SLCR #363: Regina Folk Festival (August 5-7, 2022)

DAY ONE

“It was cold as fuck and it smelled funny.”

Thank you, random stranger, for this overheard quote which summarizes Day One quite nicely. As I’m writing this over 2 months after the fact, I appreciate the assistance.

After several years, the Regina Folk Festival was back under the guidance of a new Artistic Director. We liked the lineup and got weekend passes, almost like things are normal.

They’re not, of course. It felt weird to be back. I don’t think it helped that the crowd was slow to arrive on the first night, so when we got there – a good half-hour or more after the gates opened – there was no line and there was a ton of space for us to set up our chairs. It felt a little alarming, to be honest. I always harp on how few people come out to shows here, but the folk festival has always been immune to that. Thankfully, it filled out nicely by the night’s end so we needn’t have worried.

Those who were late to arrive might have missed out on PIQSIQ. Their loss, since Mika and I agreed, once the festival was over, that they won the weekend. Two throat singing sisters from Yellowknife – super talented, funny, charming – 100% would go see again.

Look, I have approximately 73 more bands to talk about and 3 other half-finished reviews to knock off after this one and I want them out in the world before I go on vacation. In 17 hours. So I’m going to keep things short and skip the folks who had the brief in-between sets.

And I’ll also apologize now for any hilarious typos. I’m writing these on my iPad because if I have to go sit down at my computer in the office, I’ll just never do them at all, and the iPad likes to change peoples’ names on me. 

Anyway. Next up was Julie Doiron and Dany Placard. I may have seen Julie Doiron once before, opening for the Brothers Creegan a million years ago. Or maybe I didn’t and it was Julie someone else. I remember never being 100% sure. Anyway, she also falls into the talented, funny, and charming group. She was also quite sleep-deprived and was kinda giggly and spacey as a result. As far as I was concerned, this only increased the charm.

I’d seen Cadence Weapon a few times, most recently at the Exchange where the attendance barely crept into double digits. He deserved a bigger audience that night and got it here, earning the biggest reaction of the night up until that point by calling out Justin Trudeau in the song Play No Games (“I must face the facts / my Prime Minister wears blackface but he don’t really wanna face Blacks”). That said, the crowd was also really into the digs at Toronto Mayor John Tory, who really has no impact on our Saskatchewan lives whatsoever.

We missed much of Black Belt Eagle Scout as we were off getting food truck dinner. I went to El Tropezón and got fantastic tacos. Highly recommended. Mika went to the Ethiopian place and got a sampler plate. Is it conspicuous that I’m not saying more about that?

The New Pornographers are great in an I’ve-seen-them-numerous-times way. We got a solid set with a nice mix of songs spanning their entire career. AC Newman tried swapping guitars due to a broken string in the middle of Use It, which resulted in the whole song basically falling apart and they had to do it over – funny that it would happen during one of their most well-known songs given they’ve probably played at nearly every show since they released it. They tried to laugh it off but seemed a little upset by it, but oh well. Just one of those things that happens when playing live. 

It was also, as previously mentioned, cold as fuck and it smelled funny, both of which the band commented on. Welcome to Regina!

DAY TWO

A few weeks before the festival, Saturday night headliner Buffy Sainte-Marie came down with covid and was unable to appear. 

Saturday morning, Mika found out that the samosa from last night’s dinner was, indeed, as gluteny as she feared, so we were also unable to appear. 

If you’re wondering if the samosa was worth it, she assured me it was not.

DAY THREE

With better weather, we were rested, recovered, and back at it. Well, I didn’t need rest or recovery, I felt fine on Saturday and could have gone out, but the lineup was the weakest of the three nights and the folks I wanted to see come around here regularly anyway.

