the act of playing
together in a good acoustic space, where each note played can be instantly and intuitively
responded to is infinitely more valuable than the production of a technically perfect work’.
The results are a showcase in the young group’s superb musicianship, Graham’s thoughtful
picking providing the secure backbone on which Chris might explore sounds alternately
tender or wildly yowling (Warren Ellis eat your heart out), while the melodic potential of the
double bass is deftly revealed under Holly’s sure fingers. Meanwhile, the songs themselves
indicate a store of thoughtfully accumulated youthful wisdom and an ebullient joy in the
contingent possibilities of life. The String Contingent is a testament to the intuitive poise,
excitement and invention of a young group, alive with the knowledge that dark times pass
quickly when weathered with good friends and small comforts.
Some tracks from The String Contingent's self titled CD:
King Offa
Farewell to Aga
Ikadoo Blues
The String Contingent's website.
Tickets available at the door.
Under the Grandstand, Queen Elizabeth Oval View Street, 8:00pm for an 8:15pm start.
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Friday 9 December 2011 - Frank Fairfield with support from The Sitting Ducks
Frank Fairfield is a one-man tour de force, a twenty-five year old Californian
multi-instrumentalist (vocals, banjo, fiddle, guitar) dynamo who is resolutely
circumventing and re-writing the rules for the folk/popular song tradition for
the present age.
A torch-bearer for the misunderstood or under-appreciated songs of yesteryear
and with an intrinsically linked work ethic of dedication and understatement,
Frank is sustaining and rehabilitating this tradition through his powerful and
emotional voice, and through his musicianship – his performances on banjo, fiddle
and guitar are technically proficient without being showy; somehow simultaneously
played with an ease that tacitly encourages the collaboration and continuation of
these songs for the centuries to come.
"A young Californian who sings and plays as someone who’s crawled out of the Virginia
mountains carrying familiar songs that in his hands sound forgotten: broken lines,
a dissonant drone, the fiddle or the banjo all percussion, every rising moment
louder than the one before it". - Greil Marcus
"Frank Fairfield is the sort of person who makes you feel sort of glad to
be alive, so passionate is he about his obsessions from a bygone age. Just
talking to him for a few moments makes your heart begin to beat a little
slower". - The Guardian
Frank's MySpace.
Tickets available at the door. Under the Grandstand, Queen Elizabeth Oval
View Street, 8:00pm for an 8:15pm start.
