We left Melbourne in a huff, apartment and unnecessary things behind, towards Geelong, for the first show with the incredible April Maze and Quinn band, who kept us dancing until the wee hours, despite our midday slot for the Foodbowl festival in Numurkah (over 300km away) the next day. We’ve been lucky enough to have played shows with April Maze in Melbourne, and have since been busting into versions of their “Wisdom Teeth”, between spins on Ruby’s player. Ahhhh-Maze-ing (check them out: www.myspace.com/theaprilmaze ). The Quinn band lads are such a treat, as well (http://www.myspace.com/quinnacousticrootsreggae).
We left for Numurkah post-show and wedged a tiny nap in, making it to the festival just in time to set up and play. The town is absolutely adorable. The map wasn’t very hard for us to decipher, seeing as it consisted of a few blocks on the main road dotted with the pubs/venues, which faced each other. Cute. Apparently over 200 musicians made the trek to the first annual, just to be a part of it all, as small-scale as it was. Australians love their festivals, and support them all, big and small, which makes each one (that I’ve been to, anyway) an amazing experience. Our show went really well, despite exhaustion and on-stage delerium. The crowd was the perfect mix of music-loving country folk and fellow Melbournian muso friends of ours. Ahh, festivals.
The rest of the day, we gig hopped the blocks, and caught friends of ours Katt Beams, The Hazelman Brothers and Sal Kilmer & The Good Ole Boys, who, of course, blew us away. The music in this part of the world just makes you wonder what life without constant mega-music-talent around would be like. On-stage and off. As usual, we ended the musical day with a musical evening: a balcony jam on the top of the Numurhak Hotel with Katt Beams and Skiddle, Jessie Mitchell and his crew, and other lovely festival friends. Great times.
We wrapped up our playing on Sunday to friends and locals, all enjoying listening to music outside in the sun as much as we were enjoying playing it. Our early show gave us plenty of time to catch April Maze and Quinn band’s’ sets before saying our “see you soon”s as we all continued-on on our relative tours…
Brad and I stuck around Numurkah for the night to hang with the festival organizers and a few volunteers, with time to kill before our next date. We spent a large part of the next day playing piano and drinking coffee at the ultra-relaxing, mud-hutted, eco-friendly, Nine-Mile Café. Highly recommended. It’s not surprising that Chris, one of the Foodbowl Organizers, started it from the ground up. Such an inspiring bunch, those Foodbowlers are.
Post music-long-weekend, we headed for the hills….for more!
numurkah hotel
' nine-mile cafe
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