The festival gates open at noon today and when we walk through them at about 12:15, there is no line, no rush, just relaxed folks strolling around, sitting, eating and drinking beer. Lots of beer. The site is huge. There is an Open Air Stage and three huge tents with large stages and tons of covered sitting and standing room.
We choose our first concert to go to in one of the smaller venues. The Visemollen, a 150 seat what looks to be an old mill. We listen to Coig, from Canada. Some back story first.
Last winter we went to see Coig at the Northern Light Folk Club in Edmonton, and they happened to mention that they would be going to Tonder in the summer. We knew then that we were also going, so after the show we spoke with Rachel from the band and told her we were also going. I said to her that we would find them at Tonder to say HI.
Coig was fantastic and a joy to listen to and watch. After the concert, we waited for the band to come out to the foyer and we talked to Rachel and reminded her of our conversation and she remembered. We wished each other a great weekend and all left with smiles.
One thing we have noticed about the scheduling of music at Tonder is that the music is spread out. There isn’t constant music like at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Each stage has set up/sound check time for each band, so there are gaps in between the bands playing. Also, it seems that when a band is playing at one of the large stages, the other large stages are quiet. So people mill about, with time to eat more and drink yet another beer.
The one thing that is completely different to what we are used to is the standing up for concerts. The standers are in front of the stage and the sitters are towards the back and sometimes to the side. This makes difficult for short people to see, the Danes seem to be rather tall. As the crowd has lots of grey hair, there are many sitters, including us. I am definitely not a stander.
Music highlights today were Coig and Jeffrey Foucault. Jeffrey is a country bluesy folksy singer and his band was tight. I’m impressed.
I wonder what tomorrow will bring?