Samantha Muir
Cathy Welsford & Angie Smith - The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach
Cathy plays all sizes of ukulele, harp ukulele and banjo uke, as well as stick dulcimer, 5 string banjo, guitar, percussion, piano and keyboard. She was a founding member and inaugural president of the Australian Ukulele Teachers and Leaders Association (AUTLA). She holds a Level 3 James Hill Ukulele Teacher's accreditation, a Mistress of Education degree and was a Project Officer for the New England Conservatorium of Music. She recently developed two ukulele-based education programs which she is currently presenting to schools and pre-schools across New South Wales. Cathy teaches the Valla Beach Garage Band who perform at local events and in the streets of Valla Beach and Nambucca Heads.
Your Ukulele Camp hosts, Cathy (Fast Fingers) Welsford and Angie (Random Chords) Smith have been performing, writing songs and organising community events together for thirty years, singing their way through numerous political upheavals, cultural revolutions and just plain standing up against injustice. They provide high quality ukulele workshops at clubs and festivals up and down the east coast of Australia from Cairns to Tasmania, and are also tutors at Bellingen’s annual Camp Creative. They perform as The Wild Women of Anywhere Beach, interspersing beautifully harmonised original songs with evocative instrumental pieces, outrageous rock and sassy covers. A fearless song-writing duo, they compose contemporary folk ditties documenting the events, issues and celebrations of the times and of their outrageous life experiences. Their long awaited CD, Keep Laughing, Seriously is finally out, now available at festivals, on Spotify and through their website at www.thewildwomenofanywherebeach.net.
Review from Michael Fine at Troubadour Folk Club Event on 29 May 2021.
We billed it as a night of 'Creative Singer-Songwriters with Ukulele, at the Everglades'. But it deserved much more. Those of us lucky enough to have been there will remember this evening for a long time. A room full of laughter. Inspiring performances. Great original songs! And sharing that deep feeling of intimacy between audience and performers that only the most special events can ever produce.
The Wild Women were a hoot from the start. But cleverly, as we were lulled into the comfort of laughter and shared enjoyment, they began to get deeper and deeper in their reflection on what it means to be treated as a older woman, and how to respond to it. Cleverly, their message was about older blokes as well. They played some quite demanding instrumentals which I think went well beyond folk music. I thought of them as mini symphonic sketches, on the ukuleles. The lasting memories I have is of the joy they have and their rebellious embrace of gender and ageing. These are two women who are determined make the world a better place, one witty line and clever key change at a time.
Angie is a music historian with a Mistress of Education (Hons) and PhD (Education). She specialises in working with ukulele Beginners and Seniors, as well as in repertoire development, workshop exercises, songwriting and strum techniques. An experienced teacher, she brings to her workshops a unique understanding of the learning process together with ample patience and a firm belief in the ability of humans to learn. Her broad musical knowledge and ongoing research enable her to offer a wide range of workshops including beginners, strum techniques, rhythmic picking, twelve bar blues, Latin rhythms, Songs of the 20s, 30s and 40s, Hollywood Hawaiian, Great Movie Songs, and Australian, Gypsy, Scottish and Irish folk songs. Her Senior Armidale Ukulele group has now grown wings and meeting regularly to jam, rehearse and perform independently in the NSW Northern Tablelands.