Waking up the next morning at Marty’s place in Hamburg, NY – there’s worse things than regaining consciousness beneath the banner of Hell…
In the rHKR I’m generally first up, which leaves me plenty of time for uninterrupted exploration before band wrangling. And so I found this hairdryer…
I’m up, I’m up. After an easy, but long drive we joined Greg Klyma for dinner in his (next door to) home town up on the very northern edge of New York, where we also crashed with an old, old friend of his. I was socially awkward, but when it came around time to go to bed, I demonstrated what I’ve long held to be true : get me out on the road and I’ll actually SLEEP. At home I toss and turn and eventually get kicked out by my wife. Hotels can give me a lot of trouble too. I guess there’s just something about other people’s spaces…
The space here in Hamburg, NY is visually saturated, and a glowing yellow and an affection for, what I READ to be, 70s kitsch (?) sort of ties it all together. Last night, trying to make sense of it all while meeting our host with television news on in the background, I found it all entirely overwhelming. But this morning, with the sun low enough on the horizon so as to still be “dawning”, I find myself surrounded by plants and by Life and an environment both curated and chaotic that feels absolutely alive.
Seriously, Marty’s taste is kinda rad!
A couple of hours later, caffeinated and fed and as ready for the day as we can conceivably be, Canada lets us in sans incident, but our EZ-pass promptly quit working and then Heather got stung by a wasp that probably hitched a ride in her hair back at the coffeeshop. We pulled over under an overpass and hunted through the car till we found it perched above Rowan’s laptop. I flannel punched it and tossed it on the asphalt, finishing it off with my shoe.
I’ve never seen ANYONE ELSE with a Residents record! And in truth, actually I’ve never seen a “real” Residents album – solely bootlegs on cassette! Marty was apparently an old, old fan and one of the original fan club members. Wish I’d noticed THAT earlier cause I’d have clicked here to learn more…
Oh Canada, first blood is mine.
With that excitement out of the way, so far Canada seems pretty much like Ohio except everything’s metric. Pearl Jam’s on the radio, the sun is bright… off to LONDON BABY.
So far Canada is pretty much like Ohio except metric. Which is fine for distances and speeds, but it was definitely jarring with the first weather report. Everything else from the highway to the traffic feels just like home so far. I guess it was kind of silly for me to expect anything immediately different. SO different from crossing the border to Mexico, where the language and skin tones are immediately different. If I woke up from a nap and found myself on Queen Elizabeth Way, it’d take me a while for me to grasp I wasn’t in Kansas and / or the United States anymore.
Rowan’s still learning Illustrator, Heather’s still practicing archaic murder ballads, Kristen’s still driving, flipping through the same mix of pop, country and classic rock we’d get south of the border. I’m continuing to find it hard to focus, between lack of data and the presence of fatigue (I slept well, but not nearly enough) I just feel like I’ve got nothing to do right now.
We heard geese off and on all through the night. Good to actually SEE them! I’m not sure if these are Canadian geese off to become geese, or geese freshly minted Canadian – a short bit of research would no doubt tell me where the come from and whence they go, but I’m characteristically more interested in the journey than the destination.
It’ll get busy enough.
Meanwhile, had been thinking about associations with police. Rowan’s experiences are vastly different from my own, and my own are hugely different from Heather’s or Kristen’s. And ALL of us as suburbanites have very few real-world interactions (especially once I grew out of Rebellious Youth (TM)) with our associations MOSTLY being formed by media. I was thinking about the context of that – those of us that grew up with the police of the Dukes of Hazard vs the police of Law & Order. How police are portrayed on the news being MUCH less influential today than perhaps how they’re portrayed via social media and popular movies…
And how does that pertain to Canada? What’re we expecting? We were told getting in was easy… it’s getting BACK that’s hard…
Buffalo, NY. Our last American town for the weekend.Gah! Google maps knows! Interesting that distance was in miles and speed was in metric.Well,”smile for the camera BITCH” feels rather decidedly American, actually.We finally arrived at Folk Music Ontario, got checked in and scootled on down for the very first events and got greeted good and hard with traditional First Nation music. Over the course of the weekend we’d meet a LOT of First Nation people – the most frequent name was Cree – and there was a lot of recognition of that throughout the conference.Checked in and registered. Taking a beat checking out the view from our room.The valets are freakin’ READY!!!The CAMPSITE being set up for jammers over the course of the day. I’d end up frequently strolling back through here because it had a chill vibe and I got to meet people who weren’t on any of the “official” stages.Hotel artwork.