The opener was scheduled to be Dominique Fils-Aimé, but she pulled out a few days before the festival and was replaced by rising local star Megan Nash. I had suspected – and this was later confirmed – that a few local musicians were on standby in the event that one of the advertised acts had to pull out late. Festival planning in the age of covid, I guess. Anyway, I’d have liked to see Fils-Aimé but I’ve always enjoyed Nash so this worked out well too.

William Prince is someone else I’ve seen quite a few times. Soft-spoken, folksy, pleasant. Pleasant is a good word to describe William Prince. “This will be nice,” I think before every time I see him. And it is.

People went nuts for Begonia. I had seen her once before and I know she’s come through town repeatedly, but wasn’t expecting the amount of love Regina has for her. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a superfan but I came around – she’s got a really strong voice and seems like a cool human. 

Somewhere in here I got El Tropezón tacos again. Churros too. Mika got… something else. Not samosas. She’s sitting not far from me and I could ask her, but it was months ago now. Do you care? Would you care if it was today? Probably not. You know what you need to know which is, get tacos from El Tropezón. Maybe she got tacos? Or taco in a bag because the actual tacos had gluten? That sounds right. Let’s just assume that’s what happened.

I’ve seen Jeremy Dutcher twice now. Fantastic both times. Last time, he was with the Regina Symphony, so this was a lot more relaxed and loose. Fantastic presence and fascinating art, combining indigenous wax cylinder recordings with modern classical-insipired music. I probably butchered that description but I don’t claim to know things. My point is go listen to this.

I liked the lineup this year but will admit that by the end of Sunday I was excited for Lido Pimienta – someone I actually hadn’t seen before! This was a very politically charged set and there were some folks who seemed displeased as they packed up and left early. Musically great. Politically… I mean, I don’t think there were any sentiments that would be unexpected at a folk festival. Maybe they’re not always so overt but maybe they should be. 

All in all, a fun year if you discount any samosa-related mishaps. Good to be back. Good to be outside. Gotta check the weather next time. And invent a way to check stink levels.

SLCR #320: Cadence Weapon (October 2)

Are you ready for three opening acts? On a work night? On the day of our first real winter snowfall?

Probably not. I mean, I wasn’t.

This was a classic example of a night where if I hadn’t bought a ticket well in advance – this was announced back in May – I wouldn’t have gone. Even with the ticket, I still thought about skipping out. The ticket was only $15 and I’m old and I tire and I come from a long line of seniors who run the furnace in the middle of the summer. I like rest and warmth.

Apparently, my fellow citizens feel the same way. The tickets said doors at 7:30, show at 8:00. I arrived at 8:35, nothing had started yet, and the crowd consisted of 16 people. I counted. This number only got worse when I realized I’d accidentally included all three openers in my tally, since they were hanging out in the audience. A couple more folks showed up over the course of the evening, but that was all – even by the very end of the night, I think we’d have needed to count musicians and venue staff to break 30 people. This was the second-smallest audience for a concert that I’ve ever been to, topped (?) only by that ill-fated first Son of Dave tour over 15 years ago. Really, I’m not sure why nobody made the call to move the show into the Club, the smaller room at the Exchange. At least the room wouldn’t have looked quite so cavernous.

Anyway, I bought a pop, grabbed a chair from the stack along the wall, and found a place to park myself. I wind up going to a lot of shows by myself and I don’t really mind, since nobody pays attention to the old guy and I can just sort of blend into the crowd. That wasn’t happening here, not that it mattered. I did wind up making fast friends with two women who were sitting near me, by which I mean I held their table for them a few times when they went outside to smoke, and otherwise we didn’t talk. I don’t think it was in any danger of being taken but it’s good to have a purpose.

Local musician Loa, or possibly LOA, pronounced “low,” was first up, and immediately ran into some technical challenges. They shut off the background music so she could perform, but her mic wasn’t working, and that took a while to fix. Meanwhile, they didn’t turn the background music back on right away, and you could hear every conversation in the place, every footstep… it kind of felt like time stood still. Eventually they sorted things out, though another snafu shut off one of her prerecorded beats mid-song. She sounded a little nervous when she talked but ultimately handled a tough situation (or two or three) pretty well. Her music – electronic pop with R&B influences – wasn’t really my thing, though that’s just more my tastes than anything, it was all done well.

