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EMBARGO: THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS RELEASE IS EMBARGOED TO 10PM ON SUNDAY 28 JANUARY 2007.
News release folk – 1
January 28, 2007

Bringing down the Hoose!

Scottish-born musicians Kenny Ritch and Bob McNeill of the duo Ben the Hoose are the winners of the Tui for Best Folk Music Album of 2006 for the album ‘The Little Cascade’.

The winner of the Tui for Best Folk Album has been announced and the trophy presented at the Auckland Folk Festival at the Kumeu Showgrounds tonight (Sunday January 28).

Fiddler Kenny Ritch and guitarist Bob McNeill embody the modern Scots tradition with spirited interpretations of modern and traditional dance music of Scotland.

It’s the third Music Awards Tui for McNeill who won the same award as a solo artist in 2005 with his album ‘Turn the Diesels’.

Ben The Hoose formed in early 2005 when the two discovered their shared passion for the music of the Highlands and a common desire to play it to New Zealand audiences.

The album, which is the first from the duo, features three of McNeill’s compositions. Their tastes run not only to traditional tunes but also to modern Scottish compositions, music from movies and McNeill’s original songs.

The other finalists were Birmingham-born Bob Bickerton for ‘The Likes of Us’ and evergreen Kiwi folksters The Warratahs with the quintet’s seventh album ‘Keep On’.

The Best Folk Album award is part of the New Zealand Music Awards and it is the third year it has been presented at the Auckland Folk Festival.

According to the official Ben the Hoose website ‘‘The Little Cascade’ is a collection of the passionate playing and inventive arrangements that has made Ben the Hoose such a live success’.

It features modern and traditional dance tunes from all over Scotland, two original songs by Bob McNeill, and a haunting, New Zealand-inspired version of Robert Tannahill's Gloomy Winter’s Noo Awa'.

The title track is a six-part reel written for Highland pipes by Pipe Major George S. McLennan during the First World War. McLennan, a prisoner of war in Germany at the time, is said to have composed the tune while unable to sleep because of a dripping tap.The Little Cascade was recorded in Ritch’s adopted hometown of Rangiora in Canterbury, between June and September 2006. It was mixed in Wellington, where Bob now lives.

Recording Industry Association of New Zealand CEO Campbell Smith says Ben the Hoose’s win ably demonstrates the diversified strength of folk music in New Zealand.

“The fact that an album of Scottish music can win New Zealand’s top folk music accolade shows me the genre is subject to a wide range of influences which can only be good for the quality of music produced.”

The Auckland Folk Festival is in its 33rd year and its 16th at the Kumeu Showgrounds. Information about the event is available at www.aucklandfolkfestival.co.nz

NOTE TO EDITORS: The Tui for Best Folk Album is for albums released between 16 November 2005 and 15 November 2006. The Folk category was introduced to the awards in 1984. The winner will again be acknowledged as part of the main awards ceremony in October, 2007.

Previous winners of the Tui for Best Folk Album are listed here.

Sound Advice

As we wind down and do the wash-up from the Whare Flat Folk Festival, thinking about ways we can improve aspects of how we run the event, I often wonder how many performers and artists think about how they can improve their game.

My main role is as sound engineer, one of three or four that do the entire festival. It can be quite tiring because, unlike other gigs, you're doing everything on the fly. Especially in the evening concerts, you never know who is going to step up and with what ("Two mics on the drones please and the hurdy-gurdy pick-up needs a pre-amp,") or with whom ("and joining me onstage is the festival choir..."). First priority is just to get everything going so the performance can get underway - no luxury of soundchecks, so it's particularly helpful if the performer produces a bit of signal from their instrument, confirm that it's going then leave it alone while we do the next one. When musicians are alert to this it's amazing how quickly we can get the perfomance underway and start tending to the niceties of tone and timbre.

Good performers make this process easy and painless. I say 'good' performers recognising that there are fantastic musicians who can be completely unhelpful, albeit unwittingly. Here are some things that we soundmen and stage managers really like:

• Say to the audience, "How's it sounding out there?" This is extraordinarily helpful to the engineer because we can take a vote to see if we're doing a good job and maybe get some advice from the audience as to what we're doing wrong.
• Ask the audience, "Have we got time for a couple more?" No one's more aware of festival time constraints than the audience and after all they're enjoying you more than they could possibly enjoy the next act. Or you could wear a watch.
• Just bring your instrument. Rest assured we'll have a full range of leads, guitar straps, pre-amps, spare strings and a tuner backstage. Anything else we can help you with?
• Insist on the very best condenser mic for your thumb-piano, we want it to sound good. You'll know there's enough of it in the monitor when your ears are bleeding from the feedback.
• Just because the soundman is mixing from in front of the speakers doesn't mean that your suspicion that your vocals are too loud is incorrect. In this case just stand back from the mic. About a meter and a half is good.
• In the rare event that you get a sound check, use it to your full advantage, be as entertaining as possible and take the opportunity to rehearse a few numbers you're unsure of.
• Always mention how hot it is under "all these lights" and that that's the reason your instrument is always out of tune. Say, "It was in tune when I bought it!" We love that one.
• When thanking the organisers of the festival for having you, don't forget to say, "Shame about the weather." This is a useful reminder to us to not be so slack about it next year.

Fortunately none of our guests are anything but cooperative and generous and this is the case New Zealand wide in my experience. It hasn't always been the case. I learned very early in my music career 1) it isn't all about me, 2) the festival organisers are working hard to keep it all running smoothly and aren't out to frustrate me, and 3) the soundman is my friend.

