First Confirmed Interview / Final Thursday Night Performances

First off, I have been confirmed an interview with 13 year old guitar accompanist for Ashley MacIsaac, Quinn Bachand. Quinn and his sister Qristina (18) have already put out a CD called Relative Minors and have accompanied many well known musicians such as Ashely MacIsaac at this year's folk festival. I will be doing an interview with Quinn on Saturday at 2:00 PM, so make sure you check Saturday night for parts of the interview.

The last two performances of Thursday night at the Edmonton Folk Festival were country/folk artist Steve Earle and folk/rock artist Boz Scaggs. Here are some pictures of the performances, but remember to check out a full article about Thursday night's performances tomorrow morning.



A close-up of Steve Earle playing guitar. I don't usually like "country" music, but this seemed like the kind of country that I quite liked.



Steve Earle was all alone on the stage, yet his music was still very powerful.



A nice shot of the Edmonton downtown skyline as seen from the Edmonton Folk Fest.



A close-up of Boz Scaggs. Some of his songs sounded quite jazzy, but some sounded more like rock and roll or folk.



A saxophonist that played an amazing solo in one of Boz Scaggs' songs.

So check in tomorrow morning for a full review of tonight's performances, and stay tuned for all my other posts, especially my Saturday interview with 13 year old Quinn Bachand.

Good night everyone but check in the rest of the weekend!

Kathleen Edwards Mainstage Thursday Night

Kathleen Edward's main stage performance at this years folk festival just finished. Still coming tonight is Steve Earle and Boz Scaggs.

I took some pictures of the performance, but I will put a full update and article about Thursday night's main stage performance tomorrow.



The stage and festival goers, we were not that far from the front!She was great as she played many songs from her latest CD, Asking for Flowers.



A close-up of Kathleen rocking the stage. Her personality really shines in her live performances, as well as in her lyrics.



The whole band performing. Though she is listen as "Kathleen Edwards", a band performed with her. Together with the band it was an excellent show!

So stay tuned for more updates tonight, and a full article about today's performances tomorrow morning.

Also, if you're at the festival and like Kathleen Edward's performance tonight, she is playing a working shop with Neko Case tomorrow (friday) on Stage 6 at 7:30 PM.

For those of you at the festival, I hope you're enjoying it so far, and I'll see you on the hill!

Edmonton Folk Fest!

I really did want to post this before now, maybe a week ago, but I guess I found myself busier than I had thought.

Today, tomorrow, and this weekend I will be at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. This year is the 30th anniversary of the festival, and it looks like it will be great. Like last year, I have organized to get a media pass for the festival, so I will be hopefully getting a few interviews for the blog and my next issue of Die Zeitung. I will be posting regular updates throughout the festival from the media tent, for those who were not able to make it to the festival.

For those who are going, I just wanted to let you know some of the artists and workshops that I'm looking forward to this year. I'm really looking forward to Kathleen Edwards, Joel Plaskett, Iron and Wine, Great Lake Swimmers, and Neko Case.

Some of my picks for workshops to go to this year are:

Friday Stage 6 at 7:30 PM, with Kathleen Edwards and Neko Case.
Pretty much all the sessions with Joel Plaskett on Saturday.
Sunday Stage 3 at 11:00 AM with Chumbawamba and Arrested Development.
I'm also really excited to see Kathleen Edwards on Main Stage tonight, Neko Case on Main Stage tomorrow and Iron and Wine on Main Stage on Saturday.

So please, if you were not able to make it this year, or are interested in seeing what's happening at the folk fest this year, please tune in regularly to my blog. If you are going to the folk fest - I'll see you on the hill!

CIBC Run for the Cure 2009

This year my friend Rebecca and I have organized with my school, McKernan Junior High, to do the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation CIBC Run for the Cure. The walk/run will be on Sunday October 4th. The Run for the Cure is held annually across the country to raise money for breast cancer research.

Please help create a future without breast cancer by making a donation today. Your donation will be directed towards research, education and awareness programs. To donate please visit my fund raising page: https://www.cibcrunforthecure.com/html/personal_page.asp?track=3366766&languageid=1

Thank you. I appreciate your support!

New Die Zeitung!

Hello everyone, good news!

There will be a new Die Zeitung this year, as I have worked out a plan with my school to write my issues of Die Zeitung as part of school work.

For those of you who haven't been reading my blog, or haven't known me very long, Die Zeitung is a newspaper that I have been doing since 2005. I write mostly about the stuff on my blog, but I am personally a lot more proud of my newspaper when they come out. Also, on many of my newspaper there are special interviews or reviews. I wrote 4 issues in 2005, 1 in 2006, and 4 in 2007. I have been very busy over the past two years so I have been too busy to write any, but I am very excited now that I have made an agreement with my school so that I can fit newspaper writing into my very busy life.

I will be definitely be sending out an issue at the end of June, and I will most likely also being sending out issues at the end of August, October, and December. These four issues that I will trying to do will make up the 2009 Editions of Die Zeitung. I haven't decided the price to order all four of them, but I am thinking that it will be around $20 for all four issues.

If you would like to subscribe to all issues or just one of the 2009 issues of Die Zeitung, please email me at isaac.wurmann@gmail.com and letting me know if you would like me to mail you a paper copy, or email you a "green" copy.

Also, to anyone who is just new to Die Zeitung, and has never seen any of my newspapers before, you can email me and I will try to get a back copy of Die Zeitung to you ASAP.

The money that I make from these newspapers will go to a school trip to France that I have in grade 9 or fundraising and awareness campaigns that I will do in the future.

Please subscribe!

Canmore Disk Drop

On Sunday I did my third disk drop (After Edmonton and Winnipeg), and it was in Canmore. I did the drop when I was coming back from Golden to Edmonton, and I dropped it off in the visitors center on a pile of magazines.



