The Barr Brothers receive Tonder festival crisis pants

The Barr Brothers' previous gig was in a northern outpost of Quebec and it had taken two days to get to southern Denmark with a pile of gear that included a harp and a percussive bicycle wheel. However, on arrival it rapidly became clear that all was not as it should be.

"We lost an antique organ somewhere between here and Quebec," Andrew Barr (left) told his audience at Tonder yesterday. "Which is terrible because it means a lot to us. Plus we lost all our clothes. But the festival said 'That's OK. We have underwear for you.' So I would like to congratulate the festival for being that on it that they anticipated someone here would lose their underwear."

Instead of his missing guitar slide Barr improvised with a cigarette lighter. "The missing instrument is a kind of pump organ, like a harmonium," he said later. "They used to use them on battlefields during the civil war for funerals. We came by Air Canada with a final leg on Lufthansa and I don't know which of them lost the gear.

"So Brad and I received a toothbrush each and two medium sized pairs of white underpants. Now it looks as if the organ has turned up and will be with us in time for gig number two tomorrow, so that's OK. We still don't have our clothes though."

Jing Haase is the middle of three generations of her family to volunteer at Tonder - her parents are among the festival's founders - and is the lucky lady with responsibility for The Barr Brothers' crisis pants.

"Me and Eric are the panic team," she explained. "We are the kind of crisis task force and we have a large red bag of supplies to start us off. We do tampons but not condoms and there's women's underwear in there as well - though it's not very sexy stuff.

"The weirdest thing we ever had to do was when Taj Mahal arrived and his suitcase disintegrated."

That's a reason to sing the blues.

"Yes. Especially because it was a Sunday and all the shops were shut. But Tonder is a small town - fewer than 10,000 people - and so I rang up the man who runs the suitcase shop and he opened up so Taj Mahal could go down and pick one out. I've also got a dentist on standby, for emergencies.

"The Barr Brothers have been unlucky to lose their luggage... their clothes still haven't turned up, have they? We gave them a festival T-shirt each, which they wore for today's gig. But I have a feeling that they may need to buy new knickers tomorrow."

* Yesterday's post from Tonder was about Billy Bragg and the EDL's irony-free expat branch.

* And Friday's was this about Admiral Fallow having some exchange rate difficulties.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley

Billy Bragg at the Tonder festival on the EDL's expat branch

It was the pithy banter, the total absence of mumbling and the way in which there were approximately no notes out of place that rooted me to the spot. I'd always thought of Billy Bragg as politically less subtle than Ben Elton during his standup days and yet - with the flawless stagecraft as a runway - the realisation unfolded last night that, like Peter Tatchell, he is a man with whom history has caught up. My plan to slope off for a dose of Lau evaporated.

Although he should always be thought of first and foremost as the milkman of human kindness (because it's a phrase of genius), he's recently morphed into something of a silver fox - lucky bloke - and in the context of the equal marriage laws, his song Sexuality has finally ceased to be a slightly boastful paean to shagging ("I've had relations, with girls from many nations") and now wears the glamour of a prescient civil rights song. That's the odd thing about progressive politics, I guess: if you hang around long enough there's a distinct possibility that you'll end up in the mainstream eventually.

Tonder flipping loved him anyway. More to the point, he mentioned during his set that he'd recently heard that the English Defence League - best known for its racially inspired violence - has, wait for it, set up an expat branch in Spain.

"This is a party that is fundamentally about hating immigrants," he explained to his Danish audience. "So this latest development was a bit of a surprise."

I caught him later and he explained that he'd heard about the irony-free expat branch on tour to Barcelona a month or so ago.

"It crossed my radar on Twitter, where I follow a few anti-EDL accounts. The thing is that you can tell this story in Barcelona and you can tell it in Sweden and everyone will think it's hilarious. And yet the EDL don't see the inherent lunacy of having an expat branch. It shows them up for the humourless idiots they are."

Still, it gives the rest of us a chuckle.

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Admiral Fallow experience some exchange rate difficulties at Tonder festival - and a princess

I'm in Denmark, for the Tonder festival - which is pronounced "Tonner" apparently - and got here via Hamburg airport and a festival mini bus which, apart from me and my rucksack, also contained Kate Rusby and band, Admiral Fallow and a cool box containing beer. Just the facts.

In between noticing that southern Denmark, against expectations, bears a strong resemblance to Lincolnshire, the time simply flew by. 

"I only realised Denmark isn't in the euro a couple of days ago," I admitted. "I need to find a cash point as soon as we get there."

"Yes," said Joe Rattray, bass player for Admiral Fallow. "We've had some issues with that. Our manager sorted out the PDs - per diems - yesterday and he came bouncing in saying 'I've got €750 here.'"

Denmark isn't in the euro.

"There was this awkward silence before someone pointed out his mistake. In fact, if you retell this story can you say it happened to Lau instead? It's OK though: there's a guy backstage who's changing the money for us."

Other news from Tonder includes that the festival's patron - a princess, no less - will be arriving today. Since this is the Danish royal family - which takes a different approach to monarchy to our lot - it's not entirely surprising that one of them should be a folky. Apparently she was French originally and married the younger of the two Danish princes. I've been told that if I run into her I should ask about her brother-in-law, the Crown Prince, who successfully completed an Iron Man competition last weekend. Honestly, I'm not making this up...

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Spectator interview with Eurovision winner's folky mentor, Fraser Neill

Fraser Nelson, the editor of the Spectator, is a wise man. When he watched the Eurovision song contest the other night and saw Emmelie de Forest win he wrote this piece, suggesting that Denmark takes folk music seriously - its own and everyone else's - and this is why it won.

I got a call early on Monday asking if I would try to track down and interview the man he mentions in that blog - Fraser Neill, the Scottish folk musician who's been playing and performing with Emmelie de Forest in Denmark for the last five years - for this week's magazine.

24 hours later it was done, mainly through the magic of Twitter. I'd like to thank everyone who retweeted my request for information and particularly the person who runs the Tonder Festival's twitter account, because they directly facilitated my conversation with Neill.

And what a delightful man Neill is. The pride and admiration he felt at Emmelie de Forest's Eurovision win shone out of him during our 30 minutes or so on the phone.

Here's the interview in the Spectator that resulted. It appears as the arts lead in the this week's Spectator magazine; if there are any glaring errors I can try to get them fixed online.

I'd like to wish Fraser Neill the best of luck finding a deal for the unreleased album.

* You can follow the Tonder Folk festival on Twitter here.

* If you'd like to receive posts from this blog directly into your Facebook newsfeed, you could *like* its Facebook page and then use the drop-down menu to indicate that it's one of your "interests". This will enhance the possibility that you'll get them. You could also follow me on Twitter @emma1hartley