Music Beat
The two main live music venues in Lethbridge close down for South Country Fair, so most of the music community will be in Fort Macleod, July 21-23.
People come to South Country Fair for a variety of reasons.
“(People come) For the music obviously but also I think a lot of it is for the community. You can definitely feel it when you walk around here - the amount of love and togetherness. Everyone works really hard to make sure that all the guests have a great time. A lot of unique friendships have been made here and it's a really special place to return to, year after year,” summarized artistic director Jana MacKenzie.
Gillian Moranz grew up in a South Country Fair family as her parents Maureen Chambers and Trent Moranz helped found the festival over 30 years ago.
She has been responsible for booking the East Stage for the past several years. As she has been living in Vancouver for the past year, she is excited to introduce some of her favourite new musical discoveries to the Fair.
“But we have a great line up of performers from Calgary to Edmonton to Kamloops. And we have some newcomers, which I’m very excited about,” she said, taking a break from working as a producer with the Vancouver Folk Festival.
Some familiar faces include Mariel Buckley who has played the Windy City Opry and who will be returning to Lethbridge the following week for the Wide Skies music Festival, plus Joe Nolan and the Dogs, roots, bluegrass duo Chicken-Like Birds, who have played Lethbridge a couple of times, local favourites Junkman‘s Quire, who have just released their new CD and Eliza Marie Doyle, who used to play with the Cracker Cats and who was most recently in Lethbridge, both as a solo performer and as a member of the Dead South.
“We also have Kitty and the Rooster who includes Noah Walker who is a great guitar player who has played with CR Avery and Jodie Ponto who is a great photographer,” she said.
“ I’m excited about Sam Tudor. He’s a really young songwriter from Vancouver who doesn’t tour often,” she enthused, adding she is also excited to present Vancouver bluegrass band Viper Central.
She always enjoys South Country Fair.
“I have to give credit to all of the volunteers. It is pretty exciting. They have such spontaneous energy and creativity,” she enthused.
Artistic director Jana McKenzie is excited about many things about this year‘s South Country Fair.
“Well, this is the second year of kids rock camp, they'll once again be starting off the stage on Friday and last year being its first year we've never had more people at the main stage that time of day - so we're really looking forward to that again, should be an exciting start for the kids. Another thing I'm excited about is that we've got William price coming to the fair who has recently won a Juno so that should be a good show,” she wrote from the Ness Creek Music Festival. She noted one of the changes this year is moving the Fair’s outreach program to the gazebo by the swimming pool
