Ottawa Folk Festival -- Thursday night

The new version of the Ottawa Folk Festival – under Bluesfest management – had what appeared to be a very successful kick-off last night.

Arriving at the new site at Hog`s Back Park for the first time, I was very impressed with the new digs. It`s a lovely, lushly green location for the festival with the stage areas all within a two-minute walk of each other. The food and artisan vendors are on park grass, a big improvement over the concrete they occupied at the old Britannia Park site and there’s a much bigger variety of food than in past years.

Although the festival is under new management, it was very nice to see, early in the evening, well-deserved recognition paid to 18 people who either founded the Ottawa Folk Festival or were highly involved over many years in its organization. The 18 were the first inductees into the newly-created Festival Builders Hall of Fame. Congratulations to AL Chopper MacKinnon, Alan Marjerrison, Arthur McGregor, Barry Pilon, Carol Silcoff, Chris White, Dean Verger, Gene Swimmer, Joyce MacPhee, Karen Flanagan McCarthy, Max Wallace, Pam Marjerrison, Peter Zanette, Rachel Hauraney, Roberta Huebener, Rod McDowell, Sheila Ross, and Suzanne Lessard-Wynes on the well-deserved honour.

And, congratulations again, to Gene Swimmer, the Ottawa Folk Festival’s volunteer executive director for many years, who also received the Helen Verger Award, recognizing his many years of work on behalf of the folk festival.

With three stages going almost simultaneously, choices had to be made. Early in the evening, I didn’t really make a choice and wandered from stage to stage catching a couple songs each from local artists Megan Jerome, John Allaire and Gerry Wall.

I also caught a few songs by American singer-songwriter Peter Himmelman. I’d been looking forward to hearing him but he didn’t really capture my attention so I went to hear the last few songs by Dry River Caravan, a local Ottawa band that plays music blending klezmer, Balkan, bluegrass and other musics. It was my first time hearing them and I was quite impressed. I’m looking forward to hearing more of them.

The best set I saw last night – indeed, the only one that I watched from beginning through encore – was Justin Townes Earle. The son of Steve Earle (who plays the festival tonight), he is one of the finest young singer-songwriters around today (click here for my review of his latest album). Playing guitar, and accompanied by the superb bassist Bryn Davies and the equally superb fiddler Amanda Shires, Earle engaged the audience with his down-home demeanor and well-crafted songs steeped in folk, blues, country and western and swing traditions.

After Earle’s set, I dashed over to another stage to catch the last half-hour of the Punch Brothers set. The Punch Brothers are a kind of post-bluegrass band led by mandolin virtuoso Chris Thile – who’s a lot taller now than the first time I saw him play when he was a 13- or 14-year-old mandolin prodigy, circa 1994 or ’95. The instrumental skills of all five guys in the Punch Brothers are awesome and they’re good singers too. But, I wasn’t crazy about their material. Other than an astonishing instrumental (whose title I didn’t catch) and a great version of Robbie Robertson’s “Ophelia,” the other four songs didn't really draw me in.

My best bets for tonight are Vance Gilbert and Steve Earle – who, of course, are playing at the same time on different stages.

Workshop alert: For me, the real heart of a folk festival are the daytime workshops. The Ottawa Folk Festival workshops -- curated by the Ottawa Folk Festival -- are on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I’ll be taking part in one each day. I'm doing an on-stage interview with Colin Hay on Saturday, 4:00-4:45 pm, on the Heron Stage; and hosting the "Southern Folk" workshop on Sunday, 3:00-3:45 pm, with Lynne Hanson, Hayes Carll and Kelly Willis, on the Slackwater Stage.

--Mike Regenstreif

Ottawa Folk Festival line-up announced

The line-up for the first OttawaFolk Festival put together by Bluesfest director Mark Monahan has been announced. Looking at the schedule, which stretches across four days from Thursday, August 25 to Sunday, August 28, it kind of looks more like a Bluesfest schedule than a traditional folk festival with artists booked to do lengthy concert sets on multiple stages Thursday and Friday evenings and all day and evening on Saturday and Sunday.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m of the opinion that folk festival workshops are the heart and soul of the folk festival experience. The Ottawa Folk Festival workshops are being curated by Arthur McGregor of the Ottawa Folk Festival and will be announced in the coming weeks. The schedule grid shows two workshop stages to be filled in. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the workshop schedule falls into place.

