Of the many festivals that take place in Vancouver each year, there is no more salutary and restorative festival than the annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival, this year celebrating its 28th anniversary.
The 2005 Folk Festival lineup not only includes evening concerts from the likes of Iris DeMent, Leslie Feist (here’s a recent concert review) and Sarah Harmer (in The Tyee), but daytime site stage collaborative concerts, with such intriguing appellations as Reely Good Tunes, Harmony is Bliss, Expectations and the Blues, Grrrls With Guitars, and On My Way Home.
Update: In an article published in The Tyee, Vancouver Folk Music Festival artistic director Dugg Simpson discusses “music, community and social change”, the theme of this year’s Fest. And, for those who just can’t wait for the festivities to commence, The Tyee also offers this fetching pictorial. There’s also this pic of the evening stage, from the audience perspective.
In this summer with no summer (although the temperature outside is not too bad, a hot, sunny summer has been all but absent this year on Canada’s west coast), click here for the Jericho Beach webcam (Jericho Beach being the place where the Folk Fest is being held later this week).
Adult advance tickets for the three day festival are $125, or $40 for Friday evening, and $60 for the full day for each of Saturday and Sunday. Weekend student tickets are $75, while those 13 – 18 pay $65; weekend tickets for children 3 – 12 years of age are $15. Seniors’ weekend tickets are $25. In Vancouver, tickets are available at Zulu Records on West 4th Avenue, Highlife Records on Commercial Drive, Boomtown Import Record and Discs on Burrard Street (one block south of Davie), or at the Festival office located at 1113 – 207 West Hastings (at Cambie), and at the gate.

Oliver Schroer, Kelly Joe Phelps and other on workshop Stage 2

Well, here it is the first full day of the 27th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival, following a fabulous first, Friday evening series of concerts (here and here), with Janis Ian and Mercan Dede as particular standouts.
Coming up on the main stage tonight, B.C.’s own The Bills (formerly The Bill Hilly Band) and Bruce Cockburn, while this afternoon, it’ll be one workshop after another, on any one of the seven stages.
Well, back I go to the Festival to catch Ellen McIlwaine, Po’Girl, Utah Phillips, Martyn Joseph, Odetta, and so many more fine artists.

VanRamblings will be taking a well-deserved break (at least, we think so) from posting regular features, news of the world, and such, to attend the glorious, magnificent, awe-inspiring, musically transcendent, and just generally joyful and peaceful 27th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival.
Upon entering the grounds, adjacent to Jericho Beach (this is the view at sunset), we’ll locate a space in front of the main stage and await the arrival of the performers, including tonight: the Warsaw Village Band, Janis Ian, and renowned Québec cellist Jorane, among a host of others.
Posting will be sporadic on VanRamblings over the Folk Festival weekend, but will return with regular features on Monday. Enjoy your weekend!

Go Betty Go

Can’t figure out what to listen to this summer? Once again, the PopMatters’ music team presents a highly opinionated, overall quite superlative and even, at times, revelatory examination of 18 artists that, they suggest, absolutely demand your attention.
Ranging from the satirical, hip-hop sensibilities of 29-year-old rapper MC Chris (Windows Media Player required) to the avant-garde emo-rock of the San Francisco-based band, Evening, and the moody rock of The Velvet Teen you’re bound to discover at least some new music to your liking. And, the best part: almost all of the artists have made free mp3s available on their websites.
Meanwhile, the always reliable éminence grise of rock criticism, Robert Christgau, weighs in with another Consumer Guide column in this week’s Village Voice, reviewing the latest releases from Sonic Youth, Bobby Bare Jr., and Arto Lindsay, among a raft of other bands. Needless to say, Mr. Christgau loves the music of each of these artists.

VanRamblings has, this afternoon, downloaded (legal in Canada, don’tcha know?) 18-year-old Norwegian chanteuse Maria Mena’s début album, Another Phase, about to be re-released in North America with the title White Turns Blue. The album’s lyrics may relate to Mena’s junior high school experience, but to this listener the sentiments expressed in the lyrics address universal emotional issues. Mature beyond her tender years, VanRamblings has not been as impressed with a new artist since we first heard Fiona Apple.

And, finally, for this instalment, the strongest possible recommendation for the upcoming 27th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival (VanRamblings has placed a clickable advertisement for the Folk Fest at the top-right of all ‘pages’). Under the stewardship of longtime Folk Fest aficionada and political activist Frances Wasserlein, and artist cum Folk Festival artistic director Dugg Simpson, the annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival is a summer must. This year’s event promises to be a particular treat.
One of the premiére cultural events that takes place in Vancouver each summer, the Vancouver Folk Music Festival site transforms into an ideal universe of peace, love and understanding, where gays and lesbians stroll about unmolested holding hands with one another, where children run free in the safest of environments, where white cotton is the de rigeur fabric of the day, and where the music covers a broad spectrum of genres (because, after all, folk music is the music of the people, and is not limited, simply, to old-time folkies with acoustic guitars), wafting through the air from any one of the 7 daytime stages, and throughout the evening on the main stage.
In the coming days, VanRamblings will write more on the upcoming 27th annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival. In the meantime, if you haven’t purchased your ticket for this year’s event, you can do so online or by scrolling to the bottom of this page to find out where tickets are available.