First we found out that two of our classmates, Jonathan & Einar, play in the band that won last year’s competition at the Linköping festival. Then we found out that their band will be playing at Umefolk, the festival in Umeå in February. And we listened to some of the tunes they’ve written/arranged together, and they are awesome. So we thought, hey, we should go and hear them play!
But, Umeå isn’t all that conveniently located, so although Andrea was in for sure, I wanted to know at least a leeeeetle bit more about who else was on the program, and exactly when it would be and how much it cost,… And as of mid-December there was no info posted yet. But I emailed the super-nice festival organizers and they said the new site was coming soon — and they also said, hey, wanna play a dance set in exchange for free festival admission?
So, after discovering that the entire lineup is in fact quite exciting — several of our teachers are playing (Olov and Niklas and Mia), and Bruce Molsky is playing with Mikael Marin & Ånon Egeland, and check out the rest of the list too! — and then going through a stint of being the first on the waitlist, we are now officially booked for our first festival gig in Sweden!! As, I hasten to add, a late-night shift of volunteer sign-up, opposite the super-impressive real main bands — so it’s just a touch embarrassing that the site graphical presentation gives us all equal real estate. But still: pretty cool, huh?!
We did a little photo shoot yesterday, ’cause our existing publicity pics have different instruments than the ones we’ll be playing. Though then we ended up doing outdoor pics in the pretty light, so you only see instrument cases anyway. But we are quite pleased with the results — special thanks to Johannes for valiant camera-wielding duty out in the cold! (And to Thomas for the beautiful folkdräkt wristwarmers!)
Our festival page = umefolk.umeafolkmusik.se/artister/lydia-andrea
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