Cobargo Folk Festival – 1^st to 3^rd March 2024

Reviewed by Tony Roma

Whilst a litany of reports in the media of late, decry an end for festivals due to poor attendance, that news has failed to reach the town of Cobargo where the 2024 Folk Festival was recently held. Some 5 hours south of Sydney, a sense of community hits every arrival, where the volunteers greeting you don’t merely wave you through. They take the time to ask how you’ve been, what you’ve got planned and how they’re here to help you enjoy yourself. We certainly hadn’t planned on getting a flat tyre before we got our tickets but there we were, on our back under the car with one of the many volunteers trying to properly place a car jack.

Luck would soon change when we nabbed the last of the ‘close to the action’ campsites (even ground is all perception anyway) and we found ourselves setting up to the sounds of local act Goldie playing nearby in the Gulaga stage.  Led by powerful Argentinian vocalist Florencia Giorgi this four on the floor funky soul band had the right amount of horns and bass to speed up our movements and get into the festival faster. They’re definitely an act to watch out for in future as people get on their feet dancing and in the mood for a festival.

Cobargo is a friendly festival, full of familiar faces and helpful music lovers with many folk comparing notes on who they’ve seen and can recommend. I had ear marked a band from Norway to catch later on and Roger Corbett from the Bushwackers had mentioned a rare duo performance of him and Dobe on the Saturday that sounded intriguing. Pogues tributes, Irish folk stars, indigenous legends like Frank Yamma all awaited us and luckily multiple performances had been booked for most of them meaning timetable clashes were at a minimum.

There has been an enormous improvement to the Gulaga stage with respect to the acoustics. What was essentially a tin shed in 2023, now has the makings of a real live music venue and was put to the test with The Good Behaviours. This chamber-folk-post-rock ensemble (more on that genre later on) led by clawhammer banjo player Nick Henderson also features two of the new Artistic Directors of the National Folk Festival, Chris Stone (fiddle) and Holly Downes (double bass) alongside Emily-Rose Sarkova (accordion) and Felix Lalanne (guitar). With an album of new songs only just recorded, the passages of ethereal phrases and sweeping melodic crescendos were most beautifully captured in Britt’s House as well as the premiere performance of the powerful Push.

Moving about and the nighttime foot-shuffling buzz continued in two very different locations and styles of music. Over at the Yuin Folk Club Stage with Sam’s Sound Caravan, Fiona Boyes & The Fortune Tellers got the blues jumping with juke joint jams and slide guitar songs steeped in the sounds of Memphis. Her voice is as wonderfully raspy as the legends of old and she’s earned her reputation as one of the finest blues musicians this country has ever produced.

Across the way in the Wandella Tent making their Australian debut and all the way from Norway was Gangar, one of the picks of the night. Comprising 5 musicians Richard Max (guitar), Oskar Goedvriend Lindberget (sax), Mattias Truell Thedens (Hardanger fiddle), Jonas Thrana Jensen (bass) and Henrik Drullum (drums) their individual tastes from different musical backgrounds have created a fusion of heavy metal, post jazz and folk funk punk with everything in between. Chairs were pushed aside, heads and hair were banging and everywhere you looked smiles were on the faces of the crowd. An attempt to corral an Australian audience to sing a Norwegian chorus was not only sweetly innocent but genuinely funny as the Cobargo crowd inserted their own translations in a Scandinavian accent. I wonder how raucous this band would be after a good night’s sleep!

We’ve been spoilt for choice with the lineup at this year’s festival. A side chat with Chris Stone from the National Folk Festival, who themselves are aiming for artists of excellence this upcoming Easter and one could imagine the curators at Cobargo are doing exactly the same. Festival favourites across the Australian folk and country scenes, The Whitetop Mountaineers are all the way from the Appalachian Mountains of America and female vocalist Martha Spencer is much loved for her politeness and charming musicality. Australian audiences have embraced this group for many years now as testament to their back and forth touring schedules and whether on stage or amongst the crowd their authenticity is unparalleled.

Performing solo at a festival is no easy feat. It’s hard to capture and hold their attention, standing (or sitting) on your own, in front of a crowd, or not in front of a crowd as can sometimes happen. I was heading to bed around midnight and stumbled across Sam Stevenson, another local act, standing alone on stage with his electric guitar, loop pedal and a voice that was rich with soul and blues. There were less than 10 of us in the crowd, all spread out but you could feel the inner joy of those baring witness to this show. I caught up with him later on and he explained how unsure he was of the performance because he’d had a technical mishap with his acoustic guitar and no one was there. However I assured him, those who were there knew more than most and that it was one of the more special festival moments I’d ever experienced.

In contrast, another solo performer, festival headliner Lisa O’Neill, had travelled all the way from Ireland and was highly anticipated amongst the Cobargo crowd. Her tone, cadence, rhythm and melody are all her own and a truly unique and individual folk singer you will not find. With a strict no camera policy throughout her show, O’Neill allows you to enter the world of her music, one she has passionately created that requires both yours and hers full attention. Her invitation to lean into her music nearly has one on the floor as she concludes with her Peaky Blinders rendition of All The Tired Horses, which esoterically reverberates all around the Biamanga stage.

Live music in Australia hangs precariously in the balance. Recent festival experiences have been somewhat diminished through overcrowding from too many ticket sales. There’s something very organic and reassuring about the Cobargo Folk Festival and the way in which they approach their own survival. Here you can still get up close and personal with the artist and their music. The sense of community coming together means no one is left to their own for too long because conversations are easily started and recommendations generously shared. I’ll never understand why people fork out thousands for an international pop star to look like an ant from a seat in the rafters where undoubtedly the sound would be massively compromised. Especially when you can experience 10 times the number of artists, with your own eyes, on a sound system that really brings their songs to life, at a festival not yet overrun by commercial interests.