First Full FOTR Fest Day
Pretty great tent facility for us to work with at Folk On the Rocks for our first full portrait-taking day today. If we'd had windows out the back wall we'd be looking out over Long Lake, which looks VERY refreshing. In fact there's a kind of 45 degree beach sloping down to the lake with all kinds of people taking what I'm sure is a very refreshing dip. If I wasn't such a wimp about cold water, I'd probably do it myself since the rest of the site is very dry and dusty - ever so slightly worried about sand getting into all the gear. It took a while to clean all the sand out of the guitar case as we were packing up.
Still, lots of great portraits today including Royal Wood, Chris Luedecke and an old friend from Iqaluit, Marie, here with her group Kaiva.
Packed up by 6:45 or so and hung out long enough to hear a little Royal Wood and enjoy some of the fine backstage hospitality. Actually, the front of stage hospitality was pretty great too. As we waited for a lift out to Old Town, Ken - who had been part of the crew that installed the new roof on the main stage, finishing just a day before the festival opened - made me a White Russian from the little fridge in his camper. I felt like the Big Lebowski!
Then Eugene came to pick us up and took us down to Old Town to do a few shots of the guitar at the Wildcat Café and at the Pilots' Monument just up the hill. Just as we were about to leave the Wildcat, a woman came up and said, "My husband is too embarrassed to ask but... is that THE guitar?". I told her it was and I that's when he came up and posed for this shot.
Special thanks to Eugene and our booth volunteers, Larry and Andréa.
Posted at 11:15 PM
Bowling and Tapas
Lynn Feasey arranged for me to do a presentation about the guitar for 60 kids from native communities across the country - all science-minded kids aged 12-16 brought together for a camp experience in NWT.
Our venue was a non-descript building that houses both Thornton's Tapas Bar and the KingPin five-pin bowling alley. The tapas bar is closed for summer but the owner, Lucas, also owns KingPin so he dropped in for the presentation while the bowling lanes pulsed to "Hollaback Girl".
The kids were great. Jonathan, from Quebec - one of the younger kids in the room - lead the way with performances after the presentation and then Old Man Luedecke dropped in. Chris Luedecke is a brilliant songwriter and banjo player from Chester N.S. so I'm especially delighted that he decided to go for the extra string and play Voyageur for the kids.
Then a couple of other kids played it and then one of the chaperones and then Jonathan let me know he had remembered another song he'd like to play so he stepped back up to the front and played "Middle" by Jimmy Eat World. It totally tore the roof off.
Afterward, Lucas invited us to come in to the now closed bowling alley for a beer (a Canadian, of course) and we met Chef Chris, who dared me to get Lucas started talking about the superiority of Manitoba jackfish roe to just about any other kind of caviar. I can't wait to try it!
Anyway, that means we finally got to do one of the photos I've been dying to get for a couple of years now: Voyageur in a 5-pin bowling lane. I'll post it once Doug gives me a copy!
Thanks to Lucas and his lovely wife, M., staff Chris and Garth, the kids and counsellors from the science camp and Chris Luedecke.
Posted at 2:07 AM
WhiteFish Fry on McKenzie Island
We got an amazing opportunity this morning to take a 26' motorized war canoe out on Great Slave Lake from Yellowknife to McKenzie Island. It took about an hour and then we landed on this rocky little island with not too much vegetation - which was perfect, it meant a nice open breeze and no bugs!
Our guides set up a little fire and a BBQ and cooked up a mess of whitefish, potatoes and baked beans with maple syrup and bacon. It was a fantastic lunch and then we headed back to YK through the little harbour of houseboats.
Our photo session at the Legislature didn't go as planned due to some miscommunication with the Speaker's office, which is a bit of a drag, but otherwise a great day. Now it's off to a festival launch BBQ and then to the presentation for the Dene kids at the centre across from the hotel.
Thanks to Don Morin along with his colleagues Don, Ron and Hideo Nagatani at Aurora Village.
Photo by Doug Nicholson
Posted at 6:53 PM
Stellar at the Cellar
Really nice event this evening at the BookCellar in downtown Yellowknife. Lloyd Thrasher was advertised to come and play but he didn't show. Still, lots of folks made up for his absence by taking up the chance to play Voyageur themselves – including Mari, a young traveller from Tokyo who played what sounded a lot to me like the Pizzicato Five!
Daniel Christensen came by as did William Greenland from CKLB who did a song for us all (pictured). Lots of stories told by me and others and signed a bunch of books, which was fun.
Most interesting song of the night goes to a young man who played a song that had this kind of bawdy medieval French sound to it but it was in English. I asked him about the origins of the song and he told me that it was in fact by a French poet who had died and whose work was being painstakingly translated by a singer songwriter from Whitehorse!
Thanks to Janice and the staff of the BookCellar for their wonderful hospitality!
Posted at 10:46 PM
The Final Frontier – Yellowknife
No, I'm not saying that because Yellowknife is as far as this guitar goes or that it's a rootin' tootin' Gold Rush scenario (or diamond scenario, for that matter). It's because NWT is the only province or territory Voyageur had not yet been to in the three years since its birth. Well, we can now check that check box and we're off to a terrific start.
Landed last night right on schedule - though it was a bit dodgy on the first leg of my journey as the flight to Edmonton was delayed long enough that I would have missed my connection to Yellowknife. But special thanks go to all the great Air Canada staff who bent over backwards to make sure I got onto a flight that would get me to the church on time (so to speak).
There was a BBQ at Michael's house last night. He's a friend of Folk On the Rocks' Artistic Director Lynn Feasey. Met lots of great folks around the campfire in the back yard including Daniel Christensen, a white Burundian with a world of stories to tell and who seemed to embody at least some part of the essence of this place.
Managed to get about 5 hours of sleep before the 5am sun penetrated the curtains in the hotel room. I fought the rays off for some of that dreamy morning sleep (yikes, in my dream there was a crack in my iPhone but it's OK in real life - whew!) and then Lynn came by to pick me up for an interview at CKLB Radio with host William Greenland.
CKLB is part of a First Nations media company that broadcasts TV and radio to many northern communities and mines in many languages. Handily, William was not only the host of the show, he's also a guitar player and singer-songwriter. It was a pretty emotional interview for both of us and at the end, William played a healing song he'd written in English and Gwich'in. It was a fantastic way to end the interview.
CKLB does have an online audio archive so, although it's probably not up yet, it will be soon. You can check out their whole library of stuff here.
BTW, my mobile provider, Rogers, doesn't work here in Yellowknife so some of my usual TwitterPics activity is going to be a bit curtailed unless I can figure out a way around it.
I've got a book signing event at the BookCellar this evening at 6:30 where Lloyd Thrasher will play the guitar and then Doug arrives around 9. There will be some more socializing tonight and then Doug and I are going to do some photography with the guitar tomorrow at the Wildcat Cafe, the Pilot's Monument, the NWT Legislature and maybe even in a war canoe with the Sam Roberts Band if we can fit that in as well!
Posted at 1:28 PM