David Crosby was wandering around backstage at VIMF on Saturday night and when I first spotted him I thought a vagrant had slipped past security. The 69-year-old artist was wearing a worn blue t-shirt and grey hoodie, his long white hair was wild under a baseball cap. It wasn’t until I saw his face that I realized he was an award winning artist with a career spanning almost five decades and probably wasn’t backstage to collect empty wine bottles.
Crosby mingled for a little while and based on what I saw was almost as chilled out and sociable as Yes’ Jon Anderson. The day after his main stage performance, Anderson wandered the grounds, checked out the food vendors and seemed generally easy to get along with. Also like Anderson, once Crosby took the stage he showed that he still knew how to put on a good show.
Backed by the Night Train Music Club, a group of seasoned musicians who have worked with some of rock’s biggest names, and with additional vocals by Vonda Shepherd, Crosby opened with “Long Time Gone” from Crosby, Stills & Nash’s 1969 debut album. Rocking the same outfit as Saturday night (I imagine his closet being like Inspector Gadget’s) Crosby tipped his hat to the crowd and his musicians before going on to perform “Tracks in the Dust” from his 1989 solo album Oh Yes I Can & “Carry Me” from Crosby & Nash’s 1975 </I<Wind on the Water
Before his Saturday performance of”I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It)” Randy Newman lampooned rock stars who have run out of things to say but are too stubborn, stupid or vain to hang up their spurs. Crosby seems intent on not joining those ranks and was in no danger of running low on things to say. Performances by seasoned artists like Crosby are fascinating when they open up to the crowd and talk about their music. It saved Newman’s performance on Sunday night and added an extra dimension to Crosby’s on Sunday.
He complimented Newman by naming him as one of his favorite songwriters and went on to list others including James Taylor, Joni Mitchell and (grudgingly) Bob Dylan. He also joked about Mitchell & Neil Young being “Canadian Scorpios” and asked Canada to “stop sending them south because they really mess things up.”
Performing new tune “A Slice of Time” showed that Crosby can still write an engaging melody even though he claims to once have been told to never play new material at a music festival. “I guess I’ve made a career,” Crosby said, “Out of doing things I’ve been told not to.”
In an age of processed pop that’s refreshing.
Dusk is settling on VIMF as Holly Cole wraps her wonderfully smoky voice around “Que Sera Sera”. In front of me a man in a long woolen cap that resembles a lion’s mane dances with a blonde girl in a gypsy skirt, the bangles at her hips clinking in rhythm with her movements.
Cole is playing to an appreciative audience that is giving back as much as they can after 3 days in the sun. Backed by a four-piece band, she has worked her jazzy magic on classics old and new such as “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” and “Bright Sunshiny Day”.
The Vancouver Island Music Fest looks to have been a roaring success.
Night Train Music Club is next, followed by final act David Crosby.
Brennan Storr writes the blog Largely the Truth.
“To ‘confabulate’ is to fabricate imaginary experiences: hence [our] fanciful and fearless music” says the bio of David Woodhead’s Confabulation, the worst-named band since Rubicon Hearst & His Donkey-Botherers.
When I arrived at the Grassy Knoll, the Confabulation, who I will henceforth call Fabu, was just about to launch into an original composition by band violinist Jaren Freeman-Fox.
The piece was exhilarating. Imagine Lalo Schifrin and Charlie Daniels collaborating on the score to a chase movie about bootleggers. If none of that made sense to you then go ask your parents. Fabu’s other songs were good but Freeman-Fox’s piece was the highlight.
The “Guitars!” workshop at the Grierson Community Stage drew a crowd and well it should have – Albert Lee & John Jorgenson are virtuoso guitar players and both were in fine form. Seeing their fingers fly across the fretboard was jaw-dropping and their guitar dual at the end was worthy of the standing ovation it received.
Brennan Storr writes the blog Largely the Truth.
Keeping in line with all great trilogies, the weather for the third day of Vancouver Island Music Fest is a disappointment. It’s still warm and prudence dictates that I continue wearing this infernal baseball cap but clouds have crept across the sky.
The last day of a festival is always tinged with melancholy – the heavy drinking is finished and with it all the sweaty campsite indiscretions. Summer dresses have replaced bikinis and the fat men have all come to their senses and put their shirts back on.
At VIMF to promote their new album Grand Isle, Steve Riley & the Mamou Playboys were just the thing for a morning like this – an invigorating zydeco sound to brighten up the mood like lightning bugs in the backyard on nights when the moon hides away.
