Thursday Kicks Off What Should be a Great 30th Edmonton Folk Festival

Last night was the first "real" (yes, i know, it was also on Wednesday) day of the 2009 Edmonton Folk Music Festival. Four performers shone last night, including Breabach, Kathleen Edwards, Steve Earle and Boz Scaggs.

Breabach from Scotland kicked off the night with some traditional Scottish folk music. With double bagpipes a fiddle and a guitar, this band really filled up the stage, and the whole festival grounds with their fast rhythms and energy.

Coming from Ontario, Kathleen Edwards was up next. She put on a great show, with a mix of country, rock, and folk. Right from her first tune that she played, you could tell that the crowd was really into it. I think that possibly Kathleen Edwards could have been one of the performers at this years festival that people hadn't really heard of before, but now she might be one of their favourites. She played some great songs from her latest album Asking for Flowers such as The Cheapest Key, I Make the Dough, You Get the Glory, and title track, Asking for Flowers.

Steve Earle from the US took the stage next. In his music you can really tell that he writes from experience. He's a political activist and prison survivor and that really shows in his lyrics. Though his music was technically "country" it seemed like the kind of country that I could deal with and actually like. Earle was all alone on the stage, but his music was very powerful and you could hear it all through the hill.

Another American, Boz Scaggs was up next. And surprisingly, he felt like one of my favourites of the night. His songs were very 70s and kinda cheesy as my mom said, but even she had to admit that he put on a great show. His songs were a bit jazzy and seemed very traditional rock and roll... with a bit of folk mixed in I guess. We had to leave about 10 minutes before the end of his show, and even as we were walking to his car, we could hear his one last, long drawn out encore.

I put some pictures of the performers last night, but here are some pictures of the folk fest in general.



Folk fest goers watching the stage.



The hill full of people.



The full of people at night, lots of people had their candles out already. I was hard to get a good shot of this, as you can see...

Now I gotta go to a traditional Friday morning High Level Diner breakfast, but stay tuned for more updates later, and if you're going to the folk fest today, I'll see you on the hill!