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Edmonton Folk Festival:
Where Music is the Ultimate Connection
Story & Photos by Tony Tedeschi
As someone who writes and performs music, I am, of course, also an avid fan – of many genres. Live performances are very high on my activities list and if you are as fanatical about that sort of thing as I am, Canada is the place to go each summer. For months, festivals run from one side of the country to the other. I've attended music festivals in Québec City, Fredericton, three different festivals in Montréal and last summer, the Edmonton Folk Festival. One of the great advantages of attending these outdoor festivals is the interaction element. As opposed to concerts where you sit in a seat and are separated from the performers by a non-negotiable distance, at outdoor festivals you get to socialize with other fans, even bump into stars and/or their entourages. And, you sometimes have experiences that turn the event into something truly memorable.
Meeting Andrea England was one of those connection things. We'd struck up a conversation in the boarding lounge of the Air Canada flight from Toronto to Edmonton, Alberta, where I was headed to cover the annual mid-summer folk festival. She was meeting her publicist, who wanted her to demo her songs and network with members of entourages for acts like Norah Jones, Bruce Cockburn, Nanci Griffith, among a cast of dozens, representative of the best in roots music from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Africa, even Cuba. Andrea's new Gibson J-45, an acoustic guitar par excellence, was taking its first trip in the belly of the air beast. As a man who has never met a guitar he didn't like or a singer-songwriter who wasn't worth a listen, I was sure Andrea and I would have a lot to talk about on the 3 ½-hour flight to western Canada. While the journey for Andrea was more fraught with hope than anchored in certainty, she was no un-credentialed artist. One of her songs, "Lemonade," had won honorable mention in the Pop Category of the previous year's John Lennon Songwriting Contest, a competition that draws thousands of entries. By the end of the flight, we'd discussed everything from cosmology to Kant, exotic travel to enlightenment poets; I'd had her press kit and new CD in hand and was anxious to hear her music. As I said it was one of those connection things and I knew the music would add the appropriate element of emphasis.
In 2004, the Edmonton Folk Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary. It is set in Gallagher Park, in the grassy ravine of the North Saskatchewan River that cuts through the city. There is a main stage plus seven satellite stages with their backs to the river. Audiences fill the hillsides sloping up from the stages, some so steep you have to dig in to keep from sliding down toward the stage.
On Saturday mid-day, I'd been directed by local contacts to Stage 2 for the "workshop" that included a quartet of acts really resonating with the crowd: Boston-based Melissa Ferrick, whose music and delivery hold back nothing; Stephen Fearing, a wonderfully lyrical singer-songwriter-guitarist; The Brothers Cosmoline, from Toronto, who did a version of Johnny Cash's "Big River" that took me way, way back; Texas-based Tom Russell, who wrote the cock-fighting classic, "Gallo Del Cielo." Earlier, my new friend, Andrea, and I had reconnected by cell phone and we arranged a spot to meet. She escorted me to the back stage area and introduced me to her publicist, Richard Flohil, British-born, Toronto-based, his flowing white locks reminiscent of another era – one that did me and clearly did Richard, too. "You're going to do something for that woman," I said with conviction, when she wondered off a bit. "Oh, yes," he said, his accent still markedly British. "I may even make some money with her." So, there it was again, an example of that inexplicable sense of satisfaction which comes with having participated in something good – a guy doing his thing for the joy of it. Richard's pale eyes lit into one of those smiles that cannot be counterfeited. As I wandered about the grounds with Andrea, we noticed a tent where they were playing selections from CDs of artists who were showcased at the festival. "Come on," she motioned toward the tent, then asked one of the attendants if we could play her CD. Of course, they agreed. Among the wonderful tracks she played for me was "Lemonade," the superlative piece that so impressed the judges of the songwriting contest. Later, Richard, whom I had begun to feel knew everyone, introduced me to Mary Gauthier as a trio of near-anorexic women with Crayola-colored hairdos strode by on tall, tall stilts. Mary excused herself to get ready for her gig on one of the satellite stages. Richard was wearing that smile again. I nodded toward Mary. "Later," he said.
Anyone who has any kind of desire to share his or her music will find him- or herself sucked into the energy core of the Edmonton Festival. It's a function of the musical genre, this roots music that seems so inextricably wedded to both urban sidewalks and rural roads of gravel. The performers walk among you here, creatively and literally: Mary Gauthier in her stiletto-pointed boots, Eric Bibb in his plantation hat, members of soul-singer Solomon Burke's contingent in their red tuxes, even Norah Jones in a baseball cap. There is an intense sense of connection that scales that wall between performer and audience which seems endemic to other musical forms.