Hangovers, if not retreating completely, at least gave some ground as the Playboys picked up speed and soon the dancers in the crowd got to their feet.
The Cajuns always have known how to throw a party.
Brennan Storr writes the blog Largely the Truth.
The appearance by Randy Newman was the reason I wanted to attend Vancouver Island Music Fest in the first place. I’ve been a fan since I heard “God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)” in high school and seeing him walk past on his way to the stage was the kind of fanboy thrill I haven’t had since the time Dick Dale brushed past me at Victoria’s Club 9one9.
Newman’s set cherry-picked tunes from throughout his career: “Political Science” & “Last Night I Had a Dream” from 1972′s Sail Away, “Birmingham” & “Louisiana 1927″ from 1974′s Good Old Boys, “The World Isn’t Fair”, “The Great Nations of the World” & “I’m Dead (But I Don’t Know It) from 1999′s Bad Love, to name a few.
It took him a while to hit his stride – the first few numbers sounded rushed, like he was late for a bus or was going to be paid double if he got the cheque to the bank before the ink was dry.
Once he got to “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”, the Oscar-nominated track he wrote for the Pixar film Toy Story, he seemed to start having fun and the audience did too.
A famous curmudgeon, Newman’s few monologues between songs were much like his work: honest and bitingly funny:
“The first few times I saw [Toy Story],” Newman said. “I didn’t notice it was animated. Or a comedy.”
He went on to say that when he first saw the scene where Buzz Lightyear falls and breaks his arm, “I thought Disney was doing something daring…I thought he was trying to kill himself because he was gay.”
Now that’s stage banter.
After the performance I felt like I had a better grasp on where Newman was coming from. This is a man who has written some of the must clever, incisive songs of the last 30 years but is consistently given awards for writing the theme tunes to children’s films. Sure, the cheques cash fine but I think I’d be pissed off too.
The day leading up to Jon Anderson’s performance was long, airy and hot as hell. Vancouver roots group The Breakman was an afternoon highlight over the on the Grassy Knoll stage.
Their sound has been characterized as “Americana”, owing a debt to the music of The Band & the Grateful Dead, and the comparison isn’t entirely hyperbole. Their music feels authentic in a way that many artists in this genre can’t manage. If they put a little more crunch in the sound, comparisons to the Drive-By Truckers wouldn’t be out of the question. The Breakman are actively promoting their new album Heartwood.
Over on the Grierson Community Stage a performance of The Word had the audience shaking their deeply sunburnt moneymakers. Friday headliners Arrested Development shared the stage with festival performers The Recipe, e.s.l. & Janet Rogers. There were a number of similar performances throughout the day, with various artists taking the stage together to see what results.
In the case of The Word what resulted was a kind of celebratory jam session with some soul classics and a Beastie Boys cover (“Girls”) being just a few things on the menu. Janet Rogers, a writer and freestyle artist, performed a freestyle piece about touch, underscored by a haunting beat from e.s.l.
It was after this performance that I fell in love with the Misting Tent. Supplied by Jet FM, it consisted of a canopy strung with misting jets that blew a fine spray of cool water onto the AstroTurf beneath.
Mere words fail to describe the majesty of the Misting Tent on a hot day. When I say I was in love I mean it – real love. The hard stuff. The “I’ll wait for you until you get out of prison” kind of connection previously only known to Irish dissidents and mafioso.
Tearing myself away from the Misting Tent and walking into the heat of the day, I think I knew a little of what it was to be Lucifer, banished forever from the refreshing spray of God’s grace.
The festival literature says that Yes’ Jon Anderson is often accused of singing in a false falsetto but his speaking and singing voice are actually naturally that high.
I can vouch for this – every time he hollered in the direction of the VIMF concert bowl sound tech it was in a piercing Lancashire accent. With Rob Halford’s voice going, Anderson and Geddy Lee represent the last of rock and roll’s true threats to the world’s supply of crystal tableware.
Anderson’s voice was strong for a man who claims to have recently “almost died 3 times in one year” and after correcting the audio issues that cropped up at the beginning of his set he had a good rapport with the crowd. His story about meeting the enigmatic Vangelis and the Greek’s predilection for indoor archery was a good laugh and he followed it up with “I’ll Find My Way Home”, from 1981′s The Friends of Mr. Cairo, one of his collaborative efforts with the composer.
