Dave Rawlings Machine : East Coast Tour February 2016 - Bangalow A & I Hall

Dave Rawlings sings sweet and country. His hat’s not as high as some but it’s perfectly clean and cream. He plays that 80-year-old guitar like it’s gonna take him away to another planet.  At once caressing it, then tugging and working it round a solo to within an inch of its life.

Gillian Welch sings, her straight, wide mouth hiding the smooth and effortless sound that escapes it. There’s no confusing whose voice that is. She smiles frequently, at us, at Dave, enjoying herself and the music they’re making.

It’s Dave’s name on the bill, but on stage the two are equals. One wouldn’t be without the other.

Gillian jokes that it’s going to get hot and sweaty, which is just as well because that’s how they like it. For sure, the night is still and the old hall is an oven full of bodies.

The guitars are pretty high, the jeans straight and not-too-narrow, and the denim double. Americana for the clothes as well as the tunes. Long dresses brush ankles, all checks and laces up the front. Gillian hitches hers up to hoe-down along with us.

Sweet harmonies blend like honey and golden syrup warmed up on the stove. Country, folksy, bluegrass, twang. I’ve no idea what it’s called but I don’t really care. I feel like I’m in a movie, watching myself in the audience of the old hall. Their accents (they all live in Nashville these days) upset my sense of place, so I imagine that instead of surfer vans and nice hatchbacks, outside there are pickup trucks and red tractors.

 Willie Watson is a character. Short, with a scrunched up face and raised eyebrows when he sings. Sounds wonderful. Even though the two stars don’t seem to need him, he makes himself indispensable by tying them together and keeping them riding high. When left on his own, he commands the audience like he’s done it since he was 5.

The fresh-faced, rosy-cheeked American boy (of 29) on the double bass is Paul Kowert. He takes a song and a low baritone emerges from his body behind the big, shiny instrument. He twists and lifts his wooden partner around behind the others, finding the sweet spots where he can listen to the lead vocal and follow a string solo.

Brittany Haas is the girl on the fiddle. For a lass who’s not even 30, she’s got the thing by the balls and steals the show time after time. Who needs a voice when you can make strings sing and skip like she can.

Beside me Tim floats off to heaven. He’s seen the Promised Land, or rather heard it with his own ears, and he can hardly believe it.

Gig Review: The Waifs @ Bangalow A & I Hall

It had been a long time between drinks for me, since the last time I saw The Waifs in 2009. That night they played at the beautiful Bangalow A & I Hall, with its walls and ceilings covered in pressed tin reliefs, and its flat, open floor smooth from a century of gathering. Last night, the same band in the same venue brought back memories of that first magical night, the relaxed crowd milling around, finding their spot, chatting as they carry their eskys and wine bottles, waiting for the first act to come on stage. 

This time it's Mia Dyson, brandishing her vanilla icecream-coloured Tone Deluxe Standard, a guitar built by her father. She takes to the stage and a few people mutter, asking who she is. The rest of us are tuning our ears to her soulful, heavy vocals and emotional electric blues, instantly recognisable if you've ever heard any of her music. 

In the hot hall, though, without her band backing her as she revs up for each stinging solo, attentions start to drift and the chatter rises. She brings us back with the catchy When the Moment Comes, and I find myself singing along without knowing the lyrics. A little tune about spending time with a loved one before they pass away, She Can't Take the World, from her newest album, Idyllwild, is uplifting despite its subject. It showcases her gift for seeing right to the heart of a moment and condensing those feelings into one small package. 

On the ceiling there are no fans, and the small, hinged windows that run the length of the walls high above our heads are hardly able to provide enough ventilation for the now-crowded hall. Jackets are removed, brows wiped.

The Waifs have been together 23 years, and are touring their recently released 7th studio album, Beautiful You. They bounce onto the stage with the audience already at their whim.  Donna Simpson launches the performance with her familiar raw vocals, her relationship with the other four musicians so free and easy after all this time together. 

Guitarist and singer, Josh Cunningham, is hardly recognisable under a huge bushranger beard, but as soon as his voice emerges, smooth and effortless from beneath all the fuzz, you know it can't be anyone else. Within three songs he has changed guitars three times, from electric to acoustic, to electric ukulele and back again. 

Vikki Thorn’s skills on harmonica marry up beautifully, and barely a song passes which doesn't benefit from a bluesy burst inserted expertly between vocals and guitar solos. 

Mia Dyson jumps back on stage to join Josh in a "gospel shred off", jokes Vikki, and they lurch into their blues/gospel masterpiece, Temptation, filling the hall with a wall of harmonies and working their way to a dueling guitar call-and-response solo midway through. Josh’s Born to Love on banjo is country enough to avoid any comparison with the current crop of hipster urban hillbilly tunes, cemented by a stomping drum beat and anchored by the trio's close harmonies in all the right places. 

Part of The Waifs’ enduring appeal lies in their ability to create music as a close-knit group with a shared history, while still allowing each member to maintain their individual storytelling and songwriting styles.

With each new song, the emotion in the room changes, and I have a lump in my throat as Vikki and Josh begin to play Gillian, a song Josh wrote for his mother in his early days with the band. The love, the weight of parental responsibility, the honour of being someone's child all impossibly conveyed in a few simple lines. 

Donna sings her heart out for the title track from the new album, Beautiful You, which, she explains, was written as a plea to a friend struggling with addiction. The pain is palpable and her rawness leaves the crowd awkwardly searching for somewhere else to look.

Classics from their back catalogue, like London Still and Lighthouse, are as sweet as ever, with the sisters taking turns at the mic while Josh expertly recreates each line so that it pleasingly matches with the melodies burned into the minds of everyone present. 

At one point I notice I have started swaying in time without realising it, but the song ends just as I become aware. With my mind wandering and my feet tapping, the validity of our day-to-day struggles and the joys and pains of a simple life are sung with such conviction and honesty that you can't help but feel happy to be alive.