Eaglewood – Saturday

Well, the night was cool (we could see our breath) and my poor toes were cold all night. Brrr!
We woke and prepared for the day. We went to the volunteer building and charged up the camera batteries; loaded the photos from Friday night on the laptop and were ready to go again.

We checked out the Kid’s Town where they were making bird hats using poster board, glue and lots of sparkles! They were so cute!

I won’t name each of the workshops but the lineup for the weekend was: Arthur Renwick, Chris MacLean, Crabtree & Mills, David Hein, David Newland, David Woodhead’s Confabulation, Geoff Berner, the Georgina Community Drum Circle, Katherine Wheatley, Kim Barlow, Lily Frost, The Marigolds, Namgar, Red Pepper Spectacle Arts, The Saturday Saints, Shaman Ayerhart, Sourpuss, The Stagger Lees, Brent Titcomb, Trevor Mills, and Banaconda Kennedy-Kish Bell.
Because we were taking photos, along with the help from Melissa McCauley, we moved from workshop to workshop so that we could catch a bit of everything.

There were so many amazing combinations of artists. One of the most interesting was The David Woodhead’s Confabulation with Namgar. Namgar is a group from Russia/Mongolia and the instruments they play and style of music is not easy to describe – Traditional Mongolian Ethno-Pop? You can hear a sampling of their music on myspace. These two bands are both so energetic. Jaron Freeman-Fox on fiddle jumping around; David Woodhead and his spacey futuristic compositions mixed with the variety of instruments that we are not used to hearing from Namgar stretched the imaginations.

I always enjoy the workshops where 3-5 musicians or several bands will play together on stage and add to the others songs with harmonies or instrumental leads. These are moments that you can’t otherwise experience. Katherine Wheatley with the Marigolds singing backup vocals – that was sweet! There was an interesting workshop that was called First Verse & Chorus where the artist could only use 5 words to introduce the song and could only sing the first verse and chorus. There was also a microphone set up in the audience and they were encouraged to get up when it got to them in the line. That was rather enjoyable and many people sang along with the familiar tunes.

The evening mainstage was excellent. I felt for the artists who had the sun beating down on them while we all squished into any shade we could find. I was lathered up in sunscreen, wearing my hat and in search of shade whenever I could. There were times where that wasn’t possible but I sure tried.

Lily Frost had a theremin. It is an electronic musical instrument that is controlled without contact from the player. The artist controls the volume with one hand and the pitch with the other simply by moving it nearer to the box (there is a photo). If you don’t know what this instrument is – Google it!

The crowd was great on Saturday night. People were up dancing and singing along. So many smiles and toe tapping.

One of the best things – for me – was that one of the bands was taking a while setting up so Trevor (the Artistic Director) had me come up and sing an acappella song. I sang my song “Teddy Bear”. It was strange because I was in front of the monitors but behind the speakers and all I could really hear was them testing the instruments behind me (in a different key). I just went for it and tried to ignore the other sounds – I was assured later that it sounded good.

Afterwards we took a school bus to a place in Pefferlaw called the Belvedere. There was some jamming there by some of the musicians and volunteers. It was fun. It was great hanging out with Shaman Ayerhart – he used to live in London and we sure miss him. Mike played trumpet along for most of the evening and I could tell that he was in heaven. It was a long jam and we outlasted most of the locals.

When we returned back to the campground we started walking towards our campsite. We ended up stopping at several of the other areas and jamming a few tunes at each before moving on. Finally, after 3 am, we arrived back at our site. There was an excellent jam going on there with over a dozen people around the campfire. We met some new people including Andrew and Janet, (Andrew played an original tune that I just loved and Janet was playing a gorgeous acoustic bass). There was also Ruth (who could add a harmonica solo that worked for every song she played). There were people who came and went – some passing through – some would play a song. It was getting late and the crowd thinned out. We kept saying that we should go to bed but we ended up seeing some sunlight coming through the trees before we actually went to bed. What an amazing night! That is one that could have lasted a few days!