“Owner of a Lonely Heart” was a big hit with the crowd as was “Flight of the Moorglade”, from his 1976 solo album Olias of Sunhillow. The latter song, along with several others, was played on a mountain dulcimer, which looks like a kind of priapic ukulele.
Never forgetting his audience, Anderson threw himself into a number of Yes hits like “Yours is No Disgrace”, “Roundabout”, and “Long Distance Runaroud” all of which were great even without Rick Wakeman, synthesizers or a handful of LSD.
Specifically a cheeseburger from Bob’s Burger Express. Last night’s dinner was a delicious oyster burger from Bob’s and I was so happy I didn’t wake up with e. coli that I went back for lunch.
The weather has gone full-on “Duel in the Sun” and I can already feel my sunblock capitulating to Apollo like the dermal equivalent of the Vichy French. To make matters worse, I have been reduced to wearing a baseball cap so that the enormous amount of real estate on my head left vacant by male pattern baldness doesn’t start to look like the surface of Mars.
From the shaded comfort of overhanging trees I watched the Bill Coon & Darren Radtke Duo on the Woodland Stage.
A crowd that was, on average, older than that gathered around the other stages, relaxed in the grass, chilling out to the most mellow bass I have ever heard. It was the four string equivalent of a lullaby from Barry White.
According to the signs on the way in, the Woodland Stage is on the way to the swimming hole. That explained the half-naked teenagers walking through my line of sight. I have been here less than 2 hours and have already seen more abdominal muscles than subscribers to Men’s Health.
Friday night’s final act was hip-hop group Arrested Development. The group found success in the 90s by presenting themselves as a positive alternative to gangsta rap. Think Public Enemy without the anger. Or alarm clock neck chains.
Prior to the show, security guards went back and forth speaking to the photographers hunched at the foot of the stage. “If we have a crowd control situation,” they said, “…we need you to do as we say.” It sounded a bit ominous but I imagine that they meant “get the hell out of our way” rather than “touch me here but don’t tell your parents”. I didn’t have the opportunity to find out as the crowd was enthusiastic but well-behaved.
AD frontman Speech worked up the crowd, some of whom couldn’t have been old enough to shave when the groups breakout album 3 Years, 5 Months & 2 Days in the Life Of… dropped in 1992, with both hits (“Tennessee”) and new tracks (“Bloody” from the group’s latest album, 2010′s Strong).
I can’t tell you how refreshing it was to hear hip-hop that didn’t involve firearms, microskirts or airborne ejaculate.
After the cannonball of MarchFourth the first day of the Vancouver Island Music Fest settled into a more measured pace. Following M4 was Red Horse, a folk trio composed of Eliza Gilkyson, John Gorka & Lucy Japlansky.
It was wise to program something more stripped down after M4 – anyone trying to top them would have come up woefully short without the help of lions, flaming hoops and Julianne Moore in a feather boa.
Red Horse’s songs were all pleasant enough, aside from Gilkyson’s “Midnight on Raton”, a talky and awkward tribute to the late, great Townes Van Zandt.
Van Zandt often passed through the town of Raton, New Mexico during his all-too-short life and it inspired him to write the very lovely “Snowing on Raton”. Listen to that instead.
After Red Horse came Corey Harris and the Rasta Blues Experience. Harris, a native of Denver, Colorado, is a skilled songwriter and one hell of a guitar player. His saxophonist, Gordon Jones, deserves to be mentioned too – his wailing sax was irresistible, drawing applause from the crowd after every solo.
Corey Harris & the Rasta Blues Experience were a hit and Harris rewarded the audience’s enthusiasm with a solo acoustic encore before leaving the stage.
By this point in the night the mercury had begun to drop. I watched a bearded kid in a tie-dyed t-shirt wrap his arms around a slim, pale girl in a red dress who was shivering from head to toe. She leaned back into him and whispered into his ear then they moved off into the crowd.
After a while you could tell that the alcohol had been flowing freely all day: not far away I saw a teenager in a newsboy cap trying to put the moves on a woman at least twice his age:
“So, like, how old are you?”
“Older than you.”
“Yeah…I think that’s cool.”
“Great”
I saw her standing by herself later on in the evening so she must have somehow found the will to resist her pubescent Romeo. I saw him afterward too and like many good men before him, young Montague was giving his libido a burial at sea, one plastic cup of beer at a time.
