Scraps Of Mind

Kilmore Celtic Festival 2009

Someone must have pressed the fast forward button and whizzed the year through, because I can’t believe it’s been a year since we headed off down the Hume Highway on our annual pilgrimage to the Kilmore Celtic Festival.

And of course, my annual homage to the event.

I made this layout using Marcee Duggar's Music Kit with some embellishments from Amy Cheeseman's Heartsong. I'm going through a phase of blending my photos so that they form part of the background paper at the moment.

Once again I meant to buy the early-bird tickets and get the discount. Once again it slipped my mind. Once again I almost forgot which weekend it was on.

But despite all that, once again I have had a great day out at my favourite folk festival.

Kilmore lies about 40 minutes drive north of Melbourne. So from my perspective it’s one of the handiest folk festivals I can get to. And an added bonus is that my sister lives ten minutes away from Kilmore on the way home so it’s become a bit of a tradition to stop there on our way back for a bite to eat and a cosy catch up in front of their fire.

The Kilmore Celtic Festival takes place on the last weekend of June each year and kicks off with a dinner and cailaigh on Friday evening, culminating with a big lunch and concert at one of the Kilmore pubs on Sunday afternoon.

And in between there’s Saturday!

A day packed full of great bands, musicians and singers as well as markets, dancing and workshops.

Kilmore is a small festival and for me that’s part of its charm. There are always plenty of new acts to sample as well as many old favourites to revisit. And this year was no exception.

My favourite band, Ced Meledo’s Bric-a-Brac were in fine form. They represent the Breton contribution to the Celtic culture. And Ced is cute, French and wears leather pants. What more could you ask for? Oh yes, their music is great to listen to.

Another favourite act, Braemar, opened the Festival and woke us up to a set of Scottish balllads. And we enjoyed the return of Bhan Tre who are always great to watch. Each year we like to find a new act that we can add to our favourites and this year we came across two. Both are young bands from the Lake School of Celtic Music. One is called Rant and the other is Dram. Definitely two bands to watch out for on the celtic/folk scene.

And, in what has now become part of our Kilmore Festival tradition, we stopped in at Elaine and Greg’s on our way home. Topping of a terrific day with home made pizza and wine.

Aaaah! Life’s good!