Hey friends!
We hope the new year’s treating you well so far, wherever it finds you.
I landed back in Australia on Christmas Eve to sort out all the little bits and pieces in time to greet Pamela on Christmas Day, then we took our trusty Aussie tour van Hector north into the High Plains outside Corryong, Victoria to ring in 2026 at Australia’s oldest folk festival, Nariel Creek Folk Fest. It’s been going since 1962, when a bunch of young folks affiliated with the FolkLore Society of Victoria made the trek up from Melbourne to seek out the tunes and dances and bush ballads among the farmers in the Nariel Valley, like antipodean Lomaxes chasing down Australia’s mountain music.
Some of the other informal traditions are a chutney-off, where folks voted with bottle caps in jars to pick a winner from among 13 chutneys; a cocktail party and costume contest that’s only open to outfits sourced from the neighbouring town’s second-hand store; and Black Beer, where folks bring mugs to fill with free homebrew, circle up and sing sea shanties ‘til the beer runs out.
Most folks stay a week or more, and some camp for over a month, just jamming and hanging out and swimming in the creek. Camping on the reserve is $5 a night. There’s very little cell service, and almost nothing to buy. Neither of our phones worked at all, and our nervous systems thanked us for the week offline.
We found a sweet creekside campsite down the far end of the fest where folks let their dogs off-leash to swim, so it was a pretty hilarious scene all week. Our neighbour Tasman, who was visiting the fest for their first time, took their time walking and surveying the site and painted a scale map that blew our minds.
We played three songs in the open mic on New Year's Day, including “Nariel Creek Waltz”, which I wrote and released on my Patreon during our last trip through the area. Just like with the songs I've written about real people, it was a huge relief to hear that it landed well with the longtime festivalgoers.
Our last night's jam was tender and beautiful, circled up around a kerosene light sharing songs and space with old and new friends. I eventually slipped out into the moonlight and wound my way homeward through the campground with the sounds of flutes and concertinas and harmonies and nightbirds ringing out and the stars winking deliciously close to the earth.
We got back in the saddle yesterday, playing the Healesville living room of our dear friends Jon Sharpley and his wife Cecilia, whose eucalypt-leaf prints adorn the pages of Tangle of Souls. For all the precarity of this life, it sure feels abundant with all its welcomes and its potlucks and its plentiful reminders of how many interesting people are doing creative and resourceful things in their far-flung corners of the world.
Today we drove to the port in Geelong, and now we're waiting in line for an overnight ferry to Tasmania. It’s all gonna fly by pretty fast.
Sat Jan 3 • Healesville, VIC • Duckpond House Concerts
Mon Jan 5 • Hobart, TAS • matinee at the Museum of Old and New Art
Fri-Sun Jan 9-11 • Cygnet, TAS • Cygnet Folk Festival
Wed Jan 14 • Stratford, VIC • Courthouse Theatre w/ the Mafeking Hillbillies
Thu Jan 15 • Candelo, NSW • Candelo Village Hall w/ the Wild Martinis
Fri-Sun Jan 16-18 • Bulli, NSW • Illawarra Folk Fest
Tue Jan 20 • Narara, NSW • Narara Ecovillage
From there we’re flying across the Tasman Sea for our first duo tour around Aotearoa/New Zealand:
Thu Jan 22 • Wellington • UnderCurrent w/ Cotton Daisy Backstep
Fri Jan 23 • New Plymouth • Taranaki Festival of Lights
Sat Jan 24 • Auckland • Auckland Folk Festival
Thu Jan 29 • Auckland • Ministry of Folk w/ Hoop
Fri Jan 30 • Katikati • Katikati Folk Club
Wed Feb 4 • Pukehou, Hawke’s Bay • Small Halls Sessions
Thu Feb 5 • Ongaonga, Hawke’s Bay • Small Halls Sessions
Fri Feb 6 • Twyford, Hawke’s Bay • Small Halls Sessions
Sat Feb 7 • Palmerston North • The Globe Theatre
Sun Feb 8 • Wellington • Petone Abandoned Taproom
Wed Feb 11 • Onekaka • Mussel Inn
Fri Feb 13 • Nelson • Ruby Bay Store Theatre
Sat Feb 14 • Barrytown • Barrytown Hall
Sun Feb 15 • Hokitika • Old Lodge Theatre
Thu Feb 19 • Invercargill • Southland Musicians Club
Sat Feb 21 • Christchurch • A Rolling Stone w/ Adam McGrath
Sun Feb 22 • Dunedin • Dunedin Folk Club
I'll be back in Australia in late February for more dates with the Little Rippers, bookended by two of my favourite Australian folk festivals — Cobargo and Yackandandah — with a bunch more shows and an album recording in between. As always, all the dates and deets are on www.scottcook.net.
Time on Taiwan
I'm pleased to report that I made big strides on the book for Troubadourly Yours during my stay in Taiwan, though I'm sad to say that it still isn't done. If you were among the folks who pre-ordered the album in person, it's still coming, and you got a very good deal, given the steady inflation of the shipping costs and the book itself.
I've finally come to accept that there's no way I can make it any smaller than Tangle of Souls. Far as I can tell, this thing's gonna be my magnum opus. I'm already fantasizing about how slim and word-poor the next album will be, but I guess I've just got a lot to say about the last five or six years, and I've gotta let it be what it wants to be.
My month on Taiwan was everything I wanted, with ample time for writing and walking and biking around Fulong, the little coastal town I holed up in for the month. My only complaint was that it wasn't a month longer. I managed to get in a few rips on a borrowed scooter, two gigs in Taipei and Taichung, a jam with my longtime bandmate Tyler Dakin, and dinner at one of my favourite restaurants — 阿爸的情人 aka Papa's Secret Lover — on my last night with a group of old pals and their ever-growing kiddos.
I also made it into Taipei to visit my last school and try to track down my old student Frankie, who I wrote a song about but hadn't seen in nineteen years. I told more of the story on my Patreon, but the short of it is, I found him! He's 23, and he's an artist.
Earlier in this travelogue I mentioned the relief I felt when the Nariel Creek festivalgoers gave their blessing to my song about their fest. It was kind of like the feeling I got when I heard that New York's Attorney General Letitia James likes the song I wrote about her. Neither came close to my relief when Frank told me he loves the song.
I hadn't been to Taiwan since 2019, and it's wonderful to see the country continuing to change for the better. Far as I can tell, the system's more democratic and less corrupt. The roads are safer. The cities are cleaner. The transit's even better. And Taiwanese folks are ever-more adventurous, surfing and cycling and even making a rite of passage out of travelling around the island. Most Taiwanese folks I knew thought I was crazy to drive a motorbike around the island in my first year there. And my Canadian friend Syd was the only person I knew who'd walked it. But one day on a bike ride along the coast, I passed a guy with a sign on his backpack that said “環島” (huandao or around-island) and I had to stop and ask him about it. He was a young fella from Hualien who had a free month before starting a job as a firefighter, so he decided to walk around Taiwan. Turns out a lot of young people are doing it these days.
There's an old abandoned building on the beach in a little town called Daxi that we used to camp in some weekends. We never had any company except the young coast guardsmen who'd come to check us out now and then. Nowadays tons of surfers are using it. They've even run a water line out to it to wash off their boards.
Neverending love from down here,
s
