Well another long weekend of alcohol and music has drawn to a close with a long and tiring drive back to Melbourne, the low point of which was a one hour traffic jam in Geelong. Not to worry this is a minor inconvenience for what is always an exceptionally good weekend. Mind you, the liver has only two weeks to recover this year before the National Folk Festival in Canberra thanks to the moon being uncomfortably close to the Labour Day. (or something like that)

Increasingly over recent years the festival has contracted for The Green Man and his compartriots, focusing increasingly on the small venues and particularly those that serve alcohol. So it was then that the week commenced with a long Friday evening in the Wine Bar listening to some exceptional music. First up was the Hog Stompin Zydegators.

As the name implies they are a zydeco band. Zydeco originated in the southern states of America and is characteristed by its lively style with improvised instruments such as the wash board. The Hog Stompin Zydegators were the imbodiment of the style and produced some magnificent vibrant music that set a high standard for the weekend. Click here to hear a sample.

And working on the assumption that too much provincial American music is never enough the next act up was The Sensitive New Age Cowpersons who are a bluegrass band. They have taken bluegrass to its logical conclusion and they will play anything bluegrass. To this end we were treated to bluegrass renditions of the Sound Of Music and National Anthem, that’s ours, the Australian National Anthem, in which there is a national pride in not knowing the words.

That was not the only version of the National Anthem that weekend. One wonders whether other nationalities take quite so much pride in taking the piss out of their national anthem but it is big in Australia. It is all to do with our anti-authoritarian tendencies in this country. Clearly the winner, however, as far as The Green Man was concerned, was the National Anthem set to the tune from Gilligan’s Island, now that worked on so many levels.

For those of you that have not been to the Port Fairy Folk festival, each act lasts 1 hour with ½ hour in between for the setup, so by the time the third act was on we had been drinking bottles of white wine, interspersed with pints of Guinness for approximately two and a half hours, consequently The Green Man has no idea who the third act was but is reliably assured that he enjoyed them.