Just back from a great festival in Norway, where I was playing with Stevie Lawrence. It was our first festival abroad as a duo and we had a great time.
Drangedal is a small town in the south of Norway and the scenery is breathtaking. I have never seen so many trees in my life and the grass is a vivid green colour. We wer picked up at the airport by a lovely man called Richard, who is American, but has been living in Norway for a year now with his Norwegian wife. He drove us to our hosts house and just look at the view from the bedroom window!
I would never complain about waking up early if that is what met me each morning. Our hosts were a fantastic couple. Huge thanks for Elsa who looked after us so well and made the most amazing breakfasts.
The traffic on the way back from the airport was not so good, so we didn;t really have any time to eat anything or get beautified for the gig. So we rushed down to the local church for the first gig, which was really a taster session for the audience so they could hear a few numbers from all the artists. The whole church was full and it was great to get to hear everyone play. Sadly, although I try to learn a bit of the language for every gig I do abroad, my Norwegian really was not up to scratch and I had had no time to learn anything. But most of the people there spoke excellent English so there was no problem. It's a lovely language to listen to however - very lilting and musical. Anyway, here are most of the artists on stage for the final finale of the first gig. Sadly, we had dashed down to the town for a quick meal as we were starving by this point, and we missed it!!!! Oops.
After the gig in the church, everyone went to another venue for a kind of "festival club". All the acts jumped on the stage and just went for it. No running order, just totally going with the flow, which was a nice way to end the night and a really varied show that night.
The next day we had workshops to teach in the morning, and I had a very keen bunch of people in my class. One woman, also called Fiona, had driven for 6 hours all the way from Stavanger to get to the workshop! She had left at 5 in the morning! Now that is what I call keen. I also had a trio of young girls from the area in my class who all played hardanger fiddle and were kind enough to let me take photos of them in their traditional outfits and played some tunes for me.
They were really fast learners and because they were used to learnign everything by ear, they had no trouble picking up the scottish jig I taught them. Everyone in the class was playing like an authentic scottish fiddler by the end. And special mention to very brave Sammi, who had come along having never picked up a fiddle in her life. And the good news is that she enjoyed it so much she is going to get her own fiddle back in Scotland and learn properly! Yeah - another new recruit!
There was also a harganger fiddle exhibition in the one of the halls in the town which we spent a lot of time at. These fiddles are truly amaxing and have 4 sympathetic strings underneath the other 4, which make a droning sound throughout. They are also works of art.
Here is hardanger fiddle expert Torgeir Straand, playing to us.
You will never meet a guy with a bigger smile than Torgeir. I only wish I could have understood what he was talking about during his performances, because the audiences seemed to find it hysterical. He is also a manager of a company in Norway and he has scheduled all employees to attend one hour of folk music playing at 3pm every Friday! What a great idea - they all love it. I think I might try that at my work...
After our workshops it was time for the evening performance. The highlight of the festival for me was getting to hear the wonderful Ingebjorg H. Bratland. She is a young Norwegian girl who has the most amazing voice I have ever heard. She sings traditional Norwegian folk music but also writes and performs her onw songs in English, which are beautiful. And the best thing about it is that she uses the Norwegian style of singing in her English songs too. She has a MySpace page which you should check out of you can. Here she is in action.
Other artists who were playing in the festival included Sean Cannon (legend and great fun guy!), Liffey Banks, a great Irish band (below)
, Anna Karin Kassa, Torgeir Straand, our pals Sean and Robyn Gray from Ayrshire (who also have a MySpace and are a fantastic brother/sister duo),
Steve Dowling, Breagle, a great band from Stranraer called Life O' Reilly (thanks for all the good times guys. Sorry I don't seem to have any non-blurry photos of you all), Sokkelesten (an accordion band from Norway) and Jarle Hagane. Also playing were local band, Heimve - a great bunch of guys who play mostly Irish music. We enjoyed sharing tunes with them and making new friends.
After the last night of gigs was over, it was back to someone's house for a good old session. Lots of lovely food and tunes and songs.
By this time it was about 4.30am and after not much sleep the night before, we were beginning to struggle a bit. Plus our taxi was arriving to take us to the airport at 6am! So we headed back to our house to pack and our brilliant host, Elsa, even got up at 5 in the morning to make us breakfast! What a lovely lady. Then it wasa white knuckle ride back to the airport - I am so glad that I slept most of the way cos at one point I opened my eyes to see the driver going round a hair pin bend whilst pouring himself a cup of coffee out of a flask!!!! Yikes!!!! Best not to see things like that. But we are home safe now, a bit confused about the time and what to eat when etc, but nothing a good night's sleep can't cure. Looking back at all this, I feel so lucky to be able to travel to all these lovely countries and immediately just be able to make friends with so many great people from other countries, find out about their music and their culture and swap tunes and good times. It really is a pleasure. The Drangedal Festival was just great. Big thanks to Margareth for organising us and inviting us to play and we really hope we will be back there some day.