Here We Go Again...

Earlier this week a large group of ducks landed in a Syncrude tailings pond in Northern Alberta. Does this story sound familiar? Well it should... the exact same thing happened in 2008. What's even worse is that this year's duck-landing happened just days after Syncrude was fined over 3 million dollars for the previous duck-landing. Syncrude has recently stated that 350 birds have now died after landing on the Mildred Lake tailings pond on Monday night.

What is even more astounding is that this event has happened less than a month after Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized NDP MP Linda Duncan, saying that she was trying to shut down Alberta's economy by suggesting that we slow down development in the oil sands. Well maybe that seems like a better idea now, doesn't it Harper?
So if this keeps going on like it has been of late, how long will it take for people to realize that perhaps this is not the best idea? What more needs to happen to convince people that maybe searching for more environmentally friendly sources of energy are better for us in the long run? I guess for now though we'll just have to wait around until the next batch of ducks are killed in our quest for oil in the tar sands.
For more info check out http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/299493. Or you can just listen to the radio or watch the TV because hopefully we will soon be hearing about how Syncrude will be punished for their second round of duck killing.

First Snow!

It was the first day of snow here in Edmonton today. I was hoping that the weather might hold out until November and after Halloween, but I guess that just wasn't meant to be. It sure was fun to bike to school this morning though! I think I'll try and bike through the winter... but I guess we'll see how that goes. Biking home from school was pretty nice though, it wasn't too cold but everything was coated with a nice layer of white. Some of the leaves were even still on the trees!

According to Todd Babiak, the snow is good for you, really! http://tinyurl.com/289l3yd I guess it might feel good after you've spent a year in snowless north-western France!

Well I guess that's what you get for living in Edmonton... Welcome back winter!

Ecuador!!!

It's official! I will be going to Ecuador next summer to volunteer with Free the Children with my friend Zoë. During our 18 day trip we will be helping to build a school in the Chimborazo province. Before that though we will spend a few day exploring old Quito and taking a quick visit up to the Equator. At the end of our trip we will be spending a few days at a retreat in the Amazon rain forest.

Free the Children is an organization that was started by Craig Kielburger in 1995, when Craig was only 12 years old. The aim of FTC is not only to provide education for children in developing countries but to also involve children in their efforts to do so. There are also trips for youth to Kenya, Arizona/Mexico, India and China.

Our trip leaves on August 10, 2011 from Montreal, and I can't wait! I'm not sure how I am going to get through this year knowing that during the summer I will finally be going on this trip that I have been wanting to go on for so many years?!
The trip is pretty pricy though, about $3500, so I have a lot of fundraising to do. Zoë and I will be hosting a few dinners throughout the year to raise money for the trip and I also have a couple of part time jobs that will pay for a fair amount of the trip. All the work will definitely be worth it though, it's gonna be the trip of a lifetime!

Blogging Around the World

Have you ever thought about leaving everything at home and travelling around the world for a year? Well some family friends of mine are doing just that. They started off their trip in Iceland before going to England and then exploring Europe before visiting India, Egypt, the Middle East, Turkey and the Baltic states.

To read more about their travels and to learn about life on the road please check out a blog written by Sam, who's my age: http://samaaway.blogspot.com/. Sam's blog provides a unique perspective that shows what it's like to travel the world as a teenager. He posts great stories from his trip and some great pictures!

Interview with New Orleanian John Boutte

I'm finally getting around to putting this amazing interview with John Boutte on my blog! It was probably the best interview that I've ever done and John Boutte also told me that I was the best interviewer that he's ever had. He was also a great interviewee which made for a great interview! Hopefully this with also be posted on SEE Magazine's Gig Bytes blog shortly.

New Orleans has long been known for its music and festivals and is often referred to as the “most unique” city in the United States. Unfortunately, this distinctive city has also experienced more than its fair share of disasters in the past few years. At the Edmonton FolkFest this year, New Orleans native John Boutté played for his first time at Edmonton’s festival, and I had the chance to talk with him about his music as well as his interesting birthplace.

“New Orleans is such a beautiful musical city, we’ve got jazz of course, but we also dance the bamboula, we have the French Opera House, we have Spanish influence, classical music, marching band music and gospel of course. So the whole amalgamation of these sounds is just kind of like a backdrop, it’s like the highway, you can always hear it passing,” Boutté spoke fondly of his hometown during an interview at the FolkFest.

In the past five years, New Orleans has been hit hard by many disasters. The 2005 hurricane season was particularly difficult for the city with Hurricane Katrina striking the city in August and Hurricane Rita postponing restoration of the city when it hit in September of the same year. More recently, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico affected the city when oil washed up on wildlife refuges and seafood grounds on the Louisiana coast.

