Time: noon -6 p.m.

Tickets: until July 9
$80.00
$70.00 Student/Senior
at the Gate: $100/$90

Barracuda Orchestra http://www.myspace.com/barracudaorchestre
e.s.l. http://www.eslband.com/

eye contact is the stirring debut CD from Vancouver’s E.S.L. – one of those magic projects conceived in the musical chemistry among firstclass artists. A wealth of chops and inspiration come together here, bringing ideas from all over and bending them into an album that ranges across the emotional map. From lavish to swinging, the songs are a gypsy blend that is at times playful and at others heartrending.

Of particular note here are the driving rhythms of ‘Secretariat,’ and the lush cello sounds and vocal ache of ‘Side by Side.’ Guest vocalists include Duffy Driediger of Ladyhawk, and vocalist Marta Jacubek-
McKeever ‘s father Irek Jaciubek on the Polish styled ‘Czarne Oczy.’

E.S.L. is a fusion of players who could each claim top billing anywhere else. But no room for egos here. Instead, we get an incomparable band that includes Polish born pianist and singer Marta Jacubek-McKeever
(Girl Nobody); noted Cree cellist Cris Derksen; fiddler Diona Davies (Po’Girl, Carolyn Mark, Be Good Tanyas) and drummer Joy Mullen (The People Verses, The Doers, Greg MacPherson). Separately, their credentials are impressive, together, they’re divine.
 

Amos Garrett http://www.melmusic.com/amos_garrett/

 Revered as one of the top guitar players in Alberta, the reputation Amos Garrett has spent over four decades building spans beyond the geography of the Prairies, reaching into the U.S. and overseas.

Curling up with Garrett’s beloved 14-year-old pointer, Maggie, on his plush sofa, which rests in the living room of his unpretentious country-style home in High River, AB, quickly makes one realize that despite the two-time Juno Award winner’s impressive musical achievements, he leads a quiet home life, centered around his other passions: fly fishing, bird hunting and training bird dogs.

Born in Detroit, but raised in Toronto, Garrett moved through piano and trombone lessons, remarking that neither instrument suited him, before finding the guitar at the age of 14. Within a year, Garrett was gigging.

“I just sort of took to the guitar – it suited me and I guess I had gotten over my awkward years as a teen. I was getting little jobs playing within a year of picking up the guitar,” remembers Garrett.

Although known world-wide as a jazz and blues cat, Garrett’s eclectic style of playing has allowed him to transcend beyond those genres that lie closest to his heart, rooted in childhood, into country-rock, pop and folk.

“Back then, we called everything rock ‘n’ roll. We didn’t call stuff blues, rhythm and blues, rockabilly – it was all rock ‘n’ roll to us,” reflects Garrett. He remembers 1954 as being “the year rock arrived,” catapulting artists such as Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and T. Bone Walker into a world that would never forget them.

By the time he had reached college age, Garrett began learning about early acoustic Delta blues players from the 1930s such as Robert Johnson and Leadbelly.

And while Garrett was hard at work developing his own sound and playing in bar bands in the Toronto area, including the Dirty Shames (which also included Chick Roberts, Jim McCarthy and Carol Robinson), the acoustic folk duo known as Ian and Sylvia Tyson were conjuring up a new sound of their own.
 

Fred Eaglesmith  http://www.fredeaglesmith.com/

Like all great and genuine artists, Fred Eaglesmith lets his muse call the tune on his 18th album, Cha Cha Cha. And this time out it’s the big beat of rock’n’roll.

And it is not only rock’n’roll, though that is at the heart of this collection of reflections on the always fertile subject of love by one of the most acclaimed singer-songwriter of our day. With his usual creative panache, Eaglesmith splashes the style with such colors as 1950s movie music, soulful backing vocals, dance rhythms and more.  He reconfigures one of the most potent essences of popular music into something all his own as well as both timeless yet urgently contemporary.

Cha Cha Cha percolates with the primal beats, grooves and vibe of rock’n’roll to fire a collection of sharp and concise songs about lovers who are faithless, fickle, feckless, lonesome, lost, loyal and even fleeting shadows and ghosts. With such simmering, rhythmically-driven tracks laced with driving electric guitar and keyboards as the blues with a Latin beat of “Careless,” the ominously crackling “Tricks,” the garage-band bounce and kick of “I Would” and the slinky and intoxicating “Dynamite and Whiskey,” the disc is yet another organic progression and variation from a talent whose vibrant recordings and stirring live shows have earned him comparisons to a virtual honor roll of musical icons. Yet, as always, it’s just Eaglesmith doing what comes naturally and burnishing his own vital brand of music with further character and dimensions.

Sunday Lotus Land
12:00 pm Kye Kocher
12:30 Ken Sears
1:00  Ali Riley
1:30  Wakefield Brewster
2:00  Homage and Maya
2:30 (Dale and Blaine) Word Salad

Sunday East Stage ( MC -- Gillian Moranz)
12:00 pm    Toques and Beards
1:00  T. Buckley   
2:00  Jessie D. and Jacquie B.
3:00  Heavy Shtetl