One of the yearly musical highlight of the year in the BC Interior is always the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival. Outside of anything in Vancovuer, it's the festival to be at during the summer. As usual, they had a stellar line up. Lately, the acts have been moving towards a younger crowd, but there was a lot to see and like this year.
I showed up on Sunday and headed straight back to the blues stage to catch the past part of Kelly Joe Phelps' set. He's a wonderfully soulful folk singer with a nice mastery of the folk guitar, and a veteran of the tour and recording business. I saw him play about 4 songs and he put on a fine understated show, mostly him sitting on a stool, picking and singing.
I stuck around the blues stage for the workshop coming up. Workshops are where 3-4 musicians are put on stage and are left to explore their music how they want. You often get some wonderfully inspired performances at these. This one had three member of the US/Canada blues act Floyd Lee Band (Lee himself was sick and didn't make it to the festival), Delta Blues player James "Super Chikan" Johnson and the mutant soul/funk/worldbeat of Hazmat Modine. Hazmat was one of the acts I'd hope I'd see. They're a seven piece that mixes every musican genre you can think off, and they have a brass section with a tuba. I love bands that can simultaneously pay respect to tradition while mixing the sound with other genres, and still make it listenable. Having seen them here makes me wish I had come on Saturday to see them do a set by themselves. Super Chikan too was another musician that impressed me. He, like so many of my musical heroes, is a junkyard musician, fashioning his own instruments from scratch and scrap. He was playing a cigar-box guitar with three strings here and sounded great doing it.
I hung around the blues stage again to catch a quick glimpse of soul legend Bettye LaVette, who, after starting in the 60s, fell into obscurity until Anti- Records picked her up for some recent work. I caught 3-4 songs from her before hunger got the best of me.
After getting some surprisingly non-greasy donair, I watched Calgary indy rockers Raleigh from the shade of a tent. This is the kind of band that the festival has been bringing in to attract a younger crowd. The three piece had a sombre, laid back style typical of today's indy rock, blending old time roots melodies into the mix too, mostly with a cello.
At the same stage, I saw the Black Pioneer Heritage Singers play a few songs. They're also from Alberta and do very traditional southern-style vocal gospel. I saw them down in Vernon a few years ago at the Rare Earth Festival, so I knew what they were about. I went to the Rare Earth festival with a friend who wasn't a music fan (beyond what's on the radio that is...) and I explained to her that I liked musicians who strive for authenticity and visit the old styles of music in a very traditional way. She said I was "weird" for liking music like this. Anyway...
I walked across the festival grounds to see Buckman Coe, a Vancouver based folk singer I had recently become interested in. His style immediately put me off. He had a huge back up band and played shirtless. His music wasn't like what he had on his albums either, instead moving in a more radio-friendly acoustic rock. I stuck around for 3 songs, then headed back to the blues stage again to be pleasantly surprised to find...
Coco Montoya! He's a contemporary blues artist with a powerful voice and a strong graps of blues rock. He did some nice up tempo tunes and a few slower one's. By the time Montoya finished, it was time for the main stage performances to start up.
First up was Cuff the Duke, a relatively new roots rock band from Ontario. They've been around to put out a handful of strong roots rock albums in the style of Blue Rodeo, making their sound familiar and distinctly Canadian at the same time. The festival showed their recent production sensibilities here. They had several camera operators on stage capturing everything, which was them put up on two big screen TVs, so everyone sitting way in the back could see what was going on.
The second act was another band I was hoping I'd get to see, The Shuffle Demons. The Demons are legends in Canadian jazz, and even had a couple of left-field hits in the 80s, most notably "Spadina Bus". They're a six piece, drums, trumpet, stand up bass and three saxophones. Their approach is fun and upbeat, melodic and raucous. The three sax attack leads to some awesome improvisation that most jazz bands can't approach, with all three playing off of each other, or taking turns soloing or doing call and response. And there's often spastic alto sax solos, which are great in my book. They did their standard funk-based jazz-rock style, but also through in a Mingus cover, which was also okay in my book. They were definitely the highlight of the festival for me.
http://youtu.be/q6_sLmuze98
The sun finally began to set around 8 PM. The day was mercilessly hot, with only a short break in the heat with some clouds in the afternoon. The setting sun brought some welcome cool air, but also brought out the bugs: wasps, flies and mosquitos. Serena Ryder had just started her set. She's a Canadian singer with an acoustic guitar, her voice having an old jazz/blues feel to it. I caught two of her songs before the bugs got too bad, bringing my day to an end.
Overall, the festival was great as usual, I've seen some better acts at the festival, but the Shuffle Demons and Hazmat Modine were worth the trip for sure. I bought a Shuffle Demons t-shirt and Hazmat's new album Cicada, which I'll be digging into soon!
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