Another Folk Festival has come and gone and this year, the Festival ended on a high note.  After a few days of challenging weather, Mother Nature finally cooperated to help some very talented artists deliver the best night of the weekend.  Of course, because it was a nice dry night, I was wearing a sweater and had also packed a waterproof jacket.  Oh well, better to be overprepared, as we learned on Saturday night.  The general consensus seems to be that Michael Franti and Spearhead put on an awesome performance - even if the power went out twice during their set - so it's a shame we missed out.

True to form, we skipped the daytime stages, arriving in time to hear a bit from the mainstage openers, Cuff The Duke.  I didn't hear a lot of their set, but I liked what I've heard.  I've seen them before, so on the one hand, it's a shame we didn't catch more of them because I know they're good, but I also know they'll be back.

Amy Millan will also be back - she's performing with Stars near the end of November.  I don't believe I'll catch that show, but that's an unfortunate fluke of timing more than anything else. I enjoyed her set a fair bit.  Not sure that I have a lot of other observations, except to say that she sure likes to sing about drinking.  Specifically, whiskey - but then it seems that an awful lot of people who sing about drinking wind up singing about whiskey.

It should be mentioned that our cantankerous companion, the one who panned Kyrie Kristmanson and Iris Dement on successive evenings, said that if we'd learned one thing over the course of the weekend, it's that "Amy Millan can't sing at all.  I mean, you know my feelings on Sarah Slean-" (this person didn't like Sarah Slean either) "-and Sarah Slean was MILES ahead of Amy Millan."  I think SOMEBODY had a case of the grumpies! 

For what it's worth, I liked Amy Millan just fine.  Though I did prefer Sarah Slean.

Rachelle Van Zanten was up next, and I liked her set even more.  It took a while, but when she mentioned "an old Painting Daisies song," I realized that I had, in fact, seen Rachelle Van Zanten years ago.  Over a decade ago, in fact, Painting Daisies opened for Wide Mouth Mason in Louis' Pub in Saskatoon, and I liked them enough to spend an evening tracking down enough money to buy their demo tape - which I still have tucked away.  Now ten years later, I liked Rachelle Van Zanten enough to buy her new CD, Back to Francois.  This time, there was less of an adventure when it came to the shopping aspect of things, though I could have had her sign the CD had I been a few minutes sooner.  Also, I was wearing a White Stripes t-shirt, and when I bought the CD, I heard all about what it was like to see the White Stripes in Winnipeg, and how if you're on a lot of mushrooms, you freak right out when the disco ball starts spinning.  People love to tell me their drug stories, which is fine, because they're usually entertaining despite the fact that I have zero frame of reference.

In between bands, there was time for delicious foods. Dinner was, depending on which one of us you were, either Indian or Thai.  I went Thai and I do believe it was the weaker choice, even if the sticky rice pudding was both delightful and different.  But the real star of the International Food Fair - and the weekend - and possibly my whole life - was the kettle corn.  Salty but not too salty, sweet but not too sweet, greasy but not too greasy, and eaten while still warm.  This was the devil's popcorn.  This was the corn that spawned the Children of the Corn.  The kettle corn was meant to be a nice snack that would last us all evening long, but it barely made it fifteen minutes because I could not stop eating it.  After the festival was done, I even took one last walk past the food fair to see if the kettle corn stand was still operating.  I ate popcorn until I hurt, and yet mere hours later, I was willing to do it again.

I have mentioned that the setting is what makes the Folk Festival, and this was proof.  Amy Millan was singing songs, and I was crashed out in a lawnchair with a cool breeze and a warm bag of popcorn and I was completely content with the world.  Next year, I intend to gain 20 pounds during the Folk Festival, and it will be all kettle corn weight and it will SO be worth it.

Black Umfolosi provided one of the best moments of the Festival, and it came out of nowhere.  They're a group of Zimbabwean musicians, and their first few songs were delivered a capella.  Very nice, beautiful harmonies, but I wasn't sure that I was up for a full hour of that.  The polite reaction they received for their first few songs indicated that I wasn't alone in my assessment.  However, as the show progressed, the crowd was drawn into the rhythms, the dancing, and the showmanship.  Plus, they took off their shirts.  ("They" meaning "the band," not "the crowd.")  They closed with The Lion Sleeps Tonight - which was their only song that the vast majority of the audience would have ever heard before - and everyone sang along, held their hands in the air, and swayed to the music.  I was lucky enough to catch a good deal of this on video and I smiled while recording the whole thing.  Sometimes you just get lucky and can capture something magical.

