solstice weekend

After work on Friday, Kevin and I made the trek a few hours north for our first camping trip of the year.  This was, without a doubt, the latest start to the camping season ever.  In one sense I’m ashamed but we’ve been enjoying life close to home and been involved in more things locally so it’s really not much of an issue.  I do miss the mountains but I’m glad we’ve had the chance to discover how much less stressful it can be to stay home and spend an evening in the backyard.

Back to solstice… this year we decided to celebrate it at the North Country Fair where a stage had just been revamped and a new playground constructed in memory of our friends’ son.  Unlike most of the bigger music festivals in Alberta this one has space for on-site camping so I was excited about spending a weekend in one place.

We weren’t really too sure what to expect at this festival but figured it would be a little more of a family focused gathering of earthy folks joining to celebrate of solstice with great music of course.  That element was definitely there but there were easily as many obscene young drunks.  Thankfully those folks were gone before the music really got going on Sunday.

I still can’t quite get over why people would pay $100 just to drink and yell at each other all weekend but there probably aren’t many things like the fair in that neck of the woods.   I just wish we could figure out a way to train them to be more respectful.

All in all though it was a good weekend with some great music including one of our new favourites Trevor Tchir.  I also got to play around with hula hoops a little bit.  Fun times!

Oh, and during the little rain storm on Saturday Kevin and I huddled up in the back of the E to play our own music.  I wish we had the option to do videos with sound on one of our camera so we could have documented the dijeridoo, djembe, jews harp and recorder.  If for some reason we’re still here next year we’ll definitely be going back!

writing on the wall

Yesterday was not a typical day for us – we spent a full 12 hours in the city, checking  out a number of things.  One of the highlights was a free show by Trevor Tchir, a singer/songwriter my sister introduced us to at Christmas.  I love his tunes and who could beat free?  My sister joined us and then afterwards we all headed to the university.  Kevin joined his sister and friends to watch the finals of a climbing comp.  I just sat nearby and did some homework.  It’s amazing how much easier it is to “study” in an academic environment!  Anyways, onto the writing on the wall.

At John Wort Hannam‘s show last week, John not only played the I’d been asking for, he opened with an amazing solo version of it.  (On his album, it’s a duet with another of our fav’s, Maria Dunn.)  Kev’s folks came too and were so impressed they made plans to see some shows in nearby towns.  He is that good!  And his album dynamite and dozers was the first one of mine that Kevin actually liked (I used to be a country fan).  If not for the lost creek fire, his song that mentions the fire, and some other coincidences I fear we might still have our own separate music collections!

So what does this have to do with writing on the wall?  Well, for one of his songs, John gave an intro we hadn’t heard before about a song was inspired by what someone wrote on the chalkboard in a washroom at a pub.  I’d never come across a chalkboard  in the loo but thought that sounded kind of cool.

The chance to see Trevor Tchir yesterday resulted in my first trip to “the bar” in probably 4 years, and wouldn’t you know it, this bar had chalk boards in the loo!  Unfortunately it was a blank slate – probably because there was  no chalk.  Regardless I still had a good laugh… and some disappointment in the distasteful scribbles on the stall walls.  No song writing material as far as I could see.

It was a good, albeit breif show and we now have one more cd from an Albertan storytelling singer/songwriter.