Tui Award Finalists 2006

Here are links to the finalists of the Best Folk Album 2006 award (the award is called a 'Tui' after our native songbird):

• Bob Bickerton, The Likes of Us
• Ben the Hoose, Little Cascade
• The Warratahs, Keep On

There are samples on all the sites. The winner will be announced at the Auckland Folk Festival, on Sunday, 29th January 2007. A full list of award winners and finalists since the category was introduced in 1984 can be found here .

NZ Music Awards: The Folk Tui

A few years ago the Recording Industry Association of New Zealand (RIANZ) decided in its wisdom to drop a number of categories in its prestigious awards event, The Tuis. This for no better reason than there was no time to award them in their overblown, self-congratulatory, pop-music focussed awards ceremony. Among the categories dropped were Folk and Country causing consternation in both camps. After a bit of lobbying it was decided that these awards would still be facilitated by RIANZ but that the award would be announced at (for Country) the New Zealand Gold Guitar Awards in Gore each June and (for Folk) at the Auckland Folk Festival in January. These awards were reinstated about a year after they were initially dropped and have been running satisfactorily for the last 4 years.

There was much discussion on the nz-folk list at the time about the worth of the award, about turning folk music into a competition, about the commercial imperative that underpins the awards and more. The testimony of those that had won the Tui in the past was that it was of considerable value in promoting themselves and their music, both nationally and internationally and was worth persuing. Anything that was good for folk music was good for folk music, no matter how cynically it was regarded. There certainly is an element of prestige associated with it.

Recently the discussion hit the fan again as the three finalists in the Folk category for 2006 were announced. The award will be made next weekend at the end of January (at the Auckland Folk Festival). Each year five 'appropriate' people are approached in confidence by RIANZ and asked to be a judge for the category. Upon acceptance, they are sent all the albums that have been submitted for that category and a bare set of outlines for judging (which are largely irrelevant for folk music: commercial viability, radio friendliness etc.) basically asking them to be rated in order of preference. The top three (and, presumably, the winner) are selected from collation of the judges' returns.

This year the finalists were announced as follows:

"Scottish-born duo Ben The Hoose are Kenny Rich and Bob McNeill, a finalist with the album ‘The Little Cascade’ while Birmingham-born Bob Bickerton gains a finals berth for ‘The Likes of Us’. Third finalist is evergreen Kiwi folksters The Warratahs with the quintet’s seventh album ‘Keep On’."

The somewhat heated discussion arose around "evergreen Kiwi folksters The Warratahs" who have always been regarded as a Country music band. Indeed they performed at the Gold Guitar Awards when they started about a hundred years ago. What are they doing in the Folk category? And finalists to boot!

The RIANZ rules of engagement state that an album can be nominated in only one category. It stands to reason that an artist will place their album in the category where they think they will get the fairest hearing. The Warratahs, based largely around the country-style songwriting of Barry Saunders, have been around for 20 years and are without a doubt, a great, shit-kicking country band. The fact is, they've never fared well in country music circles, possibly because they don't wear big hats, sing with an American accent or play The Gambler. Country music buffs have stayed away from them in droves (speaking as one who has organised a couple of concerts for them) because they're a bit too clever, too original and don't fit the C&W mold.

Their strategy has paid off; they're finalists. There was indignation expressed from some who had their "proper folk album" nominated and nudged out by these folk pretenders - resulting in another unhealthy round of "What is folk?" discussion that just went to show that nobody can agree but we know it when we hear it. And the end of the day, five folk-friendly judges chose the finalists and all the best to all of them! I for one see it as a vote of confidence in the eclecticism of the folk scene that The Warratahs took a punt on us.

The Great Music Stand Debate

Some years ago I started a thread on the nz-folk list about how the use of music stands detract from a performance. Obviously this came with lots of qualification but the thing that surprised me was how vociferously the use of printed lyrics as a memory aid in performance was defended by some indignant list members.

Clearly there are musical disciplines, orchestras and show bands for instance, where music is read in real time; musicians play from the dots, but in this instance, no one person is engaging directly with the audience - even the conductor has their back to the audience. Classical soloists rarely play from music, they know their material inside out.

In the case of the solo or lead performer, whether it be a punk rock band or an a capella folk singer reading from the text (it's invariably text, not music) devalues even the best performance. First, a music stand creates a visual impairment. It not only distracts from the performer, it usually obscures part of them. Second, I get the clear sense that I am being read to and not experiencing the direct emotion of the artist's intention. One does not expect to see theatre actors perform with the script in one hand; playing a song is much the same thing.The difference is in which part of the brain is engaged in reconstructing the (say) song. Reading, although reasonably intuitive in most of us, is essentially a "logical" or "left brain" exercise. Rendering an emotive, humourous or satirical performance is not. There is some complex cognative processing going on in converting text and/or chords from a page to a voice-and-instrument presentation and this taxes the delivery no matter how well rehearsed.

Don't get me wrong, performing from lyrics and memory aids is fine and commonplace in our clubs and pubs - and if that's what you need to perform, do it. But if you aspire to a being more than a campfire singer then it is best to try to develop a repertoire that you can do from memory. I know of several overseas festivals, for example, that would think twice about engaging an artist that presents with a music stand for major concerts. It may seem unfair but in many of these circles it just seen as unprofessional. Some actually say this in their guidelines. They want you to genuinely know your material and not look like a work in progress.