As a new year looms, Shane Gilchrist toasts the 40th birthday of the Whare Flat Folk Festival, a place where fast picking plays second fiddle to friendship.
A Tuesday night at the Inch Bar, on Dunedin's Gardens Corner, just got a whole lot noisier.
Old Jimmy Sutton, Arkansas Traveller, Lost Indian and Woe Me Oh Woe (aka Fortune) ... the tunes keep rolling. In fact, given the modal similarities of a fair few, it's not unfair to suggest some, well, blend into others. But that's part of the beauty of both the songs and this jam session: it's an embrace of deeper resonances (exemplified by two women spontaneously breaking into dance).
Surrounded by banjo players, guitarists, a double bass player and fellow fiddlers, Flora Knight is leading the ‘‘old-timey'' gathering. And although the informal group doesn't launch into Will The Circle Be Unbroken?, there is a poignancy in the fact Knight is positioned, roughly, at the centre of a wheel that spans at least three generations.
To some, the relatively tight confines of the Inch Bar might seem a world away from the bush-clad Waiora Scout Camp, long-time venue of the Whare Flat Folk Festival, yet there are direct connections to be made.
Among those present at the jam is Mike Moroney who, with wife Bernadette Berry, has been instrumental in helping keep alive the Whare Flat event, which this year celebrates its 40th birthday.
Starting in 1975 as a ‘‘folk camp'' at Waiora Scout Camp, where it has remained (with the exception of 1989, when organisers briefly decamped to Orokonui in an attempt to halt the rampant growth of the event), the festival now spans four days and attracts about 500 people.
Some come to perform; others to see and hear guest artists from around New Zealand and the world; some attend workshops ranging from steel guitar to Charleston dance lessons; some enjoy the chance to mingle with friends old and new.
Knight first went to Whare Flat in the summer of 2005/2006, the 14-year-old Logan Park High School pupil told of the event by her music teacher, John Dodd who, over the years, has introduced more than a few teens to new/old musical genres.
Knight enjoyed the freedom of performing folk, as opposed to the diet of Bach and other classical composers she'd been consuming.
‘‘You would imagine it would be intimidating to turn up to a festival like Whare Flat when you're a crappy 14-year-old fiddle player. But, actually, it was great. People were excited to see kids getting into folk music.
‘‘I went with a friend who had relatives into the folk scene for a long time. I went back, hmmm, it must have been at least four successive years after that. Then I joined [award-winning Christchurch folk/roots/country band] The Eastern when I was 18. I'm now 24, but I'm not playing with The Eastern any more.''
Part of the reason for that is because Knight wanted to explore various musical trails in the United States and Canada. She went there last year, returned to New Zealand, then headed to North America again this year, renewing her quest to dive deep into old-time music, a genre in which the fiddle carries plenty of weight.
Which brings us back to the Inch Bar, to Knight and her friends, many of whom are Whare Flat regulars.
‘‘Over time, relationships and music kind of morph,'' Knight reflects the following morning. ‘‘I hang out with older people now and they are my buddies, you know. We have a beer and a laugh. In contrast, when I started, I would have thought, ‘oh my God, that's Mike Moroney','' Knight says, adding that although other musical commitments mean she can't commit to the entire festival this year, she is returning for at least one day of fun at Whare Flat.
So, too, is Siobhan Dillon, daughter of Mike and wife Bernadette Berry who, for the past 18 years, has been at the helm of the festival.
A member of the organising committee for Whare Flat ‘‘in different ways'' for more than a decade, Siobhan has been attending the festival since she was in utero. Now 31, she recalls counting down the days until the event as a teenager.
‘‘I have been playing music all my life and have been performing at the festival under different guises since I was very small,'' Siobhan says, adding such involvement is also a reflection of her family's strong connections to the New Edinburgh Folk Club (Mike is president).‘‘As an adult, going to these festivals is still one of the highlights of the year. I have friends all over the world that I have made from this festival. Somehow the festival manages to create quite intense, long-lasting friendships.''
Can-do attitude for a 'huge' job
The Whare Flat Folk Festival also creates a quite intense amount of work. Bernadette Berry, the singing, Appalachian dulcimer-playing director, says the four-day event is a ‘‘huge'' job.