If they were making any concession to the small crowd, it’s that there was no messing around between acts. Maybe five minutes passed between Loa ending and Hua Li starting up. It really could have been a bit longer, since basically the entire audience except me all collectively went for a smoke when Loa finished.

As a female rapper from Montreal of Chinese descent, Hua Li is unique in my concert-going experiences. She took the stage with confidence and pretty much killed it. With everyone outside, she started her set in front of literally three or four people, but everyone swarmed back in as soon as they heard her. She held everyone’s attention with powerful fast flows and some slower grooves. At one point, Li called everyone up to the front so that she could tell a personal story about her mom and about the experience of growing up the child of an immigrant – I was going to stand but I happened to be on table-watching duty at that moment which is the worst legitimate excuse I’ve ever used. She also mentioned being appreciative of the opportunity to share the bill with another woman for the first time on the tour.

Literally seconds after Li was done, Fat Tony was on stage. I noticed that this tour is continuing into the US, and there, Tony, coming from Houston, is the headliner. This was my first exposure to him, and – rap expert that I am – I thought he was fantastic. He took the stage and brought the lights down low, the better to see that he was rapping in front of a projected background of Heathcliff cartoons and Space Channel Five game footage. And then he had the lights brought back up so he could actually see his pedals. He was funny, super charismatic, and prone to yelling. And while he was mostly focused on performing songs from his new record 10,000 Hours, which just came out, we even got a Regina-specific rap about how much he liked his lunch at Hunter Gatherer that day – “and they ain’t even pay me to say that shit.” I still haven’t been, but apparently the burger of the day and a cup of soup is the way to go.

Finally – I say that though it was still pretty early – Cadence Weapon came out with Hua Li as his DJ. I moved up to the front and found a nice pole I could lean on. Really, I think everyone there went up to the front. Cadence Weapon (is it cool to just say Cadence? Or Mr. Weapon?), the former poet laureate of Edmonton, treated us to songs spanning his entire career, everything from his recently released self-titled fourth album, to a few songs (including Sharks and Oliver Square) from his debut, Breaking Kayfabe. We even got some new unreleased tracks – all delivered with energy and finesse.

There was a funny moment when he introduced a new-ish song about the greatest hockey player. After dismissing one audience member’s guess of Kanye West, everyone decided that the song was about Wayne Gretzky. Cadence Weapon clarified that the song was actually about the greatest active player… Connor McDavid. And everyone in unison said “…oh.” It was one of the greatest mass disappointments I’ve ever heard. People didn’t even care enough to be angry about the pick. It makes sense, Edmonton and all. Just… oh. The song itself was fun, helped along by two girls who tried to hijack the call-and-response part where we were supposed to yell “Connor McDavid” by yelling “Wayne Gretzky” instead.

At the end of his set, Cadence Weapon made the closest thing to an acknowledgement of the crowd size, saying something along the lines of “tell your friends who aren’t here that they missed a hell of a show.” And they did – this was a great show and everyone gave it their all, even when you know their hearts couldn’t have been all the way in it. As much as I’d love to blame this on how hard it can be to get people out in Regina sometimes, I’m not sure it’s going better anywhere else. They were scheduled to play Calgary on the night after Regina, but that show wound up cancelled with no reason given. Earlier this week, I saw that there was a price drop on tickets for students for their upcoming Saskatoon show, but the deal was open to everyone since “we were all students once.” I don’t know what the deal is – I know Cadence Weapon went six years between albums, but that couldn’t be it exclusively. Maybe there are just too many shows right now and people are picking and choosing? October is my most loaded concert month this year, and I’ve passed some things by. Whatever the reason, I hope things turn around – something this good deserves to be seen.