Sunday was the last day of this years Edmonton Folk Festival.Yet another beautiful day for the festival, all three nights we went were awesome weather wise. My buddy Buzzard and I went yet again, three out of five nights for this years fest. I went to the show early as I wanted to see a few of the workshops on the smaller stages. This almost didn't happen, as I wasn't aware that the ticket I had was only for the evening shows. I thought the ticket was for all day Sunday, but after having a closer look at my ticket, after being sent away by security, I realized, ya, it says doors at 4:30. Well, damn, what am I supposed to do for 2 hours when there isn't a bar,lounge,liquor store anywhere around the site. I eventually found someone that was willing to trade tickets with me, I got an all day pass, for my evening ticket plus 10 dollars, not too bad I guess.Beats the hell out of hanging around doing fuck all for 2 hours. The first one I checked out was Jakob Dylan with Jimmy Rankin of the Rankin family as well as Colleen Brown with Brandi Carlile on stage 6 this workshop was called "Sweet Old World". The show started with Jimmy playing a few songs with Jakob just looking on, not participating at all. I was thinking oh oh, he don't look to in to this at all. After a few songs Jakob finally did a song and sounded really good. The hill for stage 6 was packed. I only hung out for about a half hour as I wanted to get to stage 4 to checkout Alejandro Escovedo. Here are few pictures I took while at stage 6.
After checking a bit of the Jakob show, I rushed over to stage 4 to see the workshop titled "South By Southwest", and indeed it did have a southern flavour. I had never seen Alejandro Escovedo perform before, and have to say I thought he was very good. I have a couple of his albums and have heard his newest album "Street Songs Of Love" is very good. After hearing him a do a few songs, I will be grabbing this album in a hurry. All and all I thought his set was good.
Off to the beer gardens and wait for Buzzard to show up, we hooked up and off to the main stage we went and waited for Jakob Dylan to play. Jakob did not disappoint on the main stage, he opened his set with a new song from his album "Women + Country" which is a really good album. He played songs from his last 2 solo albums and even played a Wallflowers song "Sixth Avenue Heartache" which really got the crowd in to it. Jakob is really starting to look like his father and even starting to sound a bit like him. I was really impressed with his set and would like to see him play here again soon.
Next up and closer of the festival was John Prine. The last time I saw John Prine was a few years ago at the Jubilee Auditorium, and I wasn't all that impressed with that show, even though I am a big fan of Prime. Well, this show at the fest was much better, better setting, better set list and really seemed to be enjoying himself on stage. The crowd ate it up and all left very happy. All and all a good weekend, but not to sure if I would spend the money again to go. I can have just as much fun sitting in the trees at the top of hill swilling beers and carrying on up there. Plus I'm not too sure your going to be able to top this years line up for the Edmonton Folk Festival. It was a long day Sunday sitting in the sun for that many hours and having to deal with line up for everything, from washroom,beer gardens and food, I am about sick of line ups and sun. Having said that, good time was had and a big thanks to Buzzard for picking up tickets for the three nights we did go. How often do you get the chance to see Van Morrison,Levon Helm,Jakob Dylan and John Prine, plus the bands I didn't get to see Ben Harper,Gord Downie and many others in the course of 5 days. Seeing the hill at night with everyone holding a candle is a pretty damn cool site to.
Front.
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