With the registration and the welcomes out of the way, we had days before we actually officially PLAYED – so in the meantime it was time to get down to the business of listening, getting inspired, meeting people, networking, and generally impressing people with our freakin’ charm and alien Americanocity in the hopes that then they’d come to our showcase and be impressed with the REST of the package : e.g. our noise.
Our first actual musical act that we settled in for was Red Fox. They had NOT been on my initial list, but we got pulled in when we heard the singer sound checking. Suite 200 turned out to be the loudest of the rooms, with a sound engineer trapped behind tons of thronging audiences that were often dancing wildly. It meant the bass was crazy up close, but it was definitely the PARTY stage right from the get-go with generally high-energy, big band performances. Red Fox was in turns powerful and haunting, and was an immediate reality check on the sheer talent of the Canadian scene. If THIS is what the whole weekend was kicking off with, I couldn’t WAIT to see what else was in store.
Red Fox.The first act I was seeing with INTENTION : Aerialists were a Celtic rock fusion animal with an amazing harp player. They held as one of Rowan’s favourites for the entire conference.We got to talk to them later about their setup : apparently they run everything into a Behringer X-AIR and have THEIR engineer run everything (allowing for IEMs, but these are wired – something I think would be impractical for us) with just two lines going out to the “house”. There was a lot of smart set up like this to learn about.Beau Wheeler was another artist I just sort of stumbled into. Paging through FMO’s website I’d created a list of about 40 artists I’d hoped to catch over the course of the conference and made myself an intense schedule that I fully expected to abandon time and time again. Between crowd-aversion, getting lost, distraction, “what’s THIS”ness, snackiness, “come see me” conversations and whatever else, I think I didn’t get around to 5 or 6 artists on my list, and ended up seeing another 10. Mischief managed. Beau Wheeler has an IMMENSE voice, almnost too much for little old Suite 100. They’re one Hell of a stomper as well. We got to chat a bit later in the conference and they’re definitely someone I hope we can cross paths with somewhere else on the continent.We knew Suzie Vinnick from Falcon Ridge and already knew she was amazing.Amoye – great uplifting music with a killer look and a killer band. Possibly in that order.I caught Oisin complaining there were too many bodhran players at the conference – which – I THINK was sarcasm because we never saw ANYONE else play one other than Rowan! In any case, his parents Steáfán & Saskia turned out to be a really great instrumental duo that already knew IMT, Common Ground on the Hill, and really Loved our set when we finally got to play. Oisin talked to me for about 60 seconds before inviting me to the “Neurodivergent Peer Group” which I wasn’t quite sure how to take. Locarno was incredible, but also a solid example of how they’d kind of overbooked Suite 200. Later I found out that a lot of their delays were caused by a couple of volunteers that didn’t show, leaving the sound engineer single-handed, but even WITH extra hands, the 10 minute changeovers with multiple 5 – 11 piece bands would’ve been murder. Fortunately, marimba simply doesn’t need to be miked in even relatively large rooms and they launched into a stunning set without too much delay.Steáfán & Saskia had brought what felt like a fair amount of HMT’s stock with them with bouzouki, guitar, fiddle, Uillean pipes and nyckelharpa on stage for a 15 minute set!Charm of Finches. Electronic synth sounds and chill, tight harmonies. I didn’t get to catch much of them, getting overwhelmed by Suite 100’s overcrowding, but heard great things from Heather and Rowan.Retreating back to our room after a wonderful first night.
Looks like a fantastic conference! We met Steáfán & Saskia at NERFA last year and they’re so incredibly talented and kind.