Everywhere you go someone is kicking off a festival.
We’re concentrating on the music festivals of Western Canada.
I couldn’t do them all…
Vancouver Island and Winnipeg festivals have started
This weekend our guests are – artistic directors Kerry Clark from the Calgary Folk Fest and Fiona Black from the Vancouver Folk Fest.
We finish our festival updates July 20 with Jenna Klein Waller artistic director from Canmore Festival and Terry Wickham artistic director of Edmonton Folk Music Festival.
It all started as a single interview about the Edmonton Folk Festival. We seemed to be talking about the “other“ festivals and could they survive the Covid years.
That conversation turned into the first group interview with the artistic directors of Calgary, Winnipeg, Canmore and Vancouver Folk Festivals.
It was fun and informative, so I’m hoping to make it a yearly gathering.
Here’s the guest lineup this year.
They each bring with them stories of the artists they booked and why.
Vancouver Island Music Festival
Doug Cox – July 12-14 Vancouver Island Music Festival (Courtney)
Chris Frayer – July 11-14 Winnipeg Folk Festival
Fiona Black – July 19-21 Vancouver Folk Festival
Kerry Clark – July 25-28 Calgary Folk Festival
Jenna Klein Waller – Aug 3-5 Canmore Folk Festival
Terry Wickham – Aug 8-11 Edmonton Folk Festival
This week our interview guests are…
Artistic Directors of Vancouver Island Music Festival (Doug Cox) & Winnipeg Folk Festival
(Chris Frayer)
Both festivals start next weekend. Next Saturday it’s Fiona Black from Vancouver FF and Kerry Clark from Calgary FF. Bringing insights into their artist guest list and special events.
The complete interviews can be seen on the terrydavidmulligan YouTube Channel
They are Canadian music royalty. Who better to have joined us on the Canada Day weekend than Greg Keelor and Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo?
AND Jim brings his 6th solo album All the World Fades Away.
There is much to talk about. In the first half of the Podcast Greg and Jim take us through Blue Rodeo’s plans for their 40th year together in 2025.
Taking part in the Lightfoot celebration at Massey Hall. Being inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.. Then Greg bugs out and Jim and I talk about his 6th solo album with The Jim Cuddy band.
It’s called All the world fades away and it’s a beauty.
Stories about his Father, our friend the late John Mann and his family, his early years on The Yukon, and his duet with Greg on the solo album. The dialogue between the two of them on the meaning of the song is WILD!
We talk tours and plans for the year. Comments about playing the Canmore and Edmonton Folk Festivals this summer. Our thanks to the boys…
Celeigh Cardinal and her new album Boundless Possibilities and Bridget Kearney – Bassist and songwriter for Lake Street Dive
Both guests have albums that came out Friday.
Celeigh Cardinal has her latest dropping Friday – Boundless Possibilities.
Personally written songs that describe the feelings of losing her son’s Father in a murder and the death of a friend by suicide. Also surviving the pain and loss and changing her life forever.
It’s not your average album and certainly not your average interview. Open, bare and loving.
The second guest is Bridget Kearney. Bassist, vocalist and songwriter for Lake Street Dive. The album is Good Together and after 20 years together, they’ve decided to write songs and play together in the same room. It shows in the exceptional songs.
They appeared this week on Colbert and they’re on tour. One of the dates is Madison Square Garden.
The Stew is Bruce Cockburn..bringing stories of his 35th album O Sun O Moon. Plus memories of Gordon Lightfoot and his place in the music of the World and especially Canada.
Answers the question: Was/is Gord the Sound of Canada?
Could you hear the space and place in his songs?
The Podcast is the complete interview with Bruce Cockburn on the release of his 35th album O Sun O Moon. And his thoughts on the music of and the loss of Gordon Lightfoot.
The YouTube this week is the video version of both conversations.
Friday night the results were announced at the Penticton Trade and Convention Centre and then hundreds descended on the trade floor to do their own judging.
Kimberly Hundertmark, the GM of The Wine Fests said on Tasting Room Radio last week that wineries were asked to send their very best releases.
We have two guests and dear friends on this Podcast. Both are wine stars and both were judges at this event
DJ Kearney. A Global wine authority, educator and Director of Wine at Terminal City Club. Black Belt.
Rhys Pender – Master of Wine. Co-owner of Little Farm Wine in Cawston and owner of Wine Plus. World’s greatest fisherman.
We can now include here who made the Top 50 wines list and which winery won Wine of the Year
I’ve had the distinct pleasure to host and produce Tasting Room Radio for 17 years.
Most weeks we consider featuring some of those stories on the podcast but music, arts and music history seem to carry the day.
These two interviews deserve to be featured because they tell the story of the current state of the BC wine industry.
The Okanagan has been burned by summer fires and choked by summer smoke, blocked by road closures at the peak of the summer season, deep frozen by two successive winters and disappointingly shunned by liquor governing bodies in Alberta.
All the while the BC wine industry is making better and better wines. So it all feels like three steps forward and two back
Kimberly Hundertmark, the GM of Okanagan Wine Festivals brings great news. Right now, they are kicking off the Spring Wine Festival all over the Okanagan Valley. It’s an amazing collection of events. Huge gatherings like 2024 BC Top 50 and the Wine of the Year. The TASTE series, carefully curated in locations North and South, the Naramata Bench this Sunday, June 2 and the District Wine Village in Oliver Sat-Sun June 8/9 and Saturday, June 8th at the Summer Sips at Spirit Ridge Osoyoos. Kimberly brings all the news and tips for making plans.
