Kaia Katar’s song “Strange Medicine” was affecting in a way that almost nothing else was over the course of the conference. Though I had a LOT of feelings (positive) about how broad the musical, racial, ethnic, genre and … almost EVERYTHING’S spectrum was, most of the politics on display tended to be a little saccharine. I thought Kaia’s reflections in her music were stunningly REAL and it was a nice counterpoint to a lot of the conference which was FUN, but not affecting… if that makes sense?
My Son The Hurricane is already a big name and actually had JUST come through DC – it was ballsy to start their set with Slayer’s “Raining Blood” but once they got going and I understood better who and what they were (a horn-based mostly-cover band) it made sense (as Raining Blood’s kind of a renegade marching band staple). MStH knew their shit though, and came across as one of the most professional and polished acts, complete with crates to stand on, precise pre-mixed instrument mics, and coordinated dance moves.
I’m still somewhat in the throes of wonder from this weekend. The Folk Music Ontario conference was magnificent, productive, exhausting and inspirational in a way that I’d in turns not expected, hoped, ABSOLUTELY expected and couldn’t believe. And I learned a LOT. The big stages, the little stages, the jammed hallways, the scattered business cards and late-night party atmosphere. The 2am vulnerability and the all day “on”, FMO delivered.
Magnificent : I know that in the vast scheme of things I have NOT actually been to a ton of conferences. I’ve been to “real” industry conferences and I’ve peripherally been involved in sci fi cons. I’ve heard tales of many and I’ve been to the NAMM conference. In a perfect, perfect world I’d Love to see a folk industry conference with aspects of all of the above : with cosplay, where at least one night there’s a big party and you come dressed as a favourite musician. With a REALLY incredible Exhibit Hall with artists and labels and tech from Fishman and LR Baggs and boutique builders and cigarbox guitars. Useful panel discussions and peer groups and meet and greets and one-on-ones. I’ve never seen a conference that had it all, but what FMO did right was have 6 really fantastic stages that were all a little bit different – and none of them felt like afterthoughts. At first glance you had a concept of “hierarchy” that kept shifting over the course of the 4 days we were there. At first the swiftly swapping Ballroom stages seemed like they must be the “main” stages because of location and the size of the room. But in the evening 100, 200, 300 and the Windsor Club took over and had a sense of energy that the Ballroom stages couldn’t hope to match, both because of the hour and because of the COMPRESSION of these smaller rooms.
Shanna in a Dress (Nashville TN) isn’t someone I actually know THAT well, but I’ve run sound for a couple of her shows and run across her at plenty a couple of conferences, gigs and showcases. Saturday morning I caught up with her warming up at the Campsite and I think I MAY have been a little TOO happy to see her – hopefully not in a WEIRD way – but betwixt lack of sleep and the alienness of the whole experience, she RADIATED “home” to me. SiAD sells an image of the “girl next door” that is polished and professionally produced and I’m always impressed with her to be Genuine on Demand! But Saturday morning she still had her glasses on, just sort of jamming on some riffs and I sat down and was so grateful to be in the presence of someone that I KNEW that I forgot I didn’t KNOW her. I beatboxed with her for a riff or two and probably wasn’t as cool as I wished I was. A couple of hours later she kicked off the daytime showcases in the Ballroom and threw down with a fantastic set that received NO favours from the time slot. Fortunately, by halfway through her 20 minute set she had a decent audience and was well-received. She deserves greatness!
Anyone who catches the Snake Charmer’s track-driven auto-tuned well-produced videos on YouTube is going to approach her Live set with a grain of salt – but Live, she does NOT disappoint. A fantastic performance with a killer percussionist. She seemed very, very inexperienced with Live performance and was a prime reminder that this year’s conferences are seeing a LOT of artists that came to exist thanks to social media during a time when Covid meant gigging just wasn’t a thing. But she also got me really thinking about how IMAGE IMAGE IMAGE is perhaps even more important on this scene than in others I’ve been to, making me wish I was a man who knew more about hair and makeup and dressing really, really, really well.
