EARLY on in The Waifs’ show in Tamworth, vocalist Vikki Thorn notes that the band has endured longer than many marriages – it is, after all, their 25th anniversary tour.
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The aptness of this analogy strikes me many times during the night.
The venue, how the band members relate to each other, how they relate to the crowd; there’s a lotta love in the room. Lucky for them and lucky for us, it’s a happy marriage.
The show is in Tamworth town hall, which is the perfect venue for this band: stately and vintage, but small and homey: “Grand Ole Tamworth” as fellow vocalist Donna Simpson says.
The Waifs get started with their best-known hit, Lighthouse. This hooks the crowd, which is only a couple of hundred strong but very warm.
Another hit in Highway One is next, and this really starts to showcase the solid relationship between these four bandmates – Thorn (vocals, guitar, harmonica) Simpson (vocals, guitar), Josh Cunningham (vocals, guitar) and David Ross Macdonald (drums).
In this (and all their songs), Cunningham provides really tasteful, soulful and rich guitar (acoustic especially), as does Thorn on the harmonica, and the women don’t compete vocally. Macdonald keeps the pace shuffling along and enriches the sound. It’s not so much that everyone gets their turn to shine; in this family, every member is key and everyone shines at once.
Jumping to their latest album Ironbark, there’s some more lovely guitar in the intro to Higher Ground, followed by the women’s satisfying sibling harmonies. The song is a standout; lump-in-the-throat stuff for its sheer beauty and Australian-ness.
We find out that Thorn has her voice back tonight after losing it for a few days. She says she’s so happy to be “back” she wants to sing all night and talk with the audience members about everything: her shoes, her day, right down to what she had for tea (McDonald’s).
For all the world sounding like someone with a talkative spouse, Simpson counters with a wistful, “Oh, the sound of silence for three days!”
The title track from Ironbark showcases some great three-part harmonies and how well The Waifs are able to engage the audience by playing out the light and shade in their songs.
Thorn wows vocally in Dirty Little Bird (a song about betrayal) and Simpson in Done and Dusted (her “latest break-up song”).
Cunningham’s finest moment comes in his Dark Highway, a catchy and John Mayer-esque song that also features some great percussion, acoustic guitar, mouth harp and harmonies.
Simpson tells the story of how the bandmates met, when the sisters spotted an unusually-dressed guy walking along the beach with a guitar slung on his back and asked him to join their band not long after (as in, pretty much immediately).
“It was meant to be,” Cunningham pipes up, and there’s that marriage image again.
The band perhaps falters once or twice in their cohesiveness on a couple of songs, but no one cares. London Still and Fisherman’s Daughter get a run, and are still hits – by now some of the audience members are dancing in the aisles.
In between, Thorn sings Take Me To Town, her love letter to rural women who can “do it all: pack a pistol, pull a calf, cook, clean [and] bring communities together by putting on dances and events.”
A heartfelt demand for an encore brings The Waifs back on for several more songs, including the touching, circle-of-life-themed Black Dirt Track – featuring the path the sisters walked on as children, which was the surprise marriage-proposal location for Thorn, and which both now walk with their own children.
Then, in Goodnight, Lil Cowboy there’s a bit of yodelling thrown in for good measure – “I don’t want to typecast you, Tamworth, but you can yodel, can’t you?”
The crowd members certainly show their love and appreciation for The Waifs, and The Waifs give it back. They give their sincere thanks before “Goodnight, Tamworth” finishes a show with the vibe of an evening spent at a happy family dinner.