We weren’t there at the beginning, but darn close. The Winnipet Folk Festival was in 1974 to celebrate Winnipeg’s centennial. We first attended in 1976. This is the fiftieth because of two years lost to COVID. We’ve been to 41 of the 50. In most of the years we were working abroad, we had time off to travel to the festival written into our contracts. We attended this year with “Long Service” backstage passes.
In a way that kind of feels like fraud. We were never official volunteers. We first attended on press passes from KAXE in Northern Minnesota. That third festival was almost the last. They were out of money. I and several other people convinced Mitch Podolak, the festival founder, that he should pass the bucket, he did, and it worked. Our cute little three year old (Brian) was one of the bucket passers. KAXE became a ticket outlet for the festival, and we sold lots of tickets. We booked Folk Fest artists to come across the border after the festival to perform at the station’s Jackpine Jamboree. And while not officially volunteers we pitched in backstage when needed. Once, during a windstorm, Brian, Kevin and I held on to a rope securing the tent over the mainstage until the wind subsided.
That first year KAXE was within weeks of running out of money. Seeing the community the festival created and watching how well the emergency appeal worked gave us the hope and the added energy to mount an appeal for the station. It worked. If it hadn’t been for the festival KAXE may have foundered.
When we worked in the Balkans the festival gave us a different type of hope. Slobodan Milosevic misused folk music as tool to divide people and to promote Serbian nationalism. At Winnipeg artists from different cultures jammed together, borrowing licks from each other and creating the rich mosaic of world music. We rededicated ourselves to fostering that process in the Balkans, to reclaim folk music as we worked with local radio stations, especially during attempts at reconciliation after the wars.
This year’s festival, while looking forward, and introducing us to new artists, also gave us a chance to reminisce. They had a gathering of the “Long Service” folks backstage, and we swapped folk fest tales. Of course, the story of passing the bucket and counting the thousands of dollars that rolled in was at the top of the tales. We spun yarns of years of terrible weather, but we also talked of transcendent moments on stage. I remembered Lorena McKennitt, singing in the wind, red hair blowing and every string of her herp vibrating in the gale, or Ladysmith Black Mumbazo singing “Amazing Grace” with the Wilmington Gospel Choir one Sunday morning at Shady Grove or Natalie MacMaster’s Cape Breton fiddle capturing the hearts of the festival on her first performance. We also recalled moments behind the scenes. Mine was bringing a hot coffee to Suzi one chilly night. Stan Rogers intercepted me and said, “Arguably the world’ greatest violinist is sitting over there freezing his ass off and you have a hot cup of coffee, what are you going to do about it?” Stan and I walked over to Stephen Grapelli. I handed him the coffee, stories followed. Poor Suzi never got her coffee.
I heard new (to me) artists this year who will make it onto my Raven Radio “Hometown Brew” playlist. Leya McCalla, Cristina Vane, Willi Carlisle, and Allison Russell all blew me away. Australia’s Cat Empire was better than ever. And I renewed acquaintance with many old friends through their performances, Cathy Fink, Fred Penner, Al Simmons and Peter Paul VanCamp. We did a lot of “catching up.” The 50th Hootenanny was a particular joy, seeing old friends from different Winnipeg groups re-form into new groups like Black Sea Station with Balkan/Klezmer music. Bubble man was back spreading joy and bubbles to folkies sitting in the grass on the main field.
This year’s festival was marked by high levels of smoke from forest fires in Northern Manitoba and one of the best on stage comments came from David Rawlings (playing with Gillian Welsh) when he remarked on the irony of a smoke machine generating a mist for the stage lights to play off of when there was so much smoke in the air creating a strange light for the sunset to play off of. Most of my pictures have a white sky and many look like they were shot through gauze.
Highlights for me included watching grandchildren Liam and Fiona enjoying the freedom of the festival. The festival’s positioning statement used to be “People and Music.” And while the music is important the lasting friendships formed over 50 festival years by Suzi and me and our boys who were “festival brats” (Kids who “grew up at the festival”) are priceless. I’ve gained far more from this festival than I have given.
Below is a gallery of pictures with comments.