We’d gone in thinking our daytime showcase was the important one, but quickly realized that no, it’s the evening one where you really let loose. At first 100 seemed like a great room – it was just so intimate and focused. But wait… no… Windsor just sounds so good and felt a little less cramped – oh, wait – 200 must be the best room cause it’s always UBERpacked and it’s always a party – but wait – no – 300 is the best room because the MCs are so freakin’ charming and there was more space than 100 but not the cramped crowdedness of 200 but…
… but coming away from shows at all of the above with laments and Loves from EACH of these stages showed how equal they all were, and coming away sans a real feeling of hierarchy is kind of an accomplishment. All-in-all, the stages were all set up well, sounded great, LOOKED GREAT (seriously, a lighting engineer for each stage?!) and – most-importantly – were staffed by a mix of pros and volunteers who all knew their shit, were polite and friendly and rolled with punches with a +10 vs p/f/i modifier.
Suzie Vinnick is a woman who we fiercely admire. Having met her at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, we haven’t gotten to see her Live very much because of the frankly PUNITIVE laws and fees for Canadian artists touring in the U.S. Stunning guitar work and a voice that belts past her cranked guitars, she’s the quintessential blues woman who could take me to school all up and down the neck.
Productive : Well, the short version is that we SHALL return to Canada. The slightly longer version is that we made a lot of connections, but within the booking and artist communities, of which only one was a firm offer, but the rest of which feel like they can be firmed up. It was also productive in the sense of sort of reminding me how much I have to relearn when returning to “real Life” as it pertains to conference and festival Life, aggressive booking, etc. But it wasn’t a “oh my god, I’ve gotta learn so much” it was more of a “oh cool – I could do THIS or THIS or …” it was an exciting kind of energizing knowledge, not an intimidating, make-you-feel-stupid kind of knowledge. There was interest, and a firmer knowledge that the … “folk” scene – at least as defined by the largest gathering of the folk music industry in Canada, actually feels like a really good fit for ilyAIMY – and our anger / grunge / raw / edginess actually felt like an exotic exhilaration rather than an unwelcome intrusion in the overall music gestalt of the scene.
Hearth & Hymn was one of my favourites of the conference (well, ONLY my favourites are on this page!). Self-described as a “close harmony project [that] reimagines old songs and pens future classics through a queer, feminist lens. Their current project is Lullaby Bangers…” the ONLY reason they were on my “to-see” list was because a) they were adjacent to other things I wanted to see and b) they were one of the 3 or 4 Americans that I felt t’was my DUTY to support. I was NOT expecting them to deliver a disarmingly honest purity whether performing a lullaby or a drippingly seductive Love/lust-song. I really enjoyed catching up with them later and getting to chat and I hope HOPE hope we get to share a stage some day.
Exhausting : I’m not too old for this. Yet. There are a lot of OLDER peeps that were getting up earlier and staying up later than us, BUT when it came down to doing what we needed to do, even though I was never the FIRST person in a room, I was ONE of the first people, and even when our 12.45am showcase was on a stage that was running over an hour late, we had the energy to make a phenomenal showing of ourselves, and still with charisma to spare – though said charisma had the tired, strange edge of a 2am college dorm room rather than the more polished 8 in the eeeeevening folk conference charisma. And as always, since conferences are such different animals from shows, it generally makes sense to NOT make them part of a greater tour – which on the one hand means that you’re not trying to pack the car for much longer than half a week, but on the other hand means you’ve got a long drive on the way up and a long one on the way back – which, if anything, is FAR more exhausting than staying up till 2am to listen to and / or play music.
WAPAMA was absurdly cool. The bass player / vocalist grooved with the electric guitar’s NOISE and the drummer’s complexity in a distinctively Primus-y way while also vocalizing in a way that was probably sometimes language? Sometimes clicking, whistling, he was a source of birdsong and exclaimation and droid noises and very cool… NOISES that took me back to Steven Berson’s Primalyrical Acoustitronics… which NONE of you will know!