Here are the tracks that I put on the CD:
1. Cruel - Calexico
2. When These Mountains Were the Seashore - Hawksley Workman
3. Left and Leaving - the Weakerthans
4. Grapevine Fires - Death Cab for Cutie
5. Brainy - the National
5. Black - Okkervil River
6. Nine in the Afternoon - Panic at the Disco
7. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa - Vampire Weekend
8. Record Body Count - Rheostatics
9. Sleeping Sickness - City and Colour
10. Archaeologists - Wintersleep
11. Just - Radiohead
12. Broken One - Luke Doucet
13. Someday - Brett Dennen



I know that some of the tracks on this CD are the same that were on the Winnipeg CD, but I had to make this whole CD while on the road through BC and Alberta.
So, I hope that whoever got this CD likes it, and if you are the one who got it, please comment on this post to let me know.
Thanks!

Boyle Street Shoe Drop-Off

Today me and two of my friends (Rebecca and Zoe) went to drop off the shoes at Boyle Street that I said I was collecting a couple weeks ago.
Boyle Street is a centre in downtown Edmonton where homeless people can go to eat, get stuff (like the shoes that we donated), or just to stay warm during the winter. When we were there my mom's friend Matt, who works there, gave us a tour of the place.
He started off at the youth section, where he works. He explained to us that the youth part is for people aged 14 to 24, but is mostly used by people who are over 18 years old. What I found interesting was that Matt told us that when they try to help people who come in who abuse drugs, or do other stuff like that, they do not right away tell them to stop doing drugs, they just try to make it safer for them by giving them clean needles or something.



Then after that he went to showing us the room where Child and Family Services is, which, interestingly, is right in Boyle Street. This is interesting because some of the people who go to Boyle Street that have children may think of Child and Family Services as "the baby stealers" or something. So, now Child and Family Services has taken a new approach where, for instance, if they go into a house and see that the family has no food, they wont just take the children away. Instead, they will try to understand why they don't have food, and then help them to get food.
Then, Matt took us to see the place where the homeless can go and get food. There were quite a lot of people there, but Matt told us that it was fairly empty. He said that some mornings, there can be 300 people eating there!
I thought that the tour was very interesting, and was an eye opener to how some people in our own city live.



Oh, and of course, the shoes! Well, after a couple weeks of collecting shoes from school, my mom's work and family members, we ended up collecting around 50 shoes!
So, I thought that this was a great experience and I thought it was great to bring my friends along for them to help in this experience aswell. I hope that maybe in the future, like possibly even next year, I might be able to get my whole class to come and help out for a couple hours at Boyle Street.
By the way, Boyle Street has a new website: http://www.boylestreet.org Check it out to learn more!

We Have to Act Now!

I hope that after watching this video, Bilaal's inspiring words will have an impact on you, and perhaps you too will join the Barefoot Challenge this week. It's about raising awareness for people who do not have simple necessities such as shoes. It's about really understanding what other people are going through around the world, so we can better realize how lucky we are to live the life that we have. It's about possibly helping people who live in extreme poverty, after we have, literally, walked a mile in their shoes.

Disappointment Today

Today was a disappointment with the Barefoot Challenge. At school, my teachers and principal did not let me go barefoot. I was in fact sent to the office, for voicing my opinions. I thought that it was very unfortunate that there were administrative rules that have been put in place to not let students do this kind of stuff without teacher involvement. There was also some health issues with going barefoot, even though I think that this is kind of the point of this challenge, as many millions of people around the world are also facing health risks due to improper footwear.

After the fact though, I am now thinking that I maybe should have let my principal know about this beforehand, I had let my teacher know, but I guess that was not enough.

One good thing came out of today though, the other kids in my class really helped me out in trying to do the right thing. They helped me try persuade our teachers to let us go barefoot for poverty awareness. Unfortunately though, our attempts failed, but I really think I got my classmates thinking about why we were trying to do this.

So I will still be doing the Barefoot Challenge, but I guess I will not be able to go barefoot in my school.

I am not giving up though! This week I am going to try and have a sort of "shoe drive" where I collect shoes from my classmates, and then I will donate them to the Bissel Centre, Boyle Street and the Mustard Seed. (I will be doing this after school hours and outside of school grounds) If you are reading this and you live in Edmonton, if you would like, you could also drop some shoes off at the Legal Resource Centre (where my mom works) at #201 10350 124th Street, in Edmonton.

To learn more about the Bissel Centre and the Mustard Seed, go to: http://www.bissellcentre.org/donations.htm (the Bissel Centre) and http://www.mustard.ab.ca/content.php?ID=65 (the Mustard Seed).

If you live in other cities, or even perhaps other countries around the world, if you would like to be a part of this, please search your community for places to donate footwear.

Thank You.

Barefoot Challenge

12 year old Bilaal Rajan from Ontario will be going barefoot this week to raise awareness that many people around the world don't have such necessities as shoes. He also wants many other people to go barefoot as well this week, for an hour, a day or even the whole week.
I will also be going barefoot this whole week, and I hope that everyone who reads this will too, or at least for an hour or a day or two.
The point of this challenge is mainly to raise awareness. Bilaal is sure that once people walk barefoot for some time, they will finally realize how hard it is for so many people in underdeveloped countries to go about their lives.
Bilaal Rajan himself started fundraising when he was 4 years old, since then, he has raised millions of dollars to help people around the world. He has even seen first hand the effects of not wearing shoes after going to Tanzania, Malawi and rural Mexico.
I am hoping that many people will go barefoot this week and help raise awareness.
To learn more about Bilaal and the Barefoot Challenge go to: www.bilaalrajan.com/blog