These people sing your songs, in your language. Even when the dialect ostensibly is foreign, the thematic venues unfamiliar, they are somehow yours, having become yours in the dark recesses of long-dissipated formative processes, and are now articulated by these gifted artists of the proverbial road, which somehow now runs by your front door. "Have you seen Mary ‘Go-Shay' yet?" Richard asked. "Never heard of her, until you just introduced us," I replied. "Man, are you in for a treat," he countered as he motioned the three of us toward her venue. We got a spot just to the left of the stage. Mary played with Gurf Morlix, a guitarist with a huge contribution to Lucinda Williams's CD, "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road." Her set was perhaps the most dramatic example of the ability to connect that I have ever experienced. You are with her battling addiction, over-nighting in a cheesy motel, coughing among the burning cane fields of the Delta. To hear her take on Christmas among the homeless is to stop dead in your tracks alongside all those poor souls sleeping below a highway overpass or on a city sidewalk grate, all those souls you've turned away from as you raced along your far-more-important course through life. "Who," I asked myself as I recalled my own calloused indifference, "who the hell am I?" The woman is a poetic genius. The audience leapt to its collective feet as she and Morlix wound down the final chords of her final number. It was an audience in a trance; a set nothing short of brilliant. And the woman on the stage was the embodiment of humility, as she bowed low and smiled. When she signed my CD, "love," I told her the only appropriate comment for her performance was, "thank you." She seemed overwhelmed that I was so moved. Like I say, someone truly special. After the Gauthier concert, I drifted to the backstage area, sharing comments with sidemen and women for Dar Williams, Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder, Solomon Burke, then Richard Julien, the singer/songwriter/guitarist who is credited with having convinced Norah Jones to quit her Texas digs for a shot at New York. Eight Grammies later, any one who has paid any attention to the music scene over the past year knows where that went. I drifted around to the side of the stage and stared out at the audience of thousands on blankets, portable chairs, countless blue tarpaulins. The sun was finally sinking toward a set at around 9:30. The fabulous, journeyman blues artist, Taj Mahal and his band were pumping out their sound as I climbed the hill and found a small patch of dried grass about halfway up. The tallest buildings of downtown Edmonton lit the skyline across the North Saskatchewan River. From this distance, my hotel, the Fairmont Macdonald, was a dramatic presence even among the backdrop of taller, modern skyscrapers. With the fall of the sun at the end of one of those incredibly blue days, dark clouds were gathering over the prairie, symptomatic of what can happen when the dry, dry heat of the day begins to dissipate in the cool of evening. A line of children paraded by with colorful paper lanterns in the shapes of pyramids, stars, the earth, a guitar . . . a line of color against the blue-gray sky. Pape and Cheikh from Senegal played stage left, as a crew set up the stage for the Norah Jones Band, which was headlining the show. A bolt of lightning zigzagged to earth in the distance. As the moments passed, the lightning extended its reach across great stretches of the sky. The night air was getting noticeably, ominously cooler. I felt hapless, watching the approach, an incipient attack, a ringside seat to my own destruction, on a hillside, directly in the path of whatever the night sky had in store. Someone in the crowd that surrounded me is smoking a joint. For the first time in 40 years, I felt like I could use one. But I, like much crowd, had come for this concert, so I let the sky play accompaniment.
"I'm sure many of you have bought the CD," the emcee said announcing Norah Jones, "among the 16 million worldwide, who have bought it." He was right; I had. But I did before she sold her first million. I saw her at the Montreal Jazz Festival a year before. Her band was a bit unpolished, but a wonderful show nonetheless. The audience of jazz aficionados in Montreal, who could have been unforgiving for someone whose music is . . . well, genre-less, brought her back for three encores, until she finally, admitted, in a voice almost childlike, "I'm out of songs."
