To many, the Calgary Folk Fest is the most wonderful time of the year – or so I’m told repeatedly throughout the four-day festival, which ran from July 28-25. And By day four, I agree. Really though, who doesn’t love live music and a treed pathway lined with food trucks and beer gardens?
Folk Fest draws a variable bounty of music enthusiasts: families with newborns tucked into their ergo’s, headphones protecting their baby ear drums; dreadlocked and rattailed hippies bop to the rhythm while the sun-hatted masses mark their territory with blue tarps and lightweight lawn chairs.
The festival is held on Calgary’s Prince’s Island Park, a 20-hectare urban green-space which, late last month, was completely submerged in flood water. Leftover mud is covered with fresh mulch and it’s earthy scent wafts into our nostrils.
On Thursday, American acts M. Ward and Alabama Shakes kick things off. Ward’s woozy voice and throw-back sound lulls the audience into a rhythmic sway, while the Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard’s no-holds-bar approach snaps people awake. Howard’s fevered enthusiasm is contagious; there’s a buzz in the air, and the crowd stays long past the band’s well-known and debatably overplayed “Hold On.”
Friday evening, Ontario’s Bahamas takes the stage. Between lead singer Afie Jurvanen’s exceptional guitar skills (he played for Feist, Howie Beck and Zeus before forming Bahamas) and charismatic chatter, the audience is his. He sings about heartbreak and second chances from last year’s album Barchords then throws in two covers: Outkast’s “Hey Ya” and Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight,” singing, “I say Calgary, you look wonderful tonight.” Jurvanen’s sheer talent and on-stage confidence no doubt won him many new followers.
Toronto’s Elliott BROOD fired up the crowd on Saturday night with their big rockabilly sound. Though lead singer Mark Sasso couldn’t see the the crowd through the thick plumes of dust created by enthusiastic foot-stomping, he encouraged the dance-party to continue, and sang a more-than-generous encore. BROOD sent the audience home in near frenzy with the loud and dirty “Write it all down” from their 2008 album, Mountain Meadows.
To end the weekend, Evening Hymns quiet acoustic sound and lush harmonies rocked festival goers into a lazy Sunday daze, and gently eased them into yet another slow summer workweek.
With belly’s too full of food truck goodness and locally brewed beer, tarps and chairs are folded and packed away. As the holidays come and go, so Calgarians woefully bid Folk Fest adiu, until next year.