Auckland Folk Festivals Part 1 - 1973

You can't get in the song competition with a Telephone Card

The very last folk festival I went to was probably about 20 years ago. I heard on the radio they were holding a song competition as part of the festival, so I decided to write a song, especially for the occasion. It would be a bit of a pilgrimage.

I went to folk festivals all over New Zealand from the age of 15. I used to backpack and hitchhike all over the country to annual festivals with my guitar. Places like Gordonton, Hamilton, Raukawa Falls, Wellington, and Christchurch. I thought it would be fun to go back to Titirangi and see if any of the people I used to play with were still around.

I wrote a song called Telephone Card for the competition. I admired songwriters like Dick Coker and Dave Jordan, who were early influences on my own songwriting and I decided to write something humourous but very Kiwi.

I heard that Dick sadly passed away earlier this month (September 2022) R.I.P. I can still hear him singing one of his originals, where we all used to join in the chorus ‘Good Lord it’s happening to me, now I’m a Kiwi”.

So I wrote Telephone Card and on a hot summer’s day, I arrived at the gate with my family to join the festival. But before I went in, I wanted to get the details of when the competition would start. They told me it was already over. “It can’t be,” I protested. “Today is the first day of the festival.”

To cut a long story short, after having a chat with Roger Giles, who was one of the co-organisers of the festival and he came to see me at the gate, it transpired that the competition had been going on for some months and the winner would be named at the festival.

Well, that had burst my bubble big time! I’d spent time writing the song, the music, practising, and now if I got to perform it at the festival, it would not be as part of the competition. To put it politely, I was miffed. I turned the family around and did not go to the festival.

1973

The first Auckland Folk Festival I went to, was before it was even called a festival. It was more of a folk jam session, workshop, and singing around the fire on Labour Weekend in October 1973.

Do you know someone who was there?

Ironically, I wasn’t invited as a guest, although I knew one of the organisers, Frank Winter. We would become good friends. Back then, I was a young teenager.

I actually came in through the back door. I was already at Moller’s Farm, camping for the weekend with friends. When the festival retinue arrived, Bill checked with Frank if it was OK for me and my friends to stay and join in. Frank knew me because my parents started the International Folk Music Club which met once a month at the Poles Apart, Frank’s nightclub in Auckland’s Newmarket.

Let’s go back a few months. One of my best mates at the time, Steve Foster, took me to a party at Bill Moller’s Farm in Oratia in June of ‘73. That would be the first of many parties and jams that I would attend at Mollers Farm.

Bill was a cowboy. He was in the wrong country really. He looked the part, dressed like a cowboy, he rode and ran horses and had a great farm on Carters Rd, with stables, rolling hills, and long rows of sweetcorn and maize.

He built a massive barn, I mean HUGE which was only just being finished around that time. It had a stage, a massive open fireplace which always had fresh corn and maize boiling in a big pot over the fire. When it was empty, he would just walk up one of the paddocks and pick some more. I have photos of him somewhere, but I can’t find them at the time of writing.

He had amazing all-night parties and people of all ages would come from far and wide for a party at Moller’s Farm, in the Barn.

At that first event, my friends and I had camped in our tent, up on the hill and had been there a day or two before the folkies arrived. I never went anywhere without a guitar, so I was in my element.

There were some great musos there, with music ringing through the hills of Oratia during the day and evening, as groups gathered in circles around tents in different parts of Moller’s Farm. There was everything from sea shanties, Kiwi, Irish, British, and Australian folk songs, to contemporary music and some great country blues.

The highlight for me was a jam on the stage that went all night. I think it was on the Sunday night of the long weekend. At some stage during the night, the bass player took a break and left his double bass up on the stage.

I had played an electric bass before, but never a double bass. I asked if I could have a go while he was having a break. I don’t know where all the musos came from, but there was a great mix including some of Bill’s ring-ins. There was a fiddle player, a sax player, a mandolin, a banjo, all sorts of guitars, and even a piano.

Well, I got stuck into that bass, I got stuck into a fair bit of alcohol too, and had a wonderful night. I took turns with the owner of the double bass, and he gave me a few tips. The alcohol was a great pain killer for my fingers which weren’t used to plucking from the sides, instead of picking with my fingernails. The next morning, I had massive watery blisters on two of my fingers, a hangover and a warm glow that comes from having been in the zone, playing in a great jam session.

I would return for the first official Auckland Folk Music Festival in February 1974, where I played with people who became good friends, like Glenn Crosse, Bill and John Taylor, Dick Taylor (no relation), and Mo Sullivan, to name a few. Some of them I lived with for a while, in an urban commune named Fowl Farm, because in its previous life it was a chicken farm. There will be some fun stories to come from that place, which was famous for Saturday afternoon jam sessions, as well as late-night sessions at Poles Apart, where some of the best music was played in the dressing room.

I actually went to the 1974 Auckland Folk Festival on a school trip, with the Auckland Alternative School. It was a wild event. We had a huge tent which was just as well because it was windy, wet, and muddy. I’m trying to track down some photos before I tell stories from that one.

Want to read or hear some more of these stories?

Were you at one of those events? I’d love you to leave a comment.

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