Cafe Society: We must share the love, folks

Cygnet Folk Festival artistic director Erin Collins reveals what such events mean to small towns.

Cygnet Folk Festival creative director, singer and musician Erin Collins at the Conservatory Cafe. Picture: AMANDA DUCKER

AS Erin Collins rushes around in the lead-up to this weekend’s Cygnet Folk Festival, the artistic director is also tracking the daily progression south of two big-name acts to the Huon Valley town.

Last Friday Scandinavian folk super-trio Fru Skagerrak performed in the North-West at Stanley Town Hall, a venue best-known known for its glam art-deco auditorium.

On Saturday, the three young fiddlers – one each from Sweden, Norway and Denmark – played at Wynyard Theatre, where some locals believe a resident ghost lingers.

And on Sunday they made the humble Sulphur Creek Memorial Hall their stage.

Along their way, the all-female band was joined by South Australian guitar slinger Liam Gerner and his raw roots country rock.

Tomorrow, it is finally Erin’s turn to showcase the musos at Tassie’s famous folk festival, which is now in its 37th year.

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When I meet Erin at Conservatory Cafe at the Cygnet Old Bank on Tuesday, the main street is buzzing ahead of its biggest weekend of the year, which usually attracts about 6000 visitors.

Outside the cafe, which is packed for lunch, a group of protesters decrying off-shore refugee processing is adding to the buzz by asking motorists to toot if they support their stand. This being Cygnet, a progressive place when it remembers it’s not still in the 1950s, many drivers honk and wave.

Erin says she is confident the big-name acts heading their way are worth the wait. And she knows they are coming mostly because she signed Tassie up to the Festival of Small Halls program started by the Woodford Folk Festival crew in southern Queensland a few years ago.

The so-called “festival” is an annual series of regional tours that books musicians who are travelling from one festival to another into multiple gigs along the way to help make it worth their while.

It works for the musos, says Erin, and it works brilliantly for smaller festivals such as Cygnet, enabling them to sign big-name performers such as Fru Skagerrak and Gerner they might not otherwise get.

It also works a treat for the small towns along the way.

“Our first small halls tour from Woodford to Cygnet to Illawarra [NSW] was in 2016,” says Erin. “That year’s lot did seven nights in regional Tasmania, and it was sell-out shows almost each night. It was phenomenal.”

This year’s tour is also proving a hit, and Erin thinks she knows why. Best-known as a singer and accordion player with local folk act Silkweed, she knows how much small communities appreciate their entertaining drop-ins.

“There is such a sense of pride as locals show off their beautiful towns – and there is an abundance of them in Tasmania,” she says.

That pride will reach a peak in the festival host town this weekend.

“Knowing they live in a town that can attract international artists who will happily move among them over the weekend makes lots of locals proud,” she says.

International and national acts are all billeted in and around Cygnet. “And all the acts rave about their billets,” says Erin. “Apparently they all have the best billet.”

While there will always be individuals who see a festival in their town as an imposition and grumble before holing themselves up or going away for the weekend, Erin says the festival is widely embraced by the Cygnet community.

For a start, it’s a boon for local food and accommodation businesses and a sweet lining to the coffers of various community groups. The local scout group, for example, receives a donation in return for running the main festival campground.

An unwritten rule keeps the state’s folk musicians filling half the program.

“It’s not just because we want to support Tasmanians. It’s that a lot of them are just bloody good,” says Erin.

A quick look at young Huon performer Isabelle Skye’s vintage-chic Instagram feed confirms Tassie folk is not just for fuddy duddies.

“We get a huge number of young people at the festival,” says Erin.

Folk, she says, is a broad church. “A lot of people think of it as a genre: men in hair shirts with long beards and guitars. But it’s so much more than that.

“It is often a narrative type of music with strong storylines and it is rooted in history.

“It used to always be acoustic, but that line has blurred since Bob Dylan.

“It has extraordinary Eastern European traditions … and really good folk musicians are taking those traditions, arranging the music differently and doing something exciting with it.”

A great case in point, she says, is Estonian band Trad-Attack!, who will be live on stage this weekend.

■ The Cygnet folk festival features more than 100 performers and runs from tomorrow until midnight on Sunday. For more info go to cygnetfolkfestival.org