The Magic Satchel

So how do you follow an amazing day of entertaining music?

well, you start by getting up at 430 in the morning, packing your car and only then noticing you have messages waiting for you as you are about to drive out to Canmore for the 24 hours of Adrenalin bike race.

I return the calls, a little confused / concerned because I had told my teammates that I would be leaving at 5am and I would call when I was on the road. Since it was 5:05am I didn’t think they should be getting worried I wasn’t going to show, but once I started talking I understood why they were trying to reach me before I left.

The course was a mess… the rain we got in Calgary, while annoying, wasn’t creating treacherous conditions to listen to music. The same rain on the Nordic Centre race course where around 300 riders were chewing up the ground made for some “interesting riding”. Looking at lap times you can tell when things truly went in the crapper as every result jumped about 30-40 minutes.

So, with the knowledge of how horrid the course was, my teammates made a decision to give me the option to bow out. If I hadn’t had my ticket for Sunday, I’m 99% certain I would have gone just to say I went and did it. However, with the sales pitch I was getting over the phone (treacherous, possibility of injury, slippery, more walking than riding, no fun), I made the decision to go back inside and add to my 3 and a half hours of sleep so I could enjoy day 4 of the folk fest.

I arrive down at the island for about 1pm and stop at stage 3 (just inside the gates) to listen to what in my mind was definitely a stretch to fall under the “folk” category of music. The No luck club (2 DJ’s from Vancouver) and others were playing some music that was good… it was just hard to figure out why it was at this festival

The next stage had what was titled “the blue blue grass of home”… 4 banjos.. or was it 5? I don’t remember, but it was a lot, and it was fantastic. My only complaint about this was how the Duhks seemed to have decided to just play songs they had played at other workshops or on their mainstage performance the previous night. kinda lame, but still good music.

After that, the heavens opened up again for a brief but intense rain / hail shower which had everyone running for cover, and fortunately for my group.. cleared the majority of the tables in the beer gardens, including the “golden table”, right on the edge facing the mainstage with a view of one of the big screens so you can see the artists.

We jumped at the chance to have that table, and I wound up hanging out there for the majroity of the mainstage performances up the closing act for the night. All 3 acts on the mainstage were really good (Sonny Landreth, Sparrow Quartet featuring Bela Fleck, Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Trio), and the weather managed to hold on until Ani Difranco took the stage.

By this time I was safely seated in my rain jacket and cheap emergency poncho (best $1.50 I ever spent) so I managed to stay mostly dry and somewhat warm until the end of the night.

My second folk fest is in the books, and aside from some weather (a minor issue) and a few douchebags on saturday night (not worth any more of my energy) I can’t see any reason why I wouldn’t be back for next year.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Alan, Concerts, Music.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.