Events By Genre

Event

Title:: South Country Fair
When:: Sun, Jul 19
Where:: Fort Macleod Fish and Game Park - Fort Macleod
Category:: Folk

Description

Time: noon

Tickets:

Saturday or Sunday Afternoon

Gate $30

Students Seniors advance $30

Student seniors Gate $30

Fish and Games park

http://southcountryfair.com/

South
12:30: Workshop Leeroy stagger, Scott Duncan NQ Arbuckle

1:40: Sean Rowe (Folk Country) http://www.anti.com/artists/sean-rowe/

Sean Rowe has just released a new EP entitled Her Songs. The record and its accompanying videos document the acclaimed singer-songwriter and guitar player delivering acoustic versions of six compositions written exclusively by female artists - Sade, Cat Power, Neko Case, Regina Spektor, Lucinda Williams and Feist. The record and filmed performances combine to serve as an immensely powerful testament to Rowe’s interpretative guitar and vocal talents.

Initial reactions have been nothing short of phenomenal. Elmore Magazine wrote, “Rowe’s booming, resonant baritone infuses the tracks with an evocative, searing power. The best covers can re-frame a beloved song in a new light, and Rowe’s effortless masculinity lends a new tinge of remorse to the ballad, reminiscent of the iconic balladeer Johnny Cash.” Upon hearing his rendition of her “Soldiers Song,” Lucinda Williams proclaimed “This is the best cover of any of my songs that anyone has ever done. I am completely moved.”

2:50Poet TBA

3:15: Wendy McNeil (folk) http://wendymcneill.com/

I started writing songs while studying Dance at an Arts College. As much as I loved the raw energy and honesty of movement, when it came to truly 'figuring out' some of what was bouncing around in my mind and heart - I needed words. And those words were coaxed out of me far more readily and truthfully when wrapped in a melody. I still use songwriting as a way to navigate through murky waters. But now, I often find other people's stories a lot more compelling than my own. I love researching interesting folks and events and pulling them into songs. I'm also a huge animal lover, so their wild ways and worlds often creep into my writing.
A lot of what has shaped me as an artist has come from the random events in life. I started playing guitar when I realised that I needed to stop dating guitar players. I picked up the accordion when a French clown tossed one into my arms while backstage at a music festival . I started experimenting with looping and various pedals when I needed to reproduce the layers that I was imagining, but couldn't afford to pay a band to create them.

4:20: workshop Misery Mountain Boys Washboard Hank, Jenny Ritter

East
Noon: Little Jill’s Big Grass Jam
1:05: Skye Wallace (folk) http://www.skyewallace.com/

Skye Wallace is on a quest to compile stark elements of Canadian landscape and history into a contemporary musical archive. Often drawn from untold stories hidden in plain sight, Skye’s songs are dynamic, gritty, and orchestral, both the melodies and narratives sticking in your head long after listening.
Skye is currently residing, performing, and writing in Vancouver.
After having embarked on successful Canada-wide tours in 2011, 2013, and 2014, hitting the West Coast festival circuit, Canadian Music Week, and NXNE, Skye has just released her third full-length studio album. “Living Parts” is Skye’s highly-anticipated album about dead things — though the term “dead things” shouldn’t be taken at face value. In “Living Parts,” Skye exhumes and gives voice to the tiny fragments of hope, desire, and despair that echo in the wake of even the loneliest human lives.
Simultaneously visceral and ethereal, the tracks on “Living Parts” are a collection of strikingly personal portraits of characters at their most vulnerable, exposing the messy, fragile ‘parts’ that make them alive, or, in some cases, not quite alive. By turns reminiscent of the brooding, orchestral musical settings of Sigur Rós and The National, the quirkily evocative harmonics of Alt-J and Bon Iver, and a Canadiana take on the grunge-folk thrash of Neutral Milk Hotel, Against Me!, and The Weakerthans, Living Parts manages to constantly reference its roots while sounding like nothing you’ve heard before.
Backed by a full band and produced by Spencer Carson (Kyprios, Dead Soft, All My Friends),

2:10: Dance Till you Drop Sunday Funday Workshop

3:40: Brock Zeman (folk/ country) http://brockzeman.com/

Over the course of 11 albums, Ottawa area singer songwriter Brock Zeman has built a reputation as a writer of great depth and passion, through his thoughtful, often personal songs. But he’s got a rough, rockin’ side as well. Joined on relentless tours across Western Canada and down to Texas and back by his ever present collaborator, Blair Hogan, and often drummer Dylan Roberts, Zeman and crew can put on a powerful show that has attendees rocking as much as feeling the stories that he tells in song. He could easily be the bastard son of Lucinda Williams and Steve Earle, with a gravelly Tom Waits voice.
brock zemanOn his last couple of albums, Zeman had been experimenting with dense sound scapes that told as much of the story as his words. On the newest, “Pulling Your Sword out of the Devil’s Back,” the words and melody are at the forefront, and with a batch of songs as strong as these, they certainly should be. The melodies on the record are his strongest yet. Many are instantly memorable, and could find a home on commercial country or rock radio. If those tired formats played powerful songs like these, “Dead Man’s Shoes” could be a strong country hit, and “Little Details” or “Some Things Always Stay” would be blaring out of car windows all summer long.

Although the songs and the album sound fun, there is some deep emotion spilled out. Zeman tells some sad stories of heartbreak and love gone wrong on this one. One of the most sad and powerful songs is “10 Year Fight,” where he recounts seeing the father of a former lover, who has been struggling after “Daddy’s little girl, she’s gone wrong.” After the meeting Zeman says, “I finally lost the battle of a 10 year fight. I broke a promise to myself that you would never get a song. Don’t it look like I was wrong.”
In the powerful title track Zeman speaks more than sings, “I live in a house full of ghosts that just won’t let me be. I let ‘em in myself, but now I can’t get ‘em to leave. I’m haunted by love…” and now he’s exorcising those ghosts inside of these songs. For him, writing songs is “Juggling words and chiseling lines to tell a story, to tell the truth… It’s just heart to tongue, tongue to hand, blah, blah, blah, and struggle.” Later in the song, Zeman says, “And when you really knock it out, and all the planets align, it’s like pulling your sword out of the devil’s back and saying ‘No! Not this time!’” before building to a powerful crescendo finish.
With this record, the sword has obviously come loose, and there’s no doubt that Zeman will use it to battle other ghosts, demons and devils in song. The prolific writer has already written the bulk of another album, and has a wealth of other material still awaiting recording or release. This is a mature, powerful album from a writer who truly needs to be heard. Here’s hoping that many new ears will be tuned to this one.

-Jeff Robson, Tell The Band To Go Home