Falls - Firefly 2015

Festival Plan: Falls stood out as one of the top groups I wanted to see perform.


Falls (Melinda and Simon)
Simon taps a pedal to create a bass drum sound.

Relevant Links:
Falls Website
Falls at Firefly 2015 (setlist.fm)*
*Created the setlist and added the songs below on 20150703.

Pre-Festival Thoughts:
Falls is a folk music duo from Sydney (Melinda Kirwin and Simon Rudston-Brown) with an album on Spotify, Into the Fire (2014) and no prior setlists on setlist.fm. As such, I loaded up the album and at some point while listening to the first track ('Please') I just melted.

Melinda and her vintage Hohner Melodica Soprano.

With music that resonated so strongly with my own musical style,* I was immediately drawn to the duo's music and definitely wanted to see them if possible. Reserved with my rating, I assigned Falls an 8 out of 10 for both their music (seventh overall out of 117 rated artists) and my desire to see them (fourteenth overall).


Excellent**: 'Please' [3+], 'Girl That I Love' [2+], 'Home' [2+]
Above Average: 'Hey', 'Into The Fire'
Slightly Above Average: 'Hollywood'
On The Fence: ~

*typically folk-inspired, though I don't listen to much folk music, go figure
**Songs with 2 or more '+'s are considered 'Excellent'. The number of '+'s are found in brackets.

The setlist


Setlist: (Words between braces '{}' come from a written setlist on the ground at Melinda's foot; word(s) which I couldn't read are denoted by '[...]')
1) Please
-- {[...]}; they're from Australia
2) Girl That I Love
-- {New Song}; live debut:
3) Summer


-- {}; written a year ago on Independence Day while in the States:
4) Independence Day
-- {[...] in Omaha}*** {[...] next song [...]}; written during their first trip to the U.S., there was snow, and it was inspired by people they met:
5) When We Were Young
-- {Aussies? + [...]}; are there any Australians in the audience? well this next song is dedicated to Australians, Simon changes tuning:
6) Home


-- {[...] Firefly + Stubhub for having us.} {We'll be play FOREST 3PM SUNDAY}; last song:
7) Into the Fire

***They recorded in Omaha, Nebraska.

Arriving At The Coffeehouse:
While most artists who have a Coffeehouse set perform on the same day and a bit after their main set, Falls perform their main set on the last day at 3PM, and perform their Coffeehouse set two days in advance.


In any case, I was so excited to see Falls perform that I went straight to the Coffeehouse from The Porch stage after watching Wild Party and had about an hour to kill before they started. When I got there, I was happy to see there was still plenty of room in the front row, yet I wasn't the only one there.

The front and second rows didn't really fill up until about a half hour before the show started. I also noted that there were plenty of people in the area when I arrived, but they simply weren't waiting in the front.


One cool thing, was that I got to watch Melinda and Simon doing some sound check prior to the show. As part of the sound check, they would occasionally sing a line or two from their songs.

While waiting, it was nice that I could hear Le1f from The Backyard stage. With that being said, I was tired and unintentionally took a power nap (about ten minutes).

Melinda wraps up.

Finally, at about ten minutes prior to the start of the show, the area was sparsely filled, maybe with about six rows worth of people.

Post-Show Thoughts:
Maybe it's just me, but it seemed as though the duo really sang from the inside out. Receiving that emotion and feeling was such a great feeling.

While I was originally debating between seeing VÉRITÉ and Falls on Sunday (there was large time overlap between the two performers), watching Falls perform today resulted in a clear decision: I'd go and watch Falls.

Simon during sound check.

My post on the band's second set at Firefly 2015: Concert 20150621 Falls.

No comments :