However through all these disasters, the people of New Orleans still keep coming back home, “I think we have no other choice,” explains Boutté, “there’s no room for us anywhere else, where are we going to go? I don’t think that anybody from New Orleans wants to live in Kansas, I mean Kansas is okay, but New Orleans is the centre of the universe... for me.” After Katrina, John Boutté was one of the first musicians to come back. “The Katrina event, I’d like to call it... it just really made me appreciate what we had, because sometimes you have things but you don’t appreciate it until it’s almost gone.”

In the case of two of the worst disasters that New Orleans has experienced over the past five years, people have been blaming the government. “I think that we always like to point the finger at the government, but we are the government. We’re the ones who put them in office.” John Boutté also explained to me that he has a “large scepticism” towards larger organizations like the government or the church. “Katrina was a ‘SNAFU’, people out there know what that means, that’s a ‘situation normal all f***ed up.’”

Even though he says he is sceptical of large organizations such as religion, one event that effected Boutté’s music was singing in the church choir while he was in the military. “I was trying to improve my social status from ‘very poor’ to just ‘slightly poor.’ And it really opened up my repertoire to more gospel music.” he told me as his explanation for why he had joined the military. “It’s not for everyone though, especially not for people who just want to shoot somebody.”

John Boutté has been playing music since he was quite young, starting with the cornet when he was eight years old. When asked what made him want to become musical he replied laughingly, “It’s like asking me why am I black, I can’t help it! I was born with this feeling to make music ever since I was a kid.” One story he remembers was that when he was a kid, he would sing the same songs over and over and over again, just to annoy his siblings. “It would drive my sisters and brothers up the wall,” he explained to me, “and I realized, ‘Wow! There’s something to this, I’ve got power in this voice!’”

I too have been playing music since I was around his age, and after every interview at the FolkFest this summer I asked for some words of advice. I did the same with John Boutté because I definitely wanted to hear what he might have to say. John spent a day with Stevie Wonder when he was younger, and so he gave me some advice that Stevie had given him years earlier. “He said these two words that were very befuddling at first. He said ‘patience’ and ‘determination.’” And those are two words that I will remember in the years ahead as I explore the world of music and as I continue playing my own music.

Brown Doesn't Mind Joni Mitchell Comparisons

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

Emerging artist Colleen Brown performed for her first time at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year. Since her second album released in 2008 she has been growing more popular with the help of many radio personnel including Rich Terfry (a.k.a. Buck 65). I first heard Colleen play at the Winspear opening for Hawksley Workman at his Edmonton concert. She was amazing, and I was very excited to hear that she would be at the FolkFest!

Performing at the Winspear, she spoke about how she used to work in the box office there. She was ecstatic about playing there herself and one could see that she was genuinely happy. “That was really amazing for me,” she told me in an interview earlier on today, “and I have to say, I don’t think that I’ll ever experience that again.”

Brown has grown enormously in popularity over the past couple of years, and now is being compared to the likes of Joni Mitchell and Gordon Lightfoot. “I really like both Joni and Gordon,” Colleen explained, “but I do make my own music and I want to be recognized as an artist in my own right. But when somebody says you sound like Joni Mitchell you say ‘thank you, very much.’”

This was Colleen Brown’s first time performing at the Edmonton Folk Festival, but she had gone to the FolkFest before as an audience member. I just can’t imagine how it would be to be a part of the music at the FolkFest after watching the music for so long! However even though she was performing she still was listening to music she informed me. Sarah Harmer, Brandi Carlile, Colin Hay and Levon Helm were her picks for this year’s festival.

Playing music since she was six years old and writing songs since she was twelve, Colleen always thought that she was going to be a musician. “I think I always knew that I was going to be a professional singer, but I just didn’t have any expectations.” And she’s always writing music, sometimes even on the high level bridge! “I find that when I go out walking, that’s the time that I’m most creative.”

“The album sounds like some of the best music you heard on pop radio back in the ‘70s... I love this album,” spoke Rich Terfry, host of CBC Radio 2 Drive, of Colleen Brown’s latest album. This advertising by Rich really does work, Colleen told me. At a concert that she was playing in Toronto there was a considerably larger crowd than other at other concerts all because Terfry had encouraged people to go to it.

Colleen Brown plays the guitar and the piano, just like I do, so at the end of the interview she gave me some pieces of advice. “Do great work and everthing else will fall into place,” some advice that her friend had first given her. She next gave me some colourful advice from her former mentor. Colleen explained how he would get in her face and point his finger at his nose, and then finally he’d tell her, “don’t f*** up!”

