The sweltering heat only added to the fire performances coming from each stage of the Town Folk Festival.
Ahead of time the forecast read the temperature to sit at 35 degrees Celsius; an unprecedented swelter for Central Victoria in the middle of November. And yet, what could be a more quintessential festival experience than watching music under the spotlight of a blaring sunshine. Combine that with the scent of sweat paired with sunscreen, elegantly rounded out by a phenomenal lineup of musicians, domestic and international alike, and well you catch yourself thirsty for this neatly packaged experience.
On the weekend just gone, Saturday 16 November to be precise, Town Folk Festival took place in the quaint and creatively dense town of Djaara/Castlemaine to the tune of that very amalgamation. Renowned for its musical inhabitants, it’s notable venues and of course the dry heat of the climate it seemed absolutely fitting that Town Folk bring together another iteration of their family-friendly Djaara/Castlemaine based festival.
Town Folk Festival
- When: Saturday 16 November 2024
- Where: Multiple Venues across Castlemaine
Keep up with the latest music news, festivals, interviews and reviews here.
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It would have been hard to pre-empt the potency of the sun in the morning if you’d not looked ahead to what the weather was predicted to be. As the easterly breeze welcomed the rising sun, the early heat was positioned into the background.
But my day started in Glenlyon, surrounded by the oak tree shade of a local recreation reserve, as hay fever was conjured up fiercely by the early day gusts sending my fellow festival-goer into fits of sneezing. The sneezing almost acting as a motif throughout the course of the day, oft signifying an interlude in the musical proceedings, and simultaneously a reminder of the time of year.
We meandered into the township, as a certain hum reverberated throughout the streets, a rhythm noting the arrival of summer and the emergence into festival season. Despite local traffic operating as usual, at least under the guidance of two traffic controllers, the precinct around the mill markets and the Bridge Hotel had been transformed into a three-staged festival space, decked out with pop-up bars, food vendors, sunscreen stations (a must), all the while utilising the pre-existing facilities of the Bridge, the venues at the market and the nearby ‘Sunken Oval’.
The latter lived up to its name as it required punters to step down into it, as if almost walking out onto a skating rink or a performance hall. The truth of the day’s celebrations did not stray too far from these analogies either. In fact, it was the eclectic and sonically vibrant Tek Tek Ensemble that took to the Sunken Oval Stage at 5:10pm, bringing out the inherently communal and ritualistic disposition of this space. The band facilitated this with their handmade matching outfits, woven together by the boldness of the colour magenta and psychedelic patterning. With one band member chopping between playing strings and the percussion, this very enactment was a metaphor for the bands broad-ranging musical expression. They danced between Turkish Psych-Rock, Disco and Funk, all threaded together by their collective and individual eccentricity and character.
The days music had started much before Tek Tek performed though, with the duet of Ruby Jones and Loretta Miller teaming up to showcase their authentic genre-bending prowess as solo artists paired together. From there the lineup wove through the signature folk of the Maes, Felicity Cripps band with the incorporation of ambient and distorted saxophone, the depth of tone of Kid Sam and suddenly Grace Cummings was performing on the Sunken Oval stage. With the style and sass of a true performer Grace’s baritone voice bellowed through the crowd with the sway of a cowgirl, affirmed in her black boot strut and accompanied by a red Gibson six-string electric that amplified her band’s sound on certain tracks. She oozed with style, the ambient temperature running as correlative to the musicianship.
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Next came the complexity of Harmony Byrne, a four-piece led by none other than Harmony herself. Supported by a host of Naarm/Melbourne’s young stalwarts in the scene their set ebbed and flowed between slow and evocative ballads to outright foot-driving blues. One of their songs even replicated the likes of Freedom Flight by Shuggie Otis, or Maggot Brain by Funkadelic, a serpentine and ambient journey through the collision of spoken word and exceptional musical composition. Inclusive of transcendent guitar solo in the tune of overdrive, the forty minutes they played for maintained a hypnotic feel that captivated the audience in a way that perhaps none of the other acts did. This was a definite stand-out that concluded with Harmony inviting one of her music students onto the stage to perform an original that she had written herself, after all Town Folk is heralded as a community event, and this set epitomised that.
A sneeze or ten then lead us into A. Savage’s set, who for the first time in his career was performing his solo project in the area, albeit accompanied by drummer and bassist. The feel and influence of his time spent in Parquet Courts rang true, and yet his set remained unique, darting between slower and more acoustic tracks and heavier songs performed through the black sizable electric guitar strapped to his ever-swaying self.
Queenie shared their six-piece signature electro-rock to the mass of festival-goers hugging the wall of the Bridge Hotel in an attempt to seek shade from the now oppressive heat. But punters couldn’t be held back by the scorching UV, as a choreographed line dancing lesson took to the Sunken Oval, substituting the usual sneeze as an intermission. All limbered up from the two stepping and crisscrossing, the crowd shimmied and wiggled to the energetic sounds of Tek Tek, while M79, Aplegate and Merryn Jean rattled away at their respective stages.
The wind suddenly shifted and the cool change rolled through. It didn’t stop the sneezing, until Ngaiire donned the stage with her band brimming with their infectious take on soul music. Hips in the audiences continued to shake, feet kept stepping as their energy took the crowd by flight into the early stages of the night. Slow sipping on Tasmanian cherry cider, there seemed to be no distinct moment between bopping along to Ngaiire and the fall of day, except for the residual heat felt in my skin from the sun’s blistering presence.
And then it was dark, the stage lit magnificently in red, and an assortment of other colours at various intervals, illuminating Marlon Williams’ chiseled and playful smile all to the backdrop of his multi-talented band. Each band member seemed to be able to play multiple instruments, whilst Marlon added robotic vocal synthesiser effects to songs performed in Māori and spoke of the alarm in New Zealand’s political scene. He too, like the other artists, performed songs we’ve come to love over the years swapping between a nylon-string guitar, an electric and a firm grasp on the microphone that accompanied his signature swagger around the stage.
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Teskey Brothers closed out Sunken Oval with another one of their intentional performances driven by consistent gratitude. Their musical capabilities were on full display, with Josh hitting notes hard to fathom, and Sam’s guitar acting as an extension of self. A fitting close to the atmosphere established in Djaara/Castlemaine.
But it wasn’t over just yet, back at the shed shaker stage, where Harmony Byrne had performed earlier that day, Don’t Thank Me Spank Me shared their wide-ranging but ever provocative pop/rock/garage sound. Their hour-long performance acting as a punctuation point on what had been a fun and diverse day of music on Dja Dja Wurrung country.
And so, we took off into the night, heading southward, soundtracked by the less frequent sneeze and vibrational joy customary of a late spring Festival. Town Folk Festival truly curated and enacted an excellent day this year, a hopefully continual offering that we all can benefit from.
See all of the highlights of Town Folk Festival here.
