Vancouver Folk Fest 2011

Yesterday I had a good 12-hour long day at the 34th Annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival. While it's been a tradition of my dad's for a long time, this is my first one (that I remember). Here's the run-down:

The Players

Name: Adrian
Age: 56
Folk Fest Experience: Veteran. Has a collection of Folk Fest t-shirts that would put any folk fan to shame.
Special Skills/Knowledge: Long time participant of the Birkenstock 500 (I'd never heard of this name until this year. It also happens to be about the funniest thing I've heard in a long time.) Expert tarp-handler/water-proofer. Music knowledge/experience is off the chart. Also good at smuggling in alcohol in a coffee cup, optimizing blanket/tarp space, making the most out of a Folk Fest day pass.




Name: Hilary
Age: 22
Folk Fest Experience: Sophomore. Heatstroke at her first real festival last year did nothing to dampen her folk-fest loving spirit.
Special Skills/Knowledge: Poor knowledge of "dressing for the weather," but looks good nonetheless. Excellent at planning a schedule around all 7 stages that fits in pretty much everything, and more. Dancing queen. Her true love is all things folk, although she admits to cheating on it with Top 40 hits.

Name: Zoe
Age: 19
Folk Fest Experience: Newbie. Although she attended several as a baby, 2011 was her first "real" Folk Fest, and she couldn't be more pleased about it.
Special Skills/Knowledge: Sick rain boots, which make her invincible to all things muddy/wet. Has a camera, and knows how to keep it dry. Open-minded to all kinds of music, and super stoked to finally attend the Folk Fest. Excellent at ignoring the rain when, in fact, it is raining very very hard.








The Venues

The great/awful (and I mean "awful" in the nicest way, in that there are so many choices) about the Folk Fest's location at Jericho is that there are 7 different stages, plus the main one. THAT'S EIGHT STAGES. This allows for a buttload of variety and good music, all day long. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, you can't be everywhere at once, and there will always be something you are missing. Like my dad said, "I used to stress about that. But then I realized that it's impossible to see everything, and I just went with it" (or something like that). The great thing about this setup is that you also accidentally stumble upon different acts and end up really really liking them (cough cough- Joy Kill Sorrow- coughhh). Here are a few pictures of a few different stages. The picture on the right is in front of the main stage, the sacred spots that early birds/keeners (such as my dad and cousins) arrive hours before opening (7:30- now that's dedication!) for, just so they can run over RIGHT at 9 to set up their blankets/tarps. People at the Folk Fest are very nice people, and these temporary land claims are very well respected. You can leave your stuff there all day, and nobody will touch it. You earned that spot dammit, and you deserve it. The two photos to the left are stages 5 and 4. All the stages but the main stage looked pretty much like these ones. There's lots of space in front to watch, and all the stages were spaced out enough so that there was no worry about drowning out another stage. We spent all day wandering between different stages, and ending up spending time at almost all of them. While we had some schedule, some of the day was spend following our ears- and it turned out great!

The Weather
Okay... so it was wet. Oh so wet. But I'll give it to Vancouverites... they are damn good at preparing for the rain.

Tent city!

The rain doesn't even faze the fans.

Spot the Victoria girl. (Hint: she's wearing
shorts, longs socks, and canvas shoes.)

 

Good footwear vs BAD CHOICES

The music!
Obviously, the main thing about the Folk Fest is, well, the music.... duh. Seeing as we were there for a good 12 hours, we saw a lot of music. A LOT of it. I won't go into detail about all the great bands we saw, but here are a few highlights:


Joy Kills Sorrow
This was the first band that my sister and I saw. We walked by their stage and liked what we heard. We enjoyed it so much, in fact, that we ended up buying their CD (and got it signed, wee-ohh!) and seeing them again later in the evening. Not only are their instrumentals awesome, but their lead singer's voice is stupidly good. Like, words-can't-even-explain, how-does-one-person-that-small-even-fit-that-much-talent-into-their-body good. Check out one of their songs here.

  


Joel Plaskett
Apparently this guy is a kind of famous Canadian musician. And I can see why. I seriously enjoyed this guys set. Check out one of his songs here.

The Fugitives
This band combines spoken-word, hipster instruments, and catchy tunes into a kind of sweet type of music. We caught them twice and, while they give off a bit of an annoying Vancouver-hipster vibe, I quite enjoyed their performances.

  
Graveyard Train
Sometime in the very near future, you and everything you ever love or will love will disappear.

Cheery stuff they sang about, right? This Australian band was a little dark, but fun to watch and listen to.

Dry Bones

I just like this picture.

These guys played with Graveyard Train and, while more cheery, were equally fun to watch and listen. They got the whole crowd on their feet and dancing in the rain, and during their final song, the sun even made a brief appearance! We had prime seats to this one, which was nice. Also, the bald guy is apparently the son of a famous Canadian singer, and was really interesting to watch on stage. He was very, very into it.


Pokey LaFarge & the South City Three
These guys were super Misssissippi. And their main name is POKEY LAFARGE. And, THEY HAVE A WASHBOARD. Other than that, they were actually pretty good, although very country.

Roseanne Cash
Best known for being Johnny Cash's daughter, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed her hour long set on the main stage. She's actually really, really good.








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