Festival Review: Spirit of Folk 2011 – Day 3
Day 3 – What folkin’ time is it lads ?
We woke to realise we had all missed the folkin’ rugby match. Brekkie in the belly complete, we still had one full festival day to go. And what you maybe are starting to realise by now is that there was a lot more to SoF 11 than meets the eye.
Take for example the Fingal Living History. Really nice guys. And although the video and images maybe don’t do them justice – the audio interview I did with them was going to go here, but – their story told is so good we decided to save it for air on The SodShow. It is that good. How nice were the folks ? They were also in the late night revellers tent last night!
And like an advert for a JML steam cleaner kitchen mop on late night TV3 – But that’s not all – there’s more……
We were absolutely bowled over by The Newgrange Falconry display. Yet again, it didn’t stop there. How about a bit of bicycle jousting ?
And amongst all of the activities we still found time for some more music. One who caught our ears was Gabriel Minnikin and steel guitar legend Chris Hillman. Gabriel & Chris, like the gentlemen from Lynched, were due to play somewhere in the middle of the woods.
So how did we pick our people to inteview and who to record ?
We didn’t. We walked into the field – we heard a sound and walked that direction. We maybe bumped into someone who said you should see this or that. We maybe checked it out. If we liked it – we stayed. Sometimes we stayed too long. It was that simple. To our surprise however between the 3 of us we did record over 300 images, 21 videos and almost 16 hours of audio. It was a long weekend and we loved every single second of it.
What you may appreciate knowing is what it costs. In Dollars. Tickets were €95 for the weekend That aside – Food wise we brought dinner for night one and cooked brekkie for 3 mornings. Including refreshments – we calculate we were fed and watered at a cost no greater than €50 per head – you read coprrectly!
Dollars aside, to say we are ALL already looking forward to Spirit of Folk 2012 is an understatement. We miss is. We miss it terribly. And in trying to write a closing paragraph here to summise how we felt after leaving…. I slightly emotionally stumbled. On The Spirit of Folk facebook page however – see info and then scroll to products – there is this:
“And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” Roald Dahl
With very special thanks to the entire Spirit of Folk team. To all of the acts we met, honoured. And to the people who attended – especially the Johnny Depp look-a-like who kept the entire festival entertained, even when it wasn’t necessary to do – legend. Also to the contributors to the 3 blog posts that made this review possible Anthony McGuinness, Peter Donegan and Brian Greene.
Photos: Anto’s Flickr and Peter’s pix.ie account
Audio: Peter’s audioboo account
Video: Culch.ie’s Youtube and Peter’s Vimeo