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www.celtic-connection.com
JUNE2014
What's happening with the local Celtic music scene in B. C. ?
Rogue Folk Club
Celebrating 27 Years of the best Celtic & Roots!
www.roguefolk.com
Thur & Fri, June 12 & 13
Americana songwriting phenom
The Milk Carton Kids
Sorry: Both Shows Sold Out!
Tuesday, June 24
Trad, songs from New England & Appalachia wl stunning singer
TIM ERIKSEN & The Trio de Pumpkintown
Thursday, July 10
The greatest Celtic guitarist in the world teams up with Nova Scotia singer I songwriter: 2 shows in 11
TONY McMANUS
&
LAURA SMITH
St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Ave.) Tickets & Info (604) 736-3022
Johnnie Fox*g
J IRISH SNUG
1033 GRANVILLE
WWW.JOHNNIEFOX.CA
The Foggy Dew Irish Pub
Coquitlam
Is the place to be for all your entertainment needs. We offer a select menu, great daily Irish specialty food & beverage, great music, great service, friendly faces and lots of fun!
CATCH ALL YOUR FAVOURITE GAMES RIGHT HERE! on our 10 plasma & 20 satellite screens
Showing all NHL Playoff Hockey Games
Our Patio Is Open
in
• Look for our new Summer Menu
• Brunch served every day until 3:00 pm
1 .40 cent wings all day to close
Monday ' Drink Specials Every Day
SATURDAY, JUNE 14TH, UFC
JUNE/JULY EVENT CALENDAR
ENTERTAINMENT EVERY FRIDAY & SATURDAY NIGHT with: D J GARY GUNN
Playing all your favourite music
Mini Jugs of Canadian - $7.25 Coors Cans - $3.50
WWW.FOGGYDEWIRISHPUB.COM
405 North Road
(in the Executive Plaza Hotel)
Coquitlam, B.C.
(604) 937-5808
ANCOUVER -1 must admit I'm starting to wonder what is happening to the local folk festival scene with respect to Celtic music.
By local I mean southwesternB.C. and a comparison with the Edmon-ton Folk Music Festival, for example, makes for quite a contrast.
It's not just the size of the budget at Edmonton, or at least I don't think it is. They simply book more Irish and Scots performers every year than our local events.
Has the local Celtic music scene dried up? Is there no demand for Celtic music locally any more?
I don't think there is a paucity of great fiddlers and bands around here, although performers like Qualicum Beach singer Emma Beaton and Victoria fiddler Ivonne Hernandez ply their trade in bands from away these days (Joy Kills Sorrow and The Fretless, respectively).
Daniel Lapp is still going strong, but his music is as eclectic and hard to pigeonhole as ever.
Young fiddlers like Kierah Raymond and Jocelyn Pettit are not only brilliant players but also very gifted composers, so there's no lack of creativity there.
Victoria's Quinn Bachand has just been awarded a huge scholarship to attend Boston's Berklee College of Music, and his superb guitartistry makes him a Celtic music accompanist in high demand.
Yet he also plays gypsy jazz, and can play just about any musical style —or stringed instrument - that tikes his fancy.
Believe me, this young man (not yet 18) has very eclectic tastes and he's just about to release a new CD with his sister, fiddler/singer Qristina.
Tom and Kalissa (nee Hernandez) Landa still tour with The Paperboys, but Locarno - the Latin manifestation of Tom's muse - is becoming increasingly popular, and rightly so.
Yet none of these aforementioned performers are playing any of the local festivals.
Similarly, whenever we present Celtic bands at The Rogue, the audience response has been great!
We've had sold out shows this year with The Fretless, Alasdair Fraser & Natalie Haas, and Carlos Nunez, and a pretty good turnout for Caladh Nua
(on a Wednesday), so I don't think the demand for Celtic music has dropped off.
So let's take a quick look at some of the festivals and see if we can recognize a pattern:
Island Musicfest (Courtenay, July 11-13): Tony McManus (the world's finest Celtic guitar player: bar none!), North Atlantic Trio (from Glasgow, with Celtic harp, dobro and percussion; not strictly Celtic, but extremely good!).
Gilmore & Roberts (young English duo, again not exactly Celtic, but also very good!), BC Fiddle Orchestra (excellent young fiddlers) and Rakish Angles (eclectic stringband).
THE ROGUE FOLK CLUB
Laura Smith from Nova Scotia has added some trad, songs to her repertoire and clearly has a Celtic heart and soul. So, not bad, but no major touring bands from overseas.
