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 #350: Jeremy Dutcher & the Regina Symphony Orchestra (October 19, 2019)

Jeremy Dutcher won the Polaris Prize for his album Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, which means “The Songs of the People of the Beautiful River.” It combines his singing and piano with wax cylinder recordings of Indigenous songs from over 100 years ago. Several friends recommended it to me and it’s fascinating – unlike anything I’ve ever heard, and an excellent fit to be performed with the symphony.

We got to the Conexus Arts Centre and I was delighted to discover I’d bought us good seats. It had been a while and I’d forgotten, but we were dead centre, five rows back in a row with extra legroom. Fine work, me. Though it’s a little weird being so close. There’s so many people in the orchestra and they can all see you. They likely won’t, they have things to do, but still. They could. It’s unnerving.

Symphony shows are hard to write about. They start on time. You have assigned seats. There are no drunken louts. No inexplicable opening acts. No wacky misadventures and no deep-fried anything. In short, no shenanigans, and I get my word count from shenanigans. I mean, the Executive Director of the symphony introduced the performance, then was presented with a bouquet as she’s moving on to a fancier job at one of the major American symphonies. That’s a nice moment but nothing I can work with. I need some loud drunks and maybe a fistfight.

Also, the more formal the music, the less I know about it. And I’m not really suited to intelligently critique rock shows in bars by artists I’ve seen ten times over already.

Anyway, the performance had a pattern. The symphony performed a few pieces, then Dutcher would join for some, then he’d leave for one, then come back, then repeat. Dutcher was an engaging performer – not only a very talented singer and pianist, but charmingly funny as well. He had a recurring bit during the second half where his desire to stay hydrated slowly escalated as the night went on. I have to describe it in vague terms because it doesn’t sound funny if I say he came out with a glass of water, returned a while later with the pitcher, and then finally drank from the pitcher before the encore. See? Not funny. But it was funny when it happened.

For the first half, he wore what appeared to be a beaded jacket, but he emerged for the second half wearing a full-length floral robe. I mention this only because symphony patrons were all in for this robe. This robe was a star. This robe could have headlined the show without help.

Wait, right, music, yeah. The point of this all, not water and robes, even exceptional robes. It was what I expected – beautiful and haunting, expertly sung and performed.

Most of the evening was Dutcher’s songs. This should be the part where I get to cheat and transcribe the program, except – gasp – it’s wrong. At least slightly; it lists Up Where We Belong by Buffy Sainte-Marie, and they didn’t play that, though they did perform Until it’s Time for You to Go, another of hers. There was also a Dvorák piece, and one by Cris Derksen. But Dutcher was the star, reimagining historical music in a modern context, then blending it with the orchestra in a memorable performance.