BUSKING, JAMMING, and DANCING

Ruth, Lucy and Rowena have learned fiddle by ear from their mum and have busked a lot in their home town for extra spending money. Between their buskings and their shares of family band income, the girls have paid their own way to fiddle camp in Tasmania and Victoria over the past several years, including airfares.

Ruth has now moved to Perth and has spent 2007 working in a deli and a music shop for her gap year before starting university in February 09 to study towards an Arts degree in musicology.

Lucy has just finished secondary school and will be working in Scott’s shop for the next year before starting university. Her keen interest in drama has lead her to perform in a professional Noble Rot Theatre production this year at Voyager Estate during the Margaret River Wine Festival.

At Festivals the girls began by busking individually and then with other young people they came to know in the festival scene over the years. They each have a circle of close friends from fiddle camp who also show up at the Festivals.

The late night jamming of these friends is a joy to be part of or to behold! Especially when they've been known to try to dance and fiddle simultaneously at 2:30 a.m., each having a go in the middle of a circle of the others.
They also sign up to perform at "blackboard venues" with friends with whom they have worked out songs or tunes. They go dancing at dances scheduled in the programmes: anything from Scottish Country Dancing to Tango to Cat Empire and Doch!

At Fairbridge and other festivals they have played programmed concert spots to full venues for the last few years as “The Wise Girls and Friends”. They usually perform a sub-bracket as a trio within the Wise Family Band sets at festivals and gigs. They all write songs and tunes of a high calibre and have performed in other lineups with friends from time to time at school and community events in their home town. Rowena has lately formed an original rock & roll band with some friends which played at the Burning of the Vines celebration at Leeuwin Estate in 2007.

During the year between festival seasons, these friends keep in touch via email and post, sending each other gifts of CDs and generally keeping each other stoked up in enthusiasm for their music. The Wise Girls have grown up 3 hours south of the most isolated capital in the world, so this has been a veritable lifeline coming from their music friends.

The three girls have won awards in music as well as writing, drama and art at school and Lucy plans to study drama and art at university.
Updated December 2007