montreal to winnipeg to london. july 2009.

wednesday. we arrive ahead of the storm system.
the festival transportation crew believes we are travelling with only one guitar and brings a mini van for the guitar and our 4 bums.
whoops. we travel with 3 guitars, 1 bass, 1 cajon, 8 cymbals, 1 conga, 1 glockenspiel, 1 case of hand percussion, 1 case of guitar guitar effects & cables and electronic doohickeys, 1 sampler, 1 microphone and 4 suitcases. but the winnipeg folk festivals makes very few mistakes and we are all happily eating dinner at the hotel within the hour. it appears that green day is in the city. on my way down to the instrument lock-up with a full cart, their drummer, who seems to be quite enjoying his winnipeg visit, passes me in the lobby with a wild grin on his face and tells me to have safe travels.
 
the winnipeg folk festival., one of the crown jewels on any performer's summer touring schedule. this years line-up is ridiculous.
elvis costello. iron & wine. neko case. martha wainright. king sunny ade and his african beats. oumu sangare. burning spear. loreena mckennitt. xavier rudd. there's 10,000 campers on site and many thousand more each day for the performances.

i wake up on thursday morning to a symphony of thunder. seems the storm has arrived. i feel relief because most likely the system will blow itself out by the late afternoon. which it does. our first performance is a 40 minute mainstage set at 7pm. this is not the norm for first timers like ourselves. chris frayer (the artistic director) likes what we do and likes to give the good people of winnipeg a dose of something new every year. thank you chris. the crowd is warm and appreciative. 40 minutes flies by in 7 seconds. of course it does.

Backstage now - well actually to the side of the stage - feasting on bloody delicious bbq'd bison with elliot and with my favorite big rock traditional ale to wash it down while being entertained by the highly entertaining punch brothers who are currently doing their best to lay down some killer bluegrass while dodging monumental gusts of wind and rain. yes that's correct. good mother nature is back. immediately after our set, a prairie storm rolled in. fast. and what do these fine souls of the prairie do? smile. what else can you do? one of king sunny's dancers sits down besides us and, as tremendous flashes of forked lightning stab the sky, gives us the history of joujou and afrobeat music. with major points for style. she even challenges me to a drinking contest which she then pulls out of because our canadian beer is too weak for her. apparently nothing compares with her nigerian stout.

and then the rainbows. the sky behind us suddenly clears and instead of the wall of shifting grey organic forms we now have 2 perfectly brilliant rainbows arching gracefully over the stage. everyone is freaking out. needless to say, the crowd is now in a fever and the boys onstage can't play a bad note. awesome.

we stay to see king sunny's set - incredible - our new friend worked her booty bigtime -  and head back to hotel. it's dark so we can't really see who we are riding with or where we are going. now the woman in front of us turns around and it's the dancer. and she's had a few. for the next 45 minutes elliot and i are riddled with her bizarre analogies using machete beheadings to describe sexual promiscuity and why her husband in nigeria calls her 18 times a day while she's on tour. we step out of the van a bit dizzy.

in the lounge i rejoin silvana and toby and we are joined by the cuban rockstar himself alex cuba. alex moved to bc many years ago and now calls smithers home. from cuba to smithers. boggles the mind. pacifika has been a fan of alex for awhile now and it's really nice to hang. we talk into the wee hours about music and life and promise to stay in touch.

friday. day two. 10 am workshop jam with Pacific Curls - 3 fantastic musicians from New Zealand. can't believe all the people who show up for the early morning session! next is a global mishmash jam with musicians from trinidad and cuba (mr. alex) and mali. slammin. each song evolves into this epic groove. off to the festival music store for a signing session. catch uomu sangare on the mainstage. she is a godess. off to the food tent for dinner. the head chef has all of us (about a thousand volunteers and musicians) sing a verse of amazing grace to bless the meal. wow. hang with good friends t nile and richard brown. share some war stories. head to mainstage to watch iron and wine. never seen mr sam beam play before. worth the hype. one dude. one guitar. killer songs. mesmorized crowd. the mosquitoes appear to be quite taken as well and swarm around him the whole time. i don't even think he notices.

sat. pack up for london. we head into the town for some breakfast. i see this older dude in front of me wearing lime green popeye pants. he goes into the cafe we are going into. i tell the boys "just look at him. that's don cherry."  nobody has a camera so i don't bother mr. coach's corner. thought he would be bigger. i could take him. yeah i know he's 80. that's why i could take him. head to winnipeg airport. sitting in the gate i tell the boys "just look at him. that's scotty bowman." nobody still has no camera so i don't bother mr. i have more stanley cup rings than i have digits. sitting on the plane trying to get this freakin pc to work. elliot has his mac on his lap. scotty bowman is standing beside our seats waiting to get by. he looks down at us and says" hey look. there's a mac and a pc. which one is working boys? he looks at my scowl and asks "using vista huh?" i'd like to tell him that i have 2 macs at home in the studio and we were given this free pc laptop as part of a dell promotion at bumbershoot last summer and it crashes every second day but he's scotty bowman so i just laugh.

ok, this blog is getting way to long so i'll conclude by saying london sunfest is the shit. alfredo the main dude has put together a first class free admission world music festival. in london ontario. it's truly amazing seeing pretty much every ethnicity on the planet partying in one city park. silvana and myself weren't so pleased with the size of the plane that shuttled us back and forth from toronto to london and the way a little turbulance felt like king king was swattiing the aircraft... but sunfest was beautiful.

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