Andrea's Blog 8/7/09

Hey Guys,

I hope you are all enjoying the European summer.

It has been a busy old month this month with two gigs in Germany. I don’t know if anyone caught it, but I was a guest on ZDF’s ‘Fernsehen Garden’ on Sunday the 14th June. Here is the YouTube link if you missed it. It was quite bizarre performing full playback (this basically means that I perform with the track) but it did make sense, as the sound quality would’ve really been compromised had I performed live. From what I can understand all the acts usually perform with full playback on the show for this reason. George and I had a fun weekend and there was a great atmosphere on Sunday when the crowds turned up. I especially liked the host Andrea Kiewel and I was really grateful for her introduction.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera on the day, so this photo comes courtesy of Michael. Thanks Michael!

Last weekend Rachael and I performed at ‘Songs an einem Sommer Abend’ in Bad Staffelstein. It was a picturesque location and we had a great time. Nature couldn’t have done a better job of providing our backdrop - the monastery (Kloster) was bathed in a golden light and the sky splashed with smudges of pink and blue. On the first night the weather was quite foreboding so we even had lightening flashes during our performance – this was quite considerate of the man upstairs I must say! The second show on Saturday night was definitely the more relaxed of the two – the weather was perfect and by then everyone had settled a bit. There were also a few groups of rowdy Aussies in the crowd, which was a treat. When Bodo Wartke announced that I was from Australia, they made themselves known by cheering and waving little Aussie flags (Aussies do turn up in the weirdest of places and always seem to have a flag handy!?). It was great to be performing with my partner in crime again and I hope that there will be some more gigs coming up. Here are a few pics from the show:

When we weren’t at the venue, we had a hard time taking advantage of the hotel pool and on Saturday we ventured into the Thermal Springs (Bad) behind our hotel. It was heaven.

One of the highlights of the festival for me was a group called Kelpie made up of musicians Kerstin Blodig and Ian Melrose (who are apropos residents of Berlin!). Kerstin is an incredible guitarist and songwriter. She is an ‘other-wordly’ quality to her music and she reminded me a lot of Joni Mitchell. Here is a link to her website. It was very nice to see Michael there from the fan club. Thanks for the photos too Michael.

I’m not sure if anyone was able to tune into SWR1 in April (21.4.09) but I thought you might be interested in hearing this acoustic version of ‘Alibi’.