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FRIDAY, JULY 22nd
One more day till the workshops began, so I kicked up my heels, commandeered a spot on the lawn, and let another slew of diverse artists melt any pre-conceived notions of what folk music actually is.
Rudd, Classic Blues and The Indigo Girls
Xavier Rudd :: Calgary Folk Fest by Shain Shapiro |
Xavier Rudd is the aboriginal one-man band for eclectic-weary college rockers. Rudd plays lap steel, didgeridoo, and percussion at the same time, all while lecturing his crowd with socially conscious lyrics that originate from the Australian Outback. This is folk music in the truest sense - habitual, grounded in indigenous history, and created using time-tested, local instruments. Rudd, however, mixes in digital looping, drum machines, and electric guitars; elements that would not have been welcome in Newport forty years ago. The result was an hour of pure musical creativity, reinvigorating acoustic melodies with peculiar arrangements, multiple instrumentation, and energetic audience interaction. While Rudd's output bears little difference from the brilliant work of either Ben Harper or Guster, his energy and how he reverberates it throughout the audience consequently made his blend climactic and incontestably fun.
Sisters Kate and Anna McGarrigle followed with a bilingual set of rich, contextual Canadiana. Both sisters have been singing and playing various instruments since the 1960's, and their hour-long escapade into down-home folk was an ode to old times. Writing about lost love, failed love, and geographic love (of their hometown Montreal), the influential McGarrigle sisters traded turns on banjo, piano, guitar, and bass whilst harmonizing their voices effortlessly. Despite looking tired and grey, the McGarrigle's musical spread is thick enough to break toast, dripping with the history of a music they helped create.
Calgary Folk Fest by Shain Shapiro |
The musical legend theme continued long into the night, as Chicago songstress Koko Taylor strutted her musical stuff to the tune of classic, Chicago-style blues. Taylor, the self proclaimed "Queen of the Blues," has won more W.C. Handy Awards than any other artist in history and has sung with Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon amidst a venerable who's who of modern blues icons. With quite the resume to live up to, Taylor jumped on stage after a lengthy, James Brown-style introduction and proceeded to teach a spirited lesson on how to properly sing the Chicago blues. Racy, sexy, and feverishly upbeat, the queen of the blues romped through "Big Boss Man" and "Wang Dang Doodle," as well as a dozen other blues standards. An absolute treat from start to finish, Taylor sings and commands the stage like no other, truly exhibiting why she is the best in the business.
Finally, the Indigo Girls capped off the evening with one of the best performances of the festival. Amy Ray and Emily Saliers have been performing together since 1989 and have mastered the art of harmony in the process. The two sing together like no other, and their set under the stars in Calgary exemplified their vocal proficiency. Combining newer material off their most recent political statement All That We Let In with older, fan-favorite numbers like "Closer To Fine," "Galileo," and "Power of Two," the duo was utterly engrossing, merging their insurmountable vocal abilities with tenacious strumming and the power of hard-hitting, socially motivated lyrics. A true testament to the power of folk, the Indigo Girls had the bulk of the sell-out crowd on their feet, twirling up a storm to the strum of two acoustic guitars.
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