In a related note, I never did collect my MelodyTrip.com media passes.  I decided that I didn't need backstage access (though I bet there were nicer porta-potties back there), and I didn't want to waste the time of the artists with my nervous, half-assed interviews.  I'm sure I could have taken some better pictures with the improved access, but really, I was enjoying just sitting back and being a fan - and for some reason, I was having more fun shooting video anyway.  I filled a 2 GB card on Sunday night alone.  I'm downsampling the videos as we speak, with the intent of tossing them onto YouTube.  Please don't sue me.

Before the final act, the Festival's Artistic Director, Sandra Butel, addressed the crowd.  She said pretty much what you'd expect, thanking the artists, staff, and volunteers.  And I have talked a lot about the artists, but the staff and volunteers do deserve special mention.  The Folk Festival attracted several thousand people per night.  It's a lot of people for a relatively small space, and yet, the Festival ran amazingly well.  Hundreds of people were in line on that first night, and the line flowed smoothly and speedily.  Festival volunteers roamed the grounds to ensure that everything was kept neat and tidy - I quickly lost count of how often I saw garbage cans emptied and cleaned out.  Brown-shirted volunteers and white-shirted security (also volunteers) were everywhere.  It takes a lot more work than you realize to make an event like this happen.

And the work is doubtlessly worth it.  I find the Folk Festival and other similar organizations - community radio stations, repertory theatres - to be vital parts of the community, especially out here on the Prairies where we're so isolated from other cities.  If you want to leave Regina and visit another city, you're driving for nearly three hours at a minimum.  These organizations not only contribute to alternate viewpoints and cultural awareness and diversity - I'm willing to bet that Black Umfolosi couldn't have drawn 2,500 people on their own in Regina - but they do so in an accessible manner.  It's easy to provide something new and different to a receptive audience - the difficulty lies in attracting the mass audience.

Not that everyone at the Folk Festival was receptive.  We had our lawnchairs set up behind one of the more irritating families I've ever seen.  Mom, Dad, and four kids, all of whom were old enough to know better, and all of whom were quite interested in standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down and talking and playing Frisbee and fighting and generally being a nuisance to everyone around them, and not at all interested in the music.  And then the mom bought kazoos for everyone.  All six wore green wristbands, which signifies weekend passes.  That meant they spent anywhere from $330 to $600 to irritate everyone who was near them.  Then after all that, they left before the Festival's headliners took the stage.  A questionable choice on their part, I thought, but one that I was perfectly fine with.

You know, I set that last paragraph up so I could segue into the final artist, but I can't do it yet.  I have to talk about Bathroom Woman.  She was GREAT.  There were long lines for the washrooms, as there tends to be whenever you get thousands of people in one small space.  Everyone was mostly pretty cool with this, even though the porta-potties got sketchier and sketchier as the evenings went on.  The Folk Festival staff and volunteers were miracle workers, but some things are even out of their hands.  Anyway, there was one woman.  Very angry.  Presumably very drunk.  Really had to pee.  She would yell at the people in the porta-potties to hurry up, then she'd beg, then she'd run and check all the doors in hopes of finding one that was unlocked.  When you gotta go, I guess.  The girl behind me found this lady to be exasperating.  I thought she was hilarious, in that "I'm glad I only have to deal with you for five minutes" kind of way.

Anyway.  Hey, Blue Rodeo!  They were great.  If you like their hits - and who doesn't - they played most of them.  If you wanted to hear new stuff, they played that too.  If you wanted some guest vocalists, you were in luck, as they were joined on stage by Amy Millan, Sarah Slean, and Cuff The Duke.  They didn't blow me away like Spirit of the West had done a few years ago, but it was still great to see these legendary performers.  There's really no substitute for experience - their sound filled the stage like nobody else had done all weekend.  Except maybe Spearhead, but, y'know.

The show closed with the annual cram-everyone-on-stage finale.  Blue Rodeo was joined by Slean, Millan, Cuff The Duke, Black Omfolosi, and probably a bunch of other people that I couldn't make out.  Or make out with.  This is always fun, and was a great way to bring the Festival to a close.

On the walk home, I was not able to obtain the devil's popcorn, but I may have bought a bag of the devil's mini-donuts.  Deliciousness, my one weakness.

The overall final 2007 Regina Folk Festival Top 5 (foodstuffs not included):

1. Buck 65
2. Los De Abajo
3. Black Umfolosi
4. Blue Rodeo
5. Sarah Slean - I know that earlier I said I preferred Rachelle Van Zanten, but I changed my mind within the past few paragraphs.  I'll change my mind again within a few more minutes, I'm guessing.  Similarly, I keep going back and forth between Buck 65 and Los De Abajo for the top spot.  That's the problem with making lists on the Internet - you're never really able to change your mind.  It's not like Casey Kasem didn't have a new Top 40 every single week.