Salmon Arm Roots and Blues 2017

This year was the 25^th annual Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival. I've seen some pictures of the first festival, which was held on a single stage in the community hall, and mostly had local acts. Today, the festival is world renowned and attracts musicians from all over the world.

This year's festivals headliners were Booker T and Ricky Skaggs, but I rarely come to the festival with the intent to see the big names. The real action always happens on the smaller stages with the up and coming bands, and with the workshops.

I took my time getting out to Salmon Arm this year, taking the drive slow, and stopping in Chase and Sorrento to take in some of the lake scenery. I got to the festival just after 12 Noon and, after a bit of a mix up at the sign in table, got into the Barn stage for the first act, Vishten.

I should mention that the festival had a different layout this time around. Usually, the Barn stage is open and has a beer garden fenced in behind it. This year, the entire stage was fenced in and the beer garden was open, so you could wander out into the crowd with your beverage if you wanted to. They had security at the one place in too, so people couldn't take their booze out. The big courtyard which was usually kept for the water misters was turned into a huge kids zone, and every stage, save for the Barn stage, had a kids area. They worked really hard at making the festival family friendly this year.

On to the music. Vishten are a French and Celtic folk band, and they were a great act for the middle of the day. Upbeat, friendly and personable, they slid effortlessly through sad Celtic love songs, to rollicking kitchen party bits and boozy French Canadian reels.

I stuck around the Barn stage for my first workshop, led by Alex Cuba, and featuring members of Maqueque (Jane Bunnett's Cuban band), Asani and Talking Dreads. This is where magic usually happens, if the performers are up to jamming with each other. All the performers were up to the task, thankfully. Asani are a First Nations music band, three woman who work in vocal harmonies and hand drums. Their work was surprisingly deep and melodic for the mostly acapella style of music they played. They are top-notch vocalists too, singing both in Cree and in English. Alex Cuba did a bit of Cuban music with Maqueque, and did some reggae-Cuban mix with Mystic Bowie of Talking Dreads (more on them later). Bowie led the ensemble in a afro-Cuban-reggae version of Bob Marley's “One Love”. High energy set, lots of musicians playing off each other. This is what the workshop stages should be like.

I popped over to the Shade stage for my next concert (and some poutine from Smoke's Poutinerie, the bacon poutine is highly recommended from me!), Irish Mythen. I had heard her work before, but she was an entirely different entity live. Originally from Ireland, now living in the Maritimes, she's best described as a blues singer that plays Irish music. Lord, she had some pipes on her. She could sing like Bonnie Raitt and quip like any drunken Nova Scotian sailor. Visciously funny and amazingly talented. She finished up her set with an acapella version of a song called “The Old Triangle” which was totally amazing. See her if you ever get the chance.

I stuck around for Braden Gates, an Edmonton based country and folk musician. Compared to Irish Mythen's brash sense of humour, Braden's self-effacing humour was a nice change of pace. Slow, earnest country mixed with his own fiddle playing, sing alongs with the audience and fun storytelling, this was a nice, laid back concert for late in the afternoon.

Second showcase at the Shade stage again, Canadian Classics II. This one was hosted by Dana Wylie, an Alberta folk singer, and also had Braden Gates, Asani (second time seeing them) and Jay Gilday, a First Nations folk artist originally from Yellowknife. Asani were again standouts here, doing a version of “O Canada” in Cree, and an acapella version of Joni Mitchell's “Big Yellow Taxi”. Jay Gilday was also great, his voice deep and resonant, almost like a more polished Joe Cocker or a grittier Gordon Lightfoot. Not much collaboration here, but solid performances.

The Main Stage performers kicked off after this concert, so it was dinner time and also time to watch April Verch. I was hoping to see her live. She's a fiddler from the Ottawa valley with a broad range of influences. She plays bluegrass, French Canadian, Celtic and lots of other fiddle styles, while singing and step-dancing, sometimes all at the same time. She did one song where she sang and fiddles, then danced and fiddled at the same time. How she does it, I'll never know. She's also cute as a button. Great set of music and dancing from her.

Asani did a short set in between April and the next act, making it the third time I saw them that day.

Stephen Fearing was up next. He's a versatile folk and roots performer, having his own solo career and his work with seminal roots rock band Blackie and the Rodeo Kings. Sardonic and earnest, his work is a lot like Bruce Cockburn or Bruce Springsteen. He put on a very entertaining show of blistering roots rockers, and skewered Donald Trump a few times.

Back to the Barn stage for Talking Dreads, who were the big highlight of the day for me. When I saw them in the morning, Alex Cuba explained that they did reggae versions of Talking Heads songs. I rolled that idea around in my head for a while and thought, “That makes perfect sense”. The Talking Heads were early adopters of worldbeat music, and hip-hop and soul, using it with punk and new wave. Their 1980 album Remain in Light is basically a new wave/worldbeat album. “This Must Be the Place” is practically an acoustic reggae song. Then I found out that Mystic Bowie, the lead singer, had worked with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz in the Tom Tom Club, and everything fell into place. They took lots of popular Heads' songs and a few obscure ones (like “Slippery People” and “Love Goes to a Building on Fire”) and turned the Barn stage into a dance party. They even made more mopey and paranoid songs like “Houses in Motion” and “Psycho Killer” into a party, which is very impressive. I had to get up and dance to them! They said they had an album out, but there was nothing in the merch tent, nor online when I got home to check. (I did find a nice Hasil Atkins album though). I'll be ordering their album as soon as it's available, that's for sure.

As the sun set, so did my time at the festival. Wasps were all over the place during the festival, probably due to the lingering forest fire season (there was a touch of haze in the air), and they came out in force with the sun going down. Driving back to Kamloops, I found I had a tape copy of Remain in Light in the cassette carrier in the backseat, so I listened to that all the way home.