‘‘This is my 18th year and I intend it to be my last. It is tiring and I am getting older, so it's time some younger ones kept it going,'' she says, adding she is passing the baton to Tahu Mackenzie, the Dunedin performer and Orokonui Ecosanctuary educator.
‘‘I just think it's time someone else did it,'' Berry says, adding she has had plenty of help from many others.
‘‘We have about 40 to 50 crew, including about 10 ‘heads of department', and we are all volunteers. Getting the right people in the right jobs has been fantastic. I can rely on them to do their own thing.''
That can-do attitude extends to the festival's origins, Mike Moroney says.
‘‘From the very first Whare Flat Folk Camp, as it was called back then, a bunch of army guys used to come down. They called themselves the Wai Pungo Billy Lickers. They would put down a hangi and we'd have a spit-roast as well.''
Marcus Turner recalls arriving at that first event on his Honda CB125, carrying a guitar, banjo, pack, tent and mandolin.‘‘I think that I stayed up playing music in the hall all night,'' Turner says, adding such antics might have annoyed some of those attempting to sleep in bunkrooms, ‘‘which weren't completely isolated from the hall''.
Such was the excitement and atmosphere of those early festivals, Turner was lured from the world of rock into acoustic folk, particularly Celtic music.
‘‘At that time, there were two folk clubs operating in Dunedin: the Otago University Folk Music Club and the New Edinburgh Folk Club (established in 1975). I think members of both clubs had been to the Canterbury Folk Festival held at McLean's Island the previous Easter.
‘‘They were keen to establish a local festival,'' Turner says, adding a key contributor was Peter ‘‘Jock'' Walton, an accordion player who'd arrived in Dunedin from Scotland in the early 1970s, studied at the University of Otago and was a regular attendee at the university folk club.
Credited with creating enthusiasm for ‘‘traditional'' music in a Dunedin folk scene that was previously more associated with bluegrass and contemporary folk, the accordion-playing Walton has been a member of various groups, including the Ginger Minge Binge Bush Band and the Mountain Oyster Bush Band, Blackthorn and Marannan.
‘‘The first festival was held ... at a time when prog rock was big. Hippies were still a tangible cultural and musical influence. Amongst all this, a significant subculture of young people was associated with folk music, and rediscovering various forms of traditional music,'' Turner explains.‘
‘Whereas the folk clubs and festivals of the 1960s (banjo-pickers' conventions etc) were influenced by American folk-pop (Tom Paxton, Julie Felix, Peter Paul and Mary etc) and by American traditions (blues, string bands, bluegrass ...), this 1970s subculture was influenced by the rediscovery of traditional music from the British Isles.
‘‘The festivals reflected this, with Celtic music being popular for concerts and dances, influenced by the music of Steeleye Span, Planxty, The Boys of the Lough and others,'' says Turner, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose musical endeavours include the Ginger Minge Binge Bush Band, The Chaps and Footspa.
‘‘There's something about performing folk music with a group of firm friends in a beautiful setting that will always make the Whare Flat festival exceptional.''
Even after 40 years, those few days each summer remain special, to Turner, Knight, Moroney and many others.
As Turner puts it: ‘‘It's a time when I feel like a slightly different person. I'd love to think that people will have the opportunity to experience a New Year's folk festival at Whare Flat for another 40 years, at least.''
In the bluegrass tradition of playing in the round, let's go back to Knight, who perhaps sums it up best.
‘‘When people have music in common, crazy things can happen.''
BIRTHDAY CD
A limited-release CD has been created to celebrate the 40th birthday of the Whare Flat Folk Festival. Featuring artists of various generations, it will be available at the festival.
MORE FOLK FESTIVALS
Members of the New Edinburgh Folk Club, which organises the Whare Flat festival, also run two other festivals: a winter event at Gunns Bush, near Waimate, and a two-yearly Celtic festival in Dunedin.
OLD TIME COUNTRY MUSIC SHOW
Flora Knight plays fiddle as part of the Fiddle Pie Presents: The Old Time Country Music And Dance Variety Show at the following venues in the South:
• Grainstore Gallery, Oamaru, January 9
• Taste Merchants, Dunedin, January 14
• Long Beach Hall, Dunedin, January 15
• The Sherwood, Queenstown, January 21
