East Coulee Spring Fest, the unofficial kick-off to festival season

May 11, 2012, 8:54 am

Okay. Let me get this straight. I was standing outside the Bulgogi House in the old Bonnie Doon neighborhood last night after sharing a great meal with my friends Ron Rault and Crawdad Cantera and Ron, aka Renaldo, insisted that we hadn’t seen the last of snow for this spring.

I didn’t want to hear about it and was chastising Renaldo in a good-natured way for suggesting the white stuff could fly again. So, 13 hours later, Stewart MacDougall and I have just finished a morning coffee at a café near Mill Creek and wouldn’t you know it, snow pellets started to fall. You win Renaldo, it’s a seriously cold Thursday May 10th and it’s apparently time to ditch the sandals for desert boots again, at least until tomorrow.

That scenario sums up springtime in Alberta, and now Ian Tyson’s song of the same name is floating in and out of my mind as I look forward to attending the East Coulee Spring Festival on Saturday.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. East Coulee is as unique and distinctly Albertan a gathering as is produced in this province and it is fair to say that it unofficially kicks off festival season.

Rolling into East Coulee, just east of Drumheller, is scenically stunning in itself and the festival, a benefit for the East Coulee School Museum, is a community gathering that not only celebrates our history but acts as a reminder of what a talented and generous artistic community we have in this province.

Once again veteran artists along with fresh-faced emerging singers, songwriters and instrumentalists will come together and play the four stages set up around the town site of East Coulee.

Obviously it is a bit easier for musicians residing in Calgary and the surrounding area to participate given the location of the event and this year Joe Nolan, Kirby Sewell, The Sadlier-Brown Band, The Wayfaring Fiddlers, Sandy Bone and the Breakdown are just a few of the acts giving of their time and talents between noon and midnight in East Coulee.

North-Central Alberta is represented by a few acts and I’m looking forward to catching Johnny Quasar and the Swingbots, which is fronted by tunesmith, vocalist and guitarist Tom Roschkov. Tom is always “up” for a gig, whether it is in a coffee house, playing a house concert, a tavern or a warehouse turned into a venue. It doesn’t seem to matter what style he is drawing on either, although I was always drawn to his rockabilly influenced material.

There is no forecast for snow or for that matter frigid weather of any sort this coming weekend and when the sun is shining in East Coulee and the festival is in full swing, it makes for a magical day.

Read more about East Coulee Spring Festival 2012 head to http://www.ecsmuseum.ca/

See ya there!

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If you are looking for a comprehensive tool that can help point you in the right direction to festivals taking place in B.C. and Alberta this summer, look no further than the impressive Summer Festival Guide published by B.C. Musician Magazine.

This year’s edition is jam packed with 64 pages of info and it’s enough to make one wish there was enough money in the bank to take the summer off and drive all over the two provinces for 10 or 11 weeks.

The breadth, scope and focus of individual festivals is amazing and it would take a couple of lifetimes to partake in all the events being produced in our part of the world.

Whether you are considering a smaller festival in a scenic outpost or a major cosmopolitan event, all of them appear to be produced by individuals with great vision and expertise.

If I had the time and wherewithal I’d be making plans to head to the Seabird Island First Nations Festival in Agassiz, the Back2Blues Gospel Festival in Chilliwack and the Great Canadian Barn Dance Bluegrass Festival in Hillspring Alberta.

The Summer Festival Guide also includes infor on some of the festivals produced over the next three months in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the territories and Washington State.

It’s one-stop-shopping for any festival hound. Be sure to watch for CKUA's Festivals web page, launching early June.

I mentioned in a recent blog that Calgary-based musicians Mel and Marti Smith, aka The Milkwood Dreamers, were headed down to Merlefest as Mel was participating in the songwriting contest at that prestigious festival.

Marti has updated me on how the trip to North Carolina went, and not surprisingly it was all “positive”.

So in Marti’s words, here’s the update:

“Merlefest was amazing and we claimed 2nd place in our category. Stiff competition, but Jim Lauderdale mentioned that we were 12 finalists out of 1200 entries, so we were doing well no matter where we finished.

“I thought you might like this moment: on the Friday night, Sam Bush played a great set with his band and near the end he invited out Derek Truck and Susan Tedeschi for Bell Bottom Blues and Gimme Shelter and then ended his set by calling out Bela Fleck and John Cowan for The Band’s Cripple Creek which morphed into a bluegrass Cripple Creek to end the night. I never imagined that I would ever hear Derek Trucks riffing out on bottleneck to a break-neck bluegrass version of Cripple Creek ”, wrote Marti.

Hats off to both of you for a job well done and representing the Alberta roots scene at Merlefest.

Speaking of Jim Lauderdale, whose music has been a regular component on Dead Ends and Detours thanks to his great interpretations of Dead tunes via the American Beauty Project, and the three fine albums that he and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter have collaborated on, the singer-songwriter will be making an appearance at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival according to his website.

It will be Lauderdale’s first appearance at the event and Lauderdale is slated for performances at Gallagher Park on both August 11 and 12.

To quote Fred Flintstone, “yaba daba doo”!