Auckland Folk Festival 2025 and the weather was wild one day but failed to dampen spirits. Howlin’ Wind and Papatuanuku performed their part.
C.W. (Christopher William) Stoneking is a featured artist for the festival.
He has taken Bob Dylan’s best advice to heart. Find yourself!? It’s far more important to create yourself.
CW (or SeeDubya) has created a compelling persona for himself as a songster, travelling minstrel and racially mixed man wandering down in Louisiana / Just about a mile from Texarkana/ In them ole cotton fields back home.
He’s a fifty-year-old Aussie from Northern Territories, so he comes from a place where a certain level of craziness is endemic. In a recent interview he does have a ‘strine twang, but his persona is something he wears like a uniform.
On stage he’s dressed in immaculate white, red bow tie, and slicked-back brylcreemed hair.
He could have stepped out of a classic Jazz orchestra from New Orleans or Harlem. The Jazz Age of flappers, tycoons, mobsters and Prohibition.
He magpie steals many hats. Classic Blues of Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey. Gravelly guttural black preachers, Country Blues, Urban Blues, some Roots Country and Hillbilly, Jimmie Rodgers and whatever it is that Tom Waits does.
The approach is best exemplified by two founding Americana artists.
Charley Patton, an originator, more white and American Indian than black. He had a baritone growl that CW approaches.
Uncle Dave Macon was a hillbilly who sounded black and had a singular vision of American music which foresaw Rock’n’roll and Rap.
He understands theatrical presence and stays in character, Like Dylan and Borat. You never really know where Dylan’s head is, and he doesn’t either. He channels spirits most of the time.
Comes on stage alone with an acoustic guitar. Ry Cooder with a better voice but steeped in the history of Americana in its myriad forms.
As the songs roll out, he’s a Blues shouter, a hobo Johnson ridin’ the blinds, eatin’ biscuits and mentioning his sweet jelly roll.
His guitar can make sweet Hawaiian slide or imitate boogie-woogie piano.
A song called Zombie is close to Cramps style Psychobilly.
He covers Jailhouse Blues, likely the Jimmy Rogers version.
There is one he croons in early Bing Crosby style (a Jazz singer originally) where he creates a trumpet sound with his vocals. Called Deep in the Jungle, where men are being driven crazy by the heat.
Unpacks a great yodel which sits halfway between trad Swiss, and the haunting blue yodels of Tommy Johnson and Howlin’ Wolf.
He has a hilarious stand-up routine between songs. We hear it better in the second set when the sound mix is clearer.
The crow song plays, Crow Gotta Woman, and I realise this is also someone that can satisfy a fix for Captain Beefheart.
BB (Catherine Bowness) and Alex (Rubin) are husband and wife duo who play great Bluegrass and Roots Country.
BB is a Kiwi and used to attend the Folk Festival as a child. She was hooked on the banjo when listening to the Beverly Hillbillies theme tune. That was three-finger banjo specialist Earl Scruggs playing with Lester Flatt.
Alex is American and they have been domiciled in Boston for a while. One of the great institutions of American music is the Berklee College of Music in Boston where Bill Monroe also attended.
BB returns home frequently, and they were a memorable feature of the second Kiwigrass Festival in 2021 at Lake Karapiro.
They pick out a classic song from Jimmy Martin, You Don’t Know My Mind, and give it some Western Swing, Alex singing like Bob Wills.
I Know What It Means to Be Lonesome has been done by many Bluegrass outfits like Ricky Skaggs and Flatt and Scruggs. Also, an old Original Carter Family version, and most of the time the author is Trad or unknown.
They combine with Rain of Animals on the Showcase Sunday evening to lay down a rousing and racy version of John Henry.
Animals are Pepita Emmerich on violin and mandolin, and Theodore Barnard on acoustic guitar. Over the weekend they have raced through many different styles of Americana and original British Folk. Itself a bedrock for Americana, and a preservation of original styles when it seemed to disappear in the homelands.
Charm of Finches are a delightful sister duo from Melbourne, Mabel Windred-Wornes and Ivy Windred-Wornes.
Their songs are dreamy Folk Pop, with beautiful harmony singing (as you would expect from siblings) coloured with dark gothic shadows.
Let’s say they dial down the intensity of a Jazmine Mary (playing at the festival as half of Pony Baby). Keep it sweet with camouflaged barbs.
Candy is a perfect example of fey Folk Pop. As good as the Velvet Underground’s self-titled song off their undeservedly obscure third album. Doug Yule sang the lead rather than Lou Reed.
Dark themes always lifted by the salvation of the melodies.
They are true Folkies. Marlinchen in the Snow, title track off their last album, is based on a Grimm Brothers fairy tale about a mother who kills her stepson, and the protagonist is left to travel with the bones.
It has the same underlying dread as Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy, but the Finches keep it sweet and gentle. Both songs being firmly in the Pop realm also.
One new group I would like to catch again with their own headline show soon.
I was given a tip to catch Austral, as they performed a rave-up disco dance late in the evening on opening night.
Another Melbourne ensemble and recent winners of a best album gong at recent Australian Folk Music Awards.
Kick off a set with some Celtic jigs and reels and they set a fast dance pace. As well as fiddles, guitars and flutes, they include a didgeridoo which looks like a plastic pipe.
The sound is the authentic reverberating low drone.
Their polka medley you can dance to like the mashed potatoes in the land of a thousand dances.
With Rough Town they start with bagpipes crowing like a rooster. Cyclical repeated riffs head off into a Highland fling.
By the last song of their set, the didgeridoo sounds like Mongolian throat singing and it’s a hoedown and a breakdown.
There were Tall Folk and short folks. The budding next generation of performers as is the tradition of the festival. You had to watch out for them racing around on their bikes.
I caught some of the great acts and make a note of where others may be performing soon.
The various Folk clubs around Auckland and heading up north were represented, the bedrock of the music and its lifeblood.
Auckland Folk Festival 2025 has an indestructible spirit and continues to thrive.
Rev. Orange Peel
Browse a gallery of photos by Dennis O’Keefe
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- Austral
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- C W Stoneking
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- Tall Folk
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- Rain of Animals
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- BB&Alex
