What a great, fun night filled with incredibly talented musicians and a chance to get up on the dancefloor to learn some moves. For this show, Backroads to Barn Dances, four amazing musicians; Dan Garner (AKA Donny Goodman but introduced to us as Dan), Dan Ablett, Adam Springhetti and Emily Gelineau decided to get together and jam just for Fringe.

The show notes said, ‘performed by some of Perth’s most versatile multi-instrumentalists’. They were not over selling it! It was described as the most expensive version of Tetris as they swapped and juggled instruments around like nothing I’ve seen before. In my head I’ve decided before the show they sat down, and all drew cards ‘for this song you can play… *draws card* the double bass!... you can play *draws card* the banjo’ ‘but I can’t play the banjo!’ ‘that’s ok, you’ve got a few months to learn!’ Which may not have been too far from the truth given that Springhetti only picked up the banjo a few months before the show, and no, Adam if you are reading this, we couldn’t tell. He played with the same proficiency as he played the double bass and guitar.

Gelineau, a fiddler, also played keys and sang (while playing keys and while playing violin – WOW), one of the Dan’s (Ablett) was on double bass, guitar and drums and the other Dan (Garner) pulled the show together with stories and anecdotes about the music and the musicians who made and shaped country music, while playing guitar and lead vocals. I probably missed a couple of instruments; I got distracted listening to the music. The show took us on a discovery of country music from around 100ish years ago to present-ish day with an assortment of well-known country classics to some less well known by those in the audience who are perhaps newer to country music appreciation.

While most Fringe shows are about 50 minutes, Backroads to Barn Dances is a solid two and a half hours. That is a really long time for a band to perform and as you would expect there were a couple of breaks between sets. Normally those breaks would be filled with ‘get yourself a drink from the bar, we will be back shortly’. Not this time. Instead, Alyssa from Boot and Booty Slappin’ got up and invited us to fill the dance floor as she took us through some line dances. What a great way to keep the crowd engaged and get the energy up. Such great fun, Alyssa broke the dances down, gave us simple routines and it didn’t matter if you didn’t get it, it was just good fun. 

Each time the band returned to the stage the energy in the songs lifted and they took the audience with them to enjoy the ride. It was brilliant to see audience member of all ages, from tweens to older generations all enjoying the same music and atmosphere. In the words of George Strait ‘Good memories don’t fade so easy’.