Folkwoods Festival, Eindhoven

The sunday started off with of the finest Dutch singer/songwriters I know - Gerard van Maasakkers is a singer from Brabant (the Netherlands), he sings in his native language - a very nice start for another fine festival day. Next highlight was the legendary flemish folk rock band Kadril - this band was somehow a starting point for the actual new flemish folk boom. Kadril exists now already since a quarter of a decade - but their sound is very fresh and breathtaking. They have a very full sound with lots of traditional and modern instruments, and they have a great singer, too.
A personal favorite of me was the appearance of Danny Guinan. I have met this - still now quite young - Irish singer/songwriter a long time ago with his band of that time Speranza on some of their extensive quite low profile German tours. It was one of the earlier folk concerts I went to, and Speranza's album, which came out some years later, was for quite a time one of my favorite folk album... Danny has been living for some years now in the Netherlands - he has always extensive tours there, but somehow seldom crosses the borders. He is still the a bit mad singer songwriter, and I like his style of singing a lot. Hope to see you soon in Germany again, Danny!

A special concert for me was Urban Trad - I knew their CD before, and liked it a lot, but I was not sure if they could do this on stage - but they could, it was a fantastic concert. They brought the audience to dance quite from the start of their concert. Urban Trad's mastermind is the multiinstrumentalist Belge Yves Barbieux. He started Urban Trad more as a project for an album - but then it went on so well, that he created a band. Urban Trad is the name and the programme of this - Yves wants to make music rooted in different traditons (like Irish, Galician, Belgian, etc.) which can be found in the metropoles, at this time mixed with more modern sound of the cities. His band is great, with good stage performance - a personal highlight was the appearence of one of the Galician singers of Ialma. Great stuff!
Last band on was not a typical folkfestival band, but a hard rock band from the Netherlands. The organisers thought that their music would fit into the openminded concept of this festival. The audience was cut into two parts, some liked them a lot, others did not - but as it was the last concert of the festival they did not have to stay. I like the idea of having an open festival with some spots, which you normally can not find at folk festivals...