Inspirational : Absofuckinglutely inspiring. There was just SO MUCH GOOD MUSIC. This was probably the best music festival I’ve ever been to, despite not being a festival. I caught over 50 artists and I can think of 1 that I thought was underwhelming – and I’m judgy and jaded as foretold. I caught two others that seemed just kind of average and one other that seemed like they were maybe having a rough day. But the sheer weight of amazing music left me craving more every day. I wish I’d recorded every stage. I want to share a LOT of it because it’s outside of my experience. It covered so many genres, and though it never quite hit the EXTREMES of my tastes, it introduced a lot to me. Enough diversity (not “DEI” diversity, but literal, sheer, broad width of cultures, languages, instruments, style and more) that I’m coming back to America sort of dumbfounded, absolutely reset in my consideration of how broad all of this CAN be. I can think of at least four moments that I thought “this, THIS is my favourite moment of the week” and I can think of at least two when I literally lost control of my face and my jaw dropped. I can think of three moments where I felt transported and another three where I laughed out loud.
The incredible Janice Jo Lee. I’d met Janice as part of a Pan-American Asian Artists’ Showcase for Folk Alliance a year or so ago. I enjoyed her set, she was a fabulous host, but I had no REAL grasp as to just how cool her music was. Ranging from uncomfortably true to laugh-out-loud hilarious, her theatre background projects during her musical performance and it was an HONOUR to see her in person, strutting her art.Moskitto Bar was just COOL. Musically they came across as broad-ranging world-music jam band but with a joyous personality that kept it all from feeling too canned. It felt like a collective of performers that missed one another – like – it even sort of felt like THEY weren’t quite sure what was about to happen – but with a level of trust and proficiency that gave me the ilyAIMY feels : you can tell they know the song, but you can also tell this time’s gonna be different from last time, and it’ll never be this way again.
Just Prince included the only tabla player we’d seen throughout the conference and the guitarist from WAPAMA. If Mosno Al-Moseeki and Jeff Buckley had had a Lovechild – this would be he.
I never wept.
But there were blazing guitar solos and simple arpeggios and accordions and xylophones and more drums than dreamt of in ANY of my philosophies. 5-string basses were MUCH more common than I’m used to and tars and guitars and pedal guitars and sitars. Whistling and whistles, flutes, pipes, bagpipes, Uillean pipes and panpipes. Harps and koras and several things I couldn’t name.
There were no other beatboxers but there WAS a guy who made a lot of weird noises, and I related to him strongly. There were almost no keyboards played (though every stage provided one), there were a couple of synths, and at least one electronic drum. There wasn’t a single harmonium or, that Indie darling, the glockenspiel – and I didn’t see a single ukulele on stage. Just one at a jam.
And everyone and everything made me want to PLAY.
You win this round, Canada. I’m afraid your prize is ilyAIMY.
Getting to play was almost anticlimactic. With all the waiting, getting pushed back, getting interrupted, it almost felt like “wait, we’re not even HERE for this anymore, man!” But we rocked and thanks to Ethan and networking and working our asses off, we had an audience to rock even at 2am. Of course, we were on a stage that was running over an hour behind – and “only” an hour behind because they played through the half hour break their sound crew and volunteer was supposed to get. A lot of artists displayed an absolute Don’t Give a FUCKEDness when it came to schedules and set times. Blowing through time warnings and simply disrespecting one another when it came to trying to keep things running on time. Some seemed to do it kind of obliviously, as if they’d timed the songs but somehow thought that storytelling and intros were kept on a different clock. But then there were other artists who seemed to simply radiate “no, I’m the most important thing you’re going to see today so shut up and listen” even as timers are bleeping and stage managers are waving their arms to shut up and get off the stage. Watching musicians treat one another in this fashion really upsets me, but the clear lesson sure SEEMS to be that it’s how you get what you want. As a booker though, my takeaway would be that I might want to book that artist for my venue, but wouldn’t let them on my festival stage because you couldn’t trust them to be professional enough not to blow the day’s schedule. I don’t want to end this all on a negative note though – this was the best four days of music I’ve witnessed in recent (and not-so-recent memory) and whereas generally I come away from conferences with a to-do list, an exhaustion headache and probably a cold – I came away from Ontario flat-out INSPIRED. (though… Rowan and Heather DID get really bad colds)
