Kiwifolk.com
Folk and Acoustic Music in New Zealand
Folk and Acoustic Music in New Zealand
It was an early start to get to Skagen for a midday sound check and an early afternoon concert. We're now on the home stretch and the popular Skagen Festival is our last engagement. We are on the same bill (and T-shirt) as Eric Bogle, The Dubliners, Dougie McLean, Beth Hart and Wayne Toups, not to mention dozens of other acts we'd never heard of who turn out to be just as amazing!
Skagen is a fishing town on the peninsula that forms the Northern tip of Denmark, tapering into a spit where the North and Baltic seas meet. There is an eerie light there, especially at sunset (which is about 11pm at this time of year) when the ocean looks opalescent pink. The town itself has a large marina and it is full of Norwegian and Swedish craft that have sailed in for the festival. The weeks in Denmark have been sunny and hot, but everyone says it'll be better in Skagen. They were right too, temperatures in the 30s and a consistently gentle sea breeze. At night time it's just as warm and it never gets dark. The streets are alive with pubs and partygoers and there's a band in every bar.
Upon arrival we're straight in to our first performance. The audience has been nicely wound up by the previous act, a young Danish duo playing 'Whisky in the Jar' and 'Wild Rover' - the Danes just lap up this sort of thing. The marquee is full and the beer is flowing. We hit them hard and fast - "Wife and Mother" is a favourite as always. We are awarded an encore despite time constraints. After the performance we collected our green wrist bands which gave us entry to all events and concerts and checked into our hostel room - our base for the next four days. We acquainted ourselves with our neighbours, the London Philharmonic Skiffle Orchestra, a four-piece looking for their guitarist who had got up in the middle of the night saying, "I've got to go to a hospital." Skagen hasn't got a hospital so it was a day or more later before they found him some 30km away in another town where they were checking out the pain in his leg for a suspected deep vein thrombosis. As Marcus remarked to us later on, "I hope that if I announced in the middle of the night I need to go to hospital, we'd have a slightly better reaction than rolling over and going back to sleep!" We said probably.
The stadium which was the hub of the festival was the venue for some very big acts, famous artists you've never heard of. Norwegian and Danish bands that have sold millions of recordings between them and pull massive crowds. Mind you, no-one over here has heard of Dave Dobbyn. These are mainstream rock acts but it would seem that this is how they fund the rest of the ''folk festival", by attracting the general punter; and attract them they do. So this is how they can afford to take a chance on an unknown band from New Zealand. Tomorrow we play our last official gig in the big tent on the waterfront. Our last chance to make an impression on Denmark and our last chance to lighten the CD load we have to bring home. It ain't over till it's over.
The Chaps are Hyram Ballard, John Dodd, Marcus Turner and Mike Moroney (the author of these pages), an acoustic string band featuring original songs and odd material from last century. Find out more about The Chaps here and listen to some of their music on their MySpace site here
