Port Fairy cd

Music Deli presents live recordings from the Port Fairy Folk Festival

Each year over the second weekend in March, thousands of music fans travel to the beautiful small seaside town of Port Fairy on Victoria’s west coast to enjoy three nights and three days of world, roots and acoustic music. ABC Radio National’s Music Deli recording teams have been travelling to the festival for more than twenty years, making recordings and broadcasting many wonderful live performances to radio listeners around Australia.

Get your copy now from the ABC Shop.

From the extensive Music Deli archive of Port Fairy recordings, Paul Petran has chosen thirteen tracks for this exciting new CD. Included are great live tracks from some of Port Fairy’s favourite artists, including Eric Bibb and Dave Bronze; the amazing La Bottine Souriante from Quebec, Canada; Chris Smither with one of his finest songs No Love Today; Shane Howard; The Pigram Brothers; Irish button accordion wizard Sharon Shannon and many more.

If you can’t get to Port Fairy, you can enjoy the magic through the music captured on this superbly recorded collection. If you get to Port Fairy regularly you can relive some of the excitement of previous years.

1. Paul Kelly & Uncle Bill – From Little Things Big Things Grow
2. Eric Bibb & Dave Bronze – Right On Time
3. La Bottine Souriante – Le P’tit Porte-Cle
4. The Waifs – When I Die
5. Chris Smither – No Love Today
6. Sharon Shannon – The Burst Mattress
7. Banditaliana – Lune
8. Shane Howard – Light Of Day
9. Pigram Brothers – Going Back Home
10. Niamh Parsons & Graham Dunne – Fear a Bhata
11. Serena Ryder – Winter Waltz
12. Fiona Boyes & The Fortune Tellers – Easy Babe
13. Habib Koité & Bamada – I Mada

On the road again

The Waifs are nearly on the home stretch of their Oz Summer 09 tour, with Cairns, Tassie and a few festivals to go.

With the setlists predominantly made up of requests, the new songs being tested are Temptation (available now on i-tunes apparently thanks to a live gig being up there) by Josh and Daydreamer, a new tune by Vikki about one of her little boys.

Song writing is back on their agenda. We have heard they have four new songs recently penned and might be spending some time together after this tour to write more, more, more.

Oh, it’s so good that they love their music so much. It must feed them as much if not more than it feeds us.

(welcome to any Waifs listers who I finally told this site exists…)

Enmore Theatre – 7 Feb 08 – Moshcam

Cool – gotta love the internet.

Check out this gig, recorded from the Moshpit at the Enmore Theatre.

Highlights for me are Stay, sung in a beautiful slow lilt, and Temptation which is not released yet but is such a powerful song.

Thanks to Winnie Pumpkin for pointing out the link.

Sarah G

Colours reunion?

When is the last time The Waifs played as a duet without Josh? Back in the 90s before they met Josh? When they were called Colours? Think again…

I hear that Josh got lost on the way to the Sisters Festival in Oregon last weekend, leaving Vikki and Donna to fend for themselves and play without their leading man.

Word is that it was very funny and a lot of fun.

Sun Dirt Water Review – the (sydney) magazine – Oct 07

Sun, Dirt, Water – The Waifs (Jarrah) – Country blues

by Richard Jinman, page 133

Successful bands don’t always absorb the sounds of the cities where they record but The Waifs’s decision to work in Nashville is written all over ‘Sun, Dirt, Water’.

A good portion of the tracks are country blues songs, some fattened with squalls of organ and a shuffling backbeat. If you are still in love with the band that made ‘London Still’, that fragile ode to homesickness, it’s quite a jolt. There’s nothing wrong with a jolt, or course, and the trio’s Tennessee dreaming is entirely convincing.

From the gospel blues of ‘Sweetest Dream’ to the jazzy groove of the title track and the jaunty bar room rocker ‘How Many Miles’, the fatter sound, dirtier guitars and shuffling backbeats fit Josh Cunningham and sisters Vikki and Donna Simpson like a well-cut suit.