Category: Story & Song

Winnipeg Folk Festival, Sunday July 10, 2005. Another hot sunny day, carrying a forecast of possible severe thunderstorms. The storms seemed to arrive around 9:45 PM with strong winds, sending the mainstage crowd surging for the exits. The wind died down, we had some light showers, and made it through the rest of the evening. Many of the patrons who had retired to the campground came back. The crowd was smaller, probably only a couple of thousand people stayed to the end. It started to rain after midnight.

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Winnipeg Folk Festival, Bird’s Hill Park, Saturday July 9. There isn’t much to report. It was a sunny windy day, 32 degrees, humidex in the 40’s. I stayed home, visited my parents, shopped, cut the grass because it wasn’t raining and I was mainly in the shade, and didn’t visit the Festival until after 8:00 PM. I didn’t go backstage. I saw that the entrance path across Snowberry Field had dried up at one end, where the asphalt ends as the trail emerges onto the field, but there was still a bog where the trail goes into trees again. There was a lot of mud and standing water on the path towards Shady Grove and the backstage.
By the time I left for the site, the forecast had shifted to include a chance of a severe thunderstorm. When I got home this morning, I checked the radar again. There were storms that seemed to form over the corner of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and North Dakota and track northeast over the lakes, missing Winnipeg and Bird’s Hill. So far Sunday has been hot, cloudy and windy but the rain has stayed away.
I spent my free time at the Bur Oak stage, reading and then went on shift at Site West. There was still standing water in spots around the Bluestem stage, but it had dried out a lot. There was mud in the record tent and the family tent.
I spent my shift around the Firefly Palace which is the nighttime use of the family entertainment stage. During the day there are games, including hula hoops, juggling with clubs and plates, frisbees, soccer balls etc. The Family area crew had stored gear under a tarp but the evening patrons had hula hoops and juggling articles and were using them. There were some steel pegs in the field to secure some log stumps. I don’t know the daytime use but the logs and spikes were hazards in the dark. Fence-jumpers, damages fences drunks, lost kids/parents (usually can’t navigate back from the port-a-potties in the dark. Lots of activity, not boring. One of the shows was music played by a VJ against a Bollywood film for a video dance party.
Didn’t hear any other music, had a good time.

Friday July 8, 2005. Weather, site, a little music, mainly a rant about the way Festival management deals with the site.

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Thursday July 7, 2005, Winnipeg Folk Festival. My report on weather, site, music and whatever else I want to blog about.

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The Winnipeg Folk Festival starts today. I am again a volunteer on the Site Security crew. I have gone to the orientation meeting and to the T-Shirt evening. I have my pass and my schedule.
The Festival has become a personal event, perhaps a ritual of summer for me and for the majority of fans. It is a multi-layered event, bringing people into contact for a few days. I have come to believe that the music has become subordinate to the event – there is certainly none of the silence and reverent focus on the performer and the music that is found in concert settings.
The weather appears to be very good, generally sunny and hot, although the forecast for today includes possible thundershowers.
The site is soggy. Southern Manitoba has been pounded by rain and heavy rain last Wednesday basically led to huge surface flooding in many areas, as the saturated ground refused to take and more, and drainages were overwhelmed. The Festival site in Bird’s Hill Park is high and dry, on a sandy esker but the silty clay topsoil that holds down the grass on the festival site has been saturated. In other years, I have seen it turn to gumbo after a half hour of rain, but dry in a day.
I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the line-up; I trust that I will be entertained, and I look forward to some moments of joy and insight.

The Wpg Folk Festival site security volunteer crew seems to be well organized. I received a letter in the mail inviting me back, with appropriate email contact addresses to confirm my plans. I replied, they replied and it’s falling into place. I have been through it once and I have figured out the basics. It’s a good way to see the festival, it’s mostly fun, and there are good people to work with.
The 2005 line-up of performers isn’t catching my fancy.

Continue reading “Looking ahead to July ’05”