"So this is the 24th year of the Edmonton Folk Festival," the somewhat unlikely diva said, after taking the stage. "I'm 24." But she stilled seemed to be without pretense and thereby, she still had me. Her band, this time, was the embodiment of polish, with her almost frail voice providing a counterpoint that created a truly unique sound. The New York critics chewed up her last concert there as more of the same. Perhaps, but it is her unique "same." And I, for one, have had nowhere near my fill. Now she was bathed in blue light, way down at the base of the hill, and I felt like I was watching her from another country, but I had a ringside seat before a big TV screen. All the visual elements were combining to create a near hypnotic effect: the lovely lady in the blue light, the sky flashing with the approaching storm. Richard Julien came out to play with the band and sing a duet with Norah Jones. A favor returned, but it was clear that the man has a lot to offer in his own right. I was exhausted from the remnants of jet lag and a day on my feet with a heavy camera-laden backpack. I descended the hill and headed for the exit. The first drops were beginning to fall as soul singer Solomon Burke and his band began their curtain-closing set. I lucked out with a cab a few blocks from the exit, as the music faded behind me. It was 11:30, a half hour left before the bar at the Macdonald closed. I was really in the mood for martini. Unusual, this late. This was more a cognac or single malt neat time of night. But a martini was what I was craving and Kris Moore fixed a fine one. I got into a conversation about the finer points of fine spirits with Kris and two of the waitstaff: Jeremy and Carmen. A friendly gentleman, a couple of seats over joined in, bought me a second martini, one more than I'd intended. He introduced himself as Bill McAllister, the sous chef at the hotel. Bill was one of those people that were born to the hospitality industry, because he never forgets the industry's first name. As we celebrated last call – and that good conversation that when it happens this way, under these circumstances, seems to be what bards are about – Bill invited me to enjoy dinner at the hotel's Harvest Room, the next evening. He said he'd make the reservation. Late morning on Sunday, I headed for the festival grounds to catch the acts at the "Open Stage," where a disparate collection of performers sign up and get to play before an audience. The lineup was predictably diverse: a middle-aged woman, who had been singing and playing guitar in local pubs for years; two young men on guitar; a singer/songwriter/guitarist from British Columbia; the Hotte Family, a bluegrass band. All were worth a listen, but the Hottes were especially memorable: father on standup bass, mother on guitar and vocals, daughter on mandolin and vocals, son playing a killer banjo. Having only heard the wisps of the opening number of the Solomon Burke concert as headed back to the hotel the night before, I was determined not to miss his noontime gig entitled: "The Spirit Sings." Did it ever! Preceded on stage by his band, then his blind organist being led out but nonetheless singing a string of hallelujahs that had the whole hillside clapping and swaying. It was entrancing; I looked up half expecting to see some kind of sign from heaven. When Burke emerged in his crimson robes and sat on his royal purple throne, things got . . . well, even more interesting. "You are the church, today," he intoned. "Give yourself a hand, church." Then we proceeded to have one of those Elmer Gantry-esque prayer meetings set to music, wherein Burke asked God to heal cancer, assorted other ailments, financial woes, social woes, and on and on. A significant number of the audience seemed entranced. Actually, it was almost impossible not to be taken in, to some degree. I was downright amazed when he married a couple on stage. "By the power vested in me," etc., etc. He is a bishop of the House of God for All People. Then he blessed all the babies and "those who need special miracles," to the strains for "When the Saints Go Marching In." "Bless you, your hearts, your homes, your automobiles, your jobs, your schools . . ." It was mesmerizing. I joined the crowd streaming away toward the heart of the festival grounds. Exuent my first prayer meeting.
After reconnecting with Andrea, I called Bill McAllister at the hotel and asked if I could have her join me for the dinner. I insisted upon picking up the tab, but he would have none of that. So we grabbed a cab to the hotel during a lull in the activities at the festival and enjoyed a deliciously prepared meal with buttery Alberta beef as its centerpiece. As we exited the restaurant, Andrea spotted a piano in an alcove at the far end of the hall. She had told me that piano was really her instrument. "Would you mind?" she asked, already heading in the direction of the piano. "Are you kidding," I replied. "Let's go." Now the songs really resonated. There's something about a live performance, even more dramatic when it is for you alone. I was absorbed in that shower of sound that only a piano can produce and the lovely timbre of her voice. At the end of this impromptu set, a hotel guest poked his head around the corner of the alcove to say how much he had enjoyed the beautiful music. It was a wonderfully serendipitous, third-party endorsement of Andrea's artistry, directly supporting what I had been telling her, at a moment when she needed to know that my comments were not simply a matter of a new friend saying nice things. Andrea's suggestion that we jam together became, ultimately, a victim of logistics and scheduling, but she insists we will get to do that sooner rather than later and that is an opportunity I simply will not allow to pass unfulfilled. While unique in that way that all individual experiences are, this one with Andrea was emblematic of one of any number of such connections I've had at music festivals. When you decide to go to one of these, and you decide to really get into it, magic happens. It's all about connections and music is the catalyst. If you'd like more information, and some samples of the music of Andrea England and/or Mary Gauthier, connect to: http://www.andreaengland.com, http://marygauthier.com
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