Saturday Photos

Workshop with Colleen Brown, Patrick Watson and Basia Bulat.



Working.



After my interview with John Boutte.



Sarah Harmer.



Brandi Carlile.

FolkFest 2010: One Big Old Goofy World!

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

Maybe the best thing (and definitely my favourite thing) about folk festivals are the workshops. This is when two or more artists share the stage and perform together. These are great because the artists usually start out playing their separate songs, but by the end of the session, they are almost always playing together. Only at workshops like these would you finds an American folk-rock band on the same stage as two throat singers from Nunavut and an Arabic-Spanish musician from the UK.

These workshops began yesterday afternoon with one called “Big Old Goofy World” on stage 6. Sharing the stage was Tom Russell, Calexico, Natacha Atlas and Tanya Tagaq. This workshop epitomized the whole spirit of the folk fest and by the end everyone was playing together even though many of them had never met each other before!

Joey Burns, lead singer of the Tucson, Arizona band Calexico is great in these workshops. I think that he has even said that they are his favourite part of folk festivals! Two years ago I saw Calexico playing a workshop with The Weakerthans at the Winnipeg FolkFest. That performance was equally as amazing as the workshop yesterday afternoon mainly due to Burns’ ability to muck in with other musicians and create a new sound.

Going into the “Big Old Goofy World” session, I was unsure of how it would work with throat singers Tanya Tagaq and her cousin Celina Kalluk. When they were playing alone it was amazing, it was so unlike anything that I had ever heard before! What was really incredible was how they incorporated throat singing into the songs that other musicians were performing. I was surprised by how great Arabic music sounded with a little bit of Inuit throat singing thrown in!

What’s great about folk festivals is that if you’re not looking forward to a particular artist going into the event, you are still bound to like the music. Sometimes coming out of the festival you’ll even have a new favourite musician! I think that this is all thanks to workshops like this one. Often this is also where the performer’s personality comes out most, which might just make you enjoy their music even more!

See you on the hill!

Friday Night Photos

Workshop with Tanya Tagaq, Tom Russell and Calexico.



Workshop with Lucas Chaisson, Patrick Watson, Kate Reid and The Waifs.



The hill at night.



Calexico.

Sacred FolkFest Traditions; Tarp Running

At this year's Edmonton folk festival, I will be writing regular updates from the festival for SEE’s Gig Bytes Blog. I will also have an article published in next week’s SEE Magazine. This article is cross posted from SEE's Gig Bytes Blog...

The Edmonton FolkFest is about more than just the music, it’s about the whole experience. For me a main part of the experience is the colour lottery, a time when hundreds of people gather in a small, cramped corral. Each person is given a lottery ticket with a performer’s name on it and a number. If your performer is called first, you get to be in the first group to run your tarp. If your performer is the second called, you are in the second group etc. The number on the ticket indicates what number you are in your group.

On Saturday and Sunday the colour lottery starts at 7 in the morning, which means that you have to wake up at 6 after staying out until 12:30 am at Gallagher Park. For many people, this probably sounds crazy... and you know what? They’re probably right, it is pretty crazy, but it’s worth it! It’s worth it if after spending half an hour in close quarters with other caffeine fuelled folk festers your performer is called first.

For my family and friends, the colour lottery has become a tradition. After the lottery on Saturday and Sunday morning we go for breakfast at the nearby Humpty’s. The coffee there is pretty bad, but you’ve got to stick to tradition! After breakfast all of us (usually ranging between 6 and 12 people) return to the hill to watch the tarp run. It may not sound like much, but the tarp run is way more exciting than the Stanley Cup playoffs or the FIFA World Cup!

If we get first colour then our tarp runner gets to be bagpiped down the hill to place our tarp. This moment may be the most exciting part of the FolkFest. Our whole group stands at the top of the hill craning our necks to try and see where our tarp runner placed the tarp, the anticipation is sometimes too much! Our group takes tarp running so seriously that we call our runner “Tarparanjuat: The Tarp Runner”, based off of the movie “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner”. She even has a t-shirt with the name printed on it!

This year I’ve noticed that many things have changed surrounding the tarp run. The security especially seems way tighter; they wouldn’t even let us cheer on Tarparanjuat! Our group of regular FolkFest-goers fear that this will now affect the performance of our tarp runner because she won’t be able hear us cheering for her. It won’t matter today though because we got first colour at the lottery!

See you on the hill!