Woodford Folk Festival  |
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Connect, Create and Celebrate with more than 20,000 people daily at Woodford Folk Festival Christmas to New Year 2008-2009 Enrich your life with song and dance - world music performances, singing, percussion, dancing and instrument workshops, join the festival choir, chill out, feast on great food, culture, Green Tent speakers wisdom - see more details at Woodford Folk Festival official site See story and Visions from Woodford at the website !! |
 Choir Angels in the Light |
Woodford
News Release
Times have been a’changin’
for Woodford Folk Festival favourite Ash Grunwald. He’s now a doting dad and
loving every minute of it. He’s also taking a new tack in his so far magical
musical career as his new album Fish Out of Water demonstrates.
But in a curious way his new personal circumstances have also taken this man
with blues in his blood and songwriting in his soul back to some beginnings.
While Fish Out of Water, co-written
with TZU beatsmith Countbounce, is seen as
‘a genre-defying record that is taking the Australian bluesman to the next level
with a thrilling hybrid of styles’,
it has opened up new opportunities that might fit Ash’s new family life and make
touring less hectic and more harmonious.
Ash says this latest album was a product of passion on which he spent more time
and money than all of his others put together.
“My whole career in the past has been almost based around playing live. This
album will change that,” he said.
But little daughter Sunny, who has brought rays of happiness into the heart of
the man whose lyrics are often interpreted as a touch brooding, has brought
other changes.
“Sunny has brought the
biggest change of all. I'm very much in love with her,” said Ash.
When
asked if his daughter would herald another change in his style, Ash responded:
“I've always been a pretty consistently happy fella but this is a kind of joy
that I've never known before. I don't know if it will cause me to start writing
heartfelt folky tunes about her or not. I just don't know how that would sound
with some evil riff behind it, but you never know.
“But one big change is the
way I'm going to tour. I've bought a campervan and we'll be virtually living
out of that when I'm in Aus. It's going to be so sick to travel around as a
family and take a few days off in between to check stuff out.
“That’s how Danni and I
used to travel. We lived out of a Transit van for a while and we always look
back on it with fond memories.
“Over the past couple of
years I've been virtually living in airports. Although it can be easier to just
blast around the country while reading and listening to your ipod, the road trip
fills me with joy. Give the life of a nomad over the life of a commuter any
day.”
So what can Woodford
audiences expect to hear from this man who rates this festival as his favourite?
“Well I'll be doing a lot of stuff from Fish Out of Water. There was a heavy emphasis on the beats on that album plus my usual junk percussion stuff, so to cover that I've got Benny Owen playing the junk stuf including some delicate car door smashing and Fingers Malone, who's a hip hop/funk master on the drums,” said Ash.
“I'll still be doing my own foot percussion thing as well so we'll have a pretty heavy emphasis on the beats. It's really fun playing with those guys.
“I still play like I do when I'm solo, speeding up and jamming things out and just doing whatever, and they just zone in on it and go with the flow. It's fun.”
Ash also waxed lyrical over Woodford, an annual festival which he has visited and performed at four or five times.
“Woodford is my favourite festival in Aus and,come to think of it, in the world from what I've seen so far,” he said.
“You really get the sense that it's a township made in festival land, where the everyday trials, constraints and expectations of normal life simply aren't there anymore, and you wish you could move in and live there every day.
“I've had some amazing gigs at Woodford. My only regret is that as a muso it's a busy time of year so I've never been able to stay for the whole six days. I really want to do that one year and just soak it up.
“Woodford always has such a solid input from big headliners to that whole folk festival thing where you have heaps of amazing and diverse acts that you may not have heard before. In that sense it's really the best of all worlds.”
Buy
and print your tickets online at
www.woodfordfolkfestival.com or call 97 5496 1066.
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