Edmonton Folk Music Festival 2007

I know this isn't in keeping with the Toronto club-life theme of this site, but your roving reporter headed out to the wild west to sunny Alberta to take in the Edmonton Folk Music Festival (and visit relatives) earlier this month. At least the music was live and produced by about 70 great bands from around the globe.

Gallagher Park is a Natural Amphitheatre in the River Valley

The festival is 28 years old now and actually held right in the heart of the city at Gallagher Park. Local media were reporting attendance of anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000. I guess it depends on how you do the counting. I asked festival general manager Terry Wickham about that. He estimates that there are about 20,000 people at the park each day, but also mentioned that they've capped ticket sales at 20,000 in total. That includes 4-day passes, 1-day passes and evenings-only passes. But since seniors and kids get in free and there are 2000 volunteers running the show, not to mention the musicians and their guests, it's really anyone's guess. The reason for capping ticket sales is that they've pretty much reached capacity for Gallagher Park and don't want to move.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't kind on Thursday and Friday (which had evening-only sessions anyway). 10C and rain are not pleasant, when you want to see a headliner like Blue Rodeo outdoors at midnight. I solved that by not going!

Saturday and Sunday were beautiful and warm, and full-day events. There were 7 smaller stages plus the main stage, so I definitely made each day a grand tour. There was a mix of single-artist concerts and stage-packed workshops.

I took in a concert with Justin Rutledge (excellent!) and a workshop including Stephen Fearing, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Kim Beggs. A little later I caught about half of a Blackie & the Rodeo Kings concert.

Blackie & The Rodeo Kings

I would have taken in more during the day, but I had to squeeze in a few interviews... with Blue Rodeo's Greg Keeler and Jim Cuddy, Justin Rutledge and festival organizer, Terry Wickham. And, I guess I should include a number of "people in the beer tent" interviews as well! ;)

Greg Keeler & Jim Cuddy

All of the evening entertainment happens on the main stage. Saturday night's guests included Seth Lakeman, Jim Byrnes & the Sojourners and Mary Margaret O'Hara among others. I was a long way from the stage most of the time, but managed to get up close to take a few shots of Jenn Grant, one of the performers who did mini-sets during the intermissions, while equipment was changed over.

Jenn Grant

On Sunday I started off the day with a workshop featuring Tom Wilson, Colin Linden, Buck 65 and Jackie Greene. What a mix that was, but they pulled it off nicely.

Then over to another workshop with an eclectic mix... Jim Byrnes & the Sojourners, 80-year old legend Marie Knight, the Campbell Brothers, Mary Margaret O'Hara and her sister Maureen. I can't say I'm a big gospel music fan, but it was pretty amazing to watch and the crowd really got into it. Considering it was one of the smaller stages, they must have had 12-15 people up there at all times (including the backing musicians).

Marie Knight with the Campbell Brothers and Jim Byrnes

Later in the afternoon I did more "people in the beer tent" interviews, then headed over to the Buck 65 concert. I'm not into rap much either, but this guy is really good. With a legal name of Buck 65, I guess you have to be to survive.

I left a bit early to catch the tale end of Blackie & the Rodeo Kings jamming with Jim Byrnes, Tim Williams and Ndidi Onukwulu. I cornered Tom Wilson afterwards for a short interview.

I guess "cornered" isn't quite the right word, since he came out and said "let's walk and talk". He had apparently misplaced his wife (comedienne Cathy Jones of This Hour Has 22 Minutes fame). So we walked and talked.

I reluctantly passed on the evening session at the Main Stage, even though it would have been good to see old-timer Buffy Sainte-Marie perform as the closing act of the festival around 11pm. I had a 6am flight the next morning, which meant getting up at 4am. The good news... you can get a nice frosty mug of beer at the airport in Calgary at 7am (my transfer point)! Now, that's civilized, compared to our parochial Ontario policies.

Overall, I was quite impressed and would go again. I guess my biggest gripe is that the Edmonton Folk Music Festival web site sucks big time. For a potential new visitor, it leaves the impression that the festival is totally lame. Only the evening schedules were posted until the first day was underway, and they never really did get a full programme up. Even the partial schedule wasn't printer-friendly, the ticket info was incomplete, and a proper map of the site should have been provided, but wasn't.

Fortunately, the reality -- once you were there -- was that the festival couldn't have been better organized. The $5 printed programme was extremely detailed (which is perhaps why the web site wasn't), and everything happened like clockwork, given the complexity of an event that big run entirely by volunteers.

Aside from what you see here, check out my photo gallery in the Pix section.