The full list of artists and the concert schedule can be found on the Ottawa Folk Festival website, but some of the artists I’m most looking forward to seeing include the Levon Helm Band (I’ll be posting a review of Levon’s great new live album, Ramble at the Ryman, in the next week or so); Hayes Carll, a very fine singer-songwriter from Texas; Justin Townes Earle, the son of Steve Earle (who will also be at the festival), who has released three excellent albums over the past few years (my review of his latest, Harlem River Blues, is at this link); and Vance Gilbert, a terrific singer and very sophisticated songwriter.

Local favourites on the schedule include Lynn Miles (my review of Lynn’s latest, Fall for Beauty, is at this link) and Lynne Hanson.

Among the artists I’ve never seen before that I want to see are the David Wax Musuem, a kind of folk-rock-Mexican-roots band from Boston; Peter Himmelman, an interesting songwriter; and Jayme Stone, an explorer of the five-string banjo.

I’ve heard good things about the new festival site at Hog’s Back Park so I’m looking forward to hearing some good music there.

I do have some reservations about the line-up. There aren’t many artists on the list who play much traditional music, or even traditionally-oriented music. There should always be lots of room for real folk music at a folk festival.

--Mike Regenstreif

Justin Townes Earle -- Harlem River Blues

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE
Harlem River Blues
Bloodshot Records
justintownesearle.com

Justin Townes Earle is Steve Earle’s son and his middle name honours Townes Van Zandt. In the course of three albums, now, he’s more than lived up to the Earle and Townes names as a promising singer-songwriter well-versed in folk, honky tonk and rockabilly styles. His first album, 2008’s The Good Life was a formidable debut and his second, last year’s Midnight at the Movies, was even better. Harlem River Blues, his third in three years, cements his reputation as one of today’s finest young artists.

After living most of his young life in Nashville, Earle moved to New York City and many of the songs on Harlem River Blues, beginning with the title track that opens the CD, seem inspired by the city. In “Harlem River Blues,” Earle’s first-person character is on his way to drown himself in the Harlem River. It’s a surprisingly manic song for such a depressive subject. Other NYC-referenced songs include “One More Night in Brooklyn,” a love song with an R&B groove, and “Workin’ for the MTA,” an infectious modern-day folksong about working in train tunnels – in this case the tunnels of the New York City subway system.

“Wanderin’,” with its familiar themes of footloose travelling is another modern-day folksong. The spirit of Woody Guthrie – who spent some of his most productive years in New York City – can be felt in “Workin’ for the MTA” and “Wanderin’.”

Along with New York City, there also seems to be some pretty obvious Memphis influences on this record. “Move Over Mama” is a rockabilly tune driven by a slap-happy bassist that sounds like it could have been recorded at Sun Records in 1958, and “Christchurch Woman” sounds like it could have been recorded in a soul session a decade later. And I’ve already mentioned the R&B groove on “One More Night in Brooklyn.”

There is so much promise in this young artist. Unfortunately, it seems that he’s also got Steve’s and Townes’ predilections for self-destructive behaviour. He recently entered rehab to deal with addiction issues – here’s hoping that, like his dad, he’s successful in getting control of his demons.

--Mike Regenstreif

Sing Out Magazine! Summer 2009

My copy of the Summer 2009 issue of Sing Out! Magazine arrived in today’s mail. The cover story is on Feufollet.

As usual, this issue of Sing Out! has a bunch of my CD reviews including:

Bruce Cockburn- Slice O Life: Live Solo (True North/Rounder)
Debra Cowan- Fond Desire Farewell (Falling Mountain)
Guy Davis- Sweetheart Like You (Red House)
Ray Doyle- The Emigrant Trail: A Journey West (Emigrant Trail)
Justin Townes Earle- Midnight at the Movies (Bloodshot)
Flatlanders- Hills and Valleys (New West)
Good Lovelies- Good Lovelies (Good Lovelies)
Eddie Holstein- Eddie Holstein (Eddie Holstien)
John Lee Hooker- 50 Years: John Lee Hooker Anthology (Shout! Factory)
Eilen Jewell- Sea of Tears (Signature Sounds)
Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell- One to the Heart, One to the Head (Frontera/Scarlet Letter)
Harvey Reid- Of Wind and Water (Woodpecker)
Saffire-The Uppity Blues Women- Havin’ the Last Word (Alligator)
Sometymes Why- Your Heart is a Glorious Machine (Signature Sounds)
Various Artists- Red House 25: A Silver Anniversary Retrospective (Red House)
Various Artists- Singing Through the Hard Times: A Tribute to Utah Phillips (Righteous Babe)
William Elliott Whitmore- Animals in the Dark (Anti-)
Jesse Winchester- Love Filling Station (Appleseed)

--Mike Regenstreif