Harrison Festival of the Arts
(Harrison Hot Springs, July 11-20): Ross Ainslie & Jarlath Henderson (brilliant young pipers from Scotland and Ireland!), Tony McManus again.
Pacific Curls (wonderful trio from NZ blending Maori songs with Scots fiddle tunes), and also North Atlantic Trio, Gilmore & Roberts, plus David Francey (Canadian Scotsman not Celtic, but very Scottish!).
Moira Smiley & V0C0 (a cappella songs from many traditions, including Celtic), Jaron Freeman-Fox (mercurial and creative fiddler), Bruit Court Dans La Ville (trad. Quebecois trio).
So this is pretty good for fans of Celtic and related music. Not too surprising really, with new artistic director Andy Hillhouse (Mad Pudding) at the helm! Way to go, Dr. H!
Vancouver Folk Music Festival
(July 18-20) Scots songwriter Karine Polwart used to front bands like Malinky and Battlefield Band. She's definitely one of the best reasons to attend this year's event!
Galway's Leo Moran and Anto Thistlethwaite (Saw Doctors), Victoria's Oliver Swain & Big Machine, and Quebec trad combo Les Tireux d'Roches are about as close as it gets to Celtic this year.
Nevertheless it will be an amazing event, and rare appearances by Riccardo Tesi & Banditaliana, Joan Baez, Beppe Gambetta, Casey Driessen (incredible fiddler from the Sparrow Quartet,) and the return of Flying Mountain will be among my highlights I'm sure.
Mission Folk Festival (Mission, July 25-27) features Dervish, one of Ireland's very best Celtic bands! Hooray for Mission!!
It's been a few years since Dervish were last seen around here. They have a new CD, too, The Thrush In The Storm(20\3).
Bands like Sweet Lowdown, Fish & Bird, and the lovely Ruth Moody will add some near-Celtic bliss, and perhaps there will be more Celtic music on the Music BC showcase or late additions to the bill.
Islands Folk Festival (Duncan, July 25-27) Spirit of the West still dabble in Celtic music from time to time, and then there's Scots-born Murray McLachlan.
The aforementioned Locarno, Daniel Lapp, B.C. guitar god David Essig, and the wonderful Cajun-style band Cannery Row will make this event hugely enjoyable - if a little bereft of trad. Celtic sounds!
And then there's Edmonton (August 7-10) with the likes of Lunasa (oh yes! What a great band! They are so good you don't even notice they don't have any vocals!), Ron Kavana withNiamh Parson, Paddy Keenan & Siobhan Peoples (three Irish music stalwarts joined by the fiddling daughter of Tommy Peoples).
Sharon Shannon - that wonderful accordionist from Galway making her first western Canadian festival appearance for many years - Baka Beyond (whose latest CD adds their Celtic / Cameroon groove to songs from Shakespeare's The Tempest\).
Irish music legends Donal Lunny & Andy Irvine performing as a duo, songwriters Jez Lowe, James Keelaghan, and Maria Dunn with fiddler Lizzie Hoyt, etc.
OK, so festival producer Terry Wickham is a Dublin man and his festival always showcases brilliant Celtic music, but this year's lineup is spectacular! (There's a lot more than Celtic on the bill, too).
I'll be going to Edmonton for sure, but I do wish we had something nearly as good in our own backyard....
Speaking of our backyard, The Rogue Folk Club is busy with some summer shows and we are on the lookout for creative solutions to our ongoing heat problems at St. James Hall.
If there is anyone out there who knows someone in the air conditioning business or has any fabulous ideas for cooling down a large wooden hall with very few windows, we would love to hear from you! Pleasee-mailroguefolk@telus.net, orcall(604)732-1305.
There are two sold-out shows with California duo The Milk Carton Kids at St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue) on June 12 and 13.
If you don't have a ticket, there just might be a standby ticket or two available on the night if someone doesn't show up.
On Friday, June 20, there is a concert of traditional Greek music on guitar and bouzouki from local duo Yiorgos & Yannis at St. James.
Then on Sunday, June 22, The Rogue will have a booth at the amiual Greek Day street festival on West Broadway.
Come along and say "Hi" and see what's happening at The Rogue (and the Hollywood Theatre).
It's a free event, with music and food and beverages. And it's always great to see people revelling in their cultural roots (as Dick Gaughan might say: "I'm immensely proud of where I'm from, but I can only be so if I'm equally proud of where everyone is from too!").
That same weekend (Saturday, June 21) I will be an MC at the Gathering Fes-tival in Emery Barnes Park (Seymour & Davie) with performances by Jim Byrnes, Petunia & The Vipers, and Gary Comeau's Voodoo All-Stars and lots more besides.
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