Wonderful article from Charles P. Pierce Esquire Magazine May 25
Let’s get the whole gang together: Davey Moore, Hattie Carroll, Hollis Brown, Einstein disguised as Robin Hood, the motorcycle black Madonna two-wheeled gypsy queen, Ma Rainey, and Beethoven, John the Baptist, the Commander In Chief, Louis The King, Napoleon in rags, Lucille, Johanna, Sweet Marie, John Wesley Harding, St. Augustine, the joker, the thief, Big Jim, Lily, Rosemary, and most of all, the Jack of Hearts, Rubin Carter, Isis, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Blackjack Davey, Charlie Patton. All of them. Play me a song, Mr. Wolfman Jack, because if you want to remember, you better write down the names.
Bob Dylan turned 83 on Friday. All of him did. All of them did. All the personae, the entire kaleidoscope of masks, the false fronts and head fakes, and, finally, the last, and in many ways, best of them all. The travelling storyteller, the seanchai as the people in the old country would call him. Out on the endless tour, up the endless highway. I think of him and I think of Turlough O’Carolan, the legendary blind Irish harper who would travel the countryside, composing his songs on the spot for whomever would give him food and drink. Go back further. Go back to Homer. Sing to him, O muse. When Dylan dropped “Murder Most Foul,” virtually out of a clear blue sky, blessing us with it as consolation for the years when America had gone so terribly wrong, it was Homer of whom I thought, poet and historian both, protector of the shadowland between myth and reality, chronicler of what Greil Marcus called “the old, weird America,” a phrase I wish I’d written.
He’ll be around all summer, travelling with Willie Nelson and John Mellencamp and a whole clutch of other artists in something called the Outlaw Music Festival Tour. It’s a high-priced extravaganza but, in a very real way, he’s just on the road, heading for another joint. Move along, brother Bob. The highway, as you taught us, is for gamblers, and we take what we have gathered from coincidence.
Here’s a collection of comments and reflections from Dylan’s artistic partners and others just sharing the same spaces with Bob. Interviews I’ve done over the years to be added to when Dylan turns 85.
Interviews with
David Bowie
Robbie Robertson
Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks
The Avett Brothers
Barney Bentall and Steve Dawson
Greg Keelor (Blue Rodeo)
And Colin Linden (Blackie and the Rodeo Kings)
Wine and Dine – Tofino June 1-2.
The second story takes place next weekend June 1 and 2 in one of Earth’s most beautiful places – Tofino, British Columbia. The western edge of Canada on Vancouver Island. The community includes surfing, golfing, fishing, underwater adventures and an unusual gathering of chefs. It is where they come to learn how to create seafood dishes and cook with what the forest and oceans give them – and surf their minds out.
It’s the second annual Wine and Dine gathering on the front lawns of Best Western Plus Tin Wis Resort.
We know Ottawa-born Sue Foley from the blues albums she’s created and released. Plus Multiple blues awards on both sides of the border.
Her new album is One Guitar Woman. A tribute to the female pioneers of guitar.
This was/is a very personal journey for Sue. She’s studied the many women who played guitar before her and left their legacy to study and pass on.
Female singers and players like Memphis Minnie, Elizabeth Cotten, Maybelle Carter, Sister Rosetta Tharp, Geeshe Wiley, Lydia Mendoza etc.
Many tales and tunes are connected to the album.
Four-time Blues Foundation Traditional Female Artist award winner, Sue Foley’s new album One Guitar Woman is a heartfelt tribute to the female pioneers of the guitar – including Memphis Minnie, Lydia Mendoza, Maybelle Carter, Ida Presti, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. The album showcases the dexterity of Foley’s acoustic nylon string guitar skills as she expands on her blues playing into other genres like Piedmont fingerpicking, traditional country, the Carter Scratch, flamenco and classical.
“From the time I decided to be a professional guitar player, I’ve always looked for female role models. These are the women who were expressing themselves through the instrument as far back as the 1920’s, at the inception of radio and recorded music. They are the trailblazers and visionaries whose footsteps I walk in,”
Corby brings new, acoustic, live off off-the-floor music in his new album El Viejo (The Old One) in memory and tribute to his pal Ian Tyson.
Corby says that this album may be his best yet.
He brings memories of Ian and also how his audiences are different depending on where he’s playing,
For El Viejo Corb and the Hurtin’ Albertans played live, letting the songs reveal themselves.
It was all captured by CKUA Alumni Scott Franchuck.
Corby describes it as “organic”.
We talked about his name “is that the name of the band?”
Talked about his time with The Smalls and how this music connects to those days. “half urban/indy and half cowboys/ranchers”
We touched on Hearts on Fire Michael Barclay’s book on “6 Years That Changed Canadian Music” which in its promo mentioned cowboys who used to play speed metal.
“the alt-country music in the late ’90s and 2000s was littered with x-punks who suddenly discovered acoustic guitar.”
That’s Corb. The Poet Laureate of the Albertan people.
