I arrived in the middle of an exciting and impressive set by Oh My Darling  for the first annual Prairie Folk tournament which got off to a great start, Friday, March 11 with a sold out crowd of enthusiastic music fans.

They played a sizzling bluegrass version of  Tina Turner’s “What’s Love Got To Do With It,”  and were surprised to get a request for “Caught You Looking” off their latest CD “In The Lonesome Hours”.

They played it with glee. The girls,  bassist Marie Josee Dandeneau, banjo player Allison De Groot, fiddler Rosalyn Dennett and guitarist/ lead singer Vanessa Kuzina, showed mad skill on their instruments as  well as impressive vocal harmonies.

 One of my favourite tricks was called fiddlesticks,” where  Kuzina put down her guitar and picked up a pair of sticks to hit Dennett’s fiddle strings, while she played, all without hitting the same strings.

I missed a couple excellent shows on Saturday, but wanted to support the second day of the Prairie Folk Tournament.

To borrow a phrase from performer Sean Brewer, it was a great night of prairie themed  roots/ country “plains-billy” misc. The turnout wasn’t as great  for the second day, though people started pouring in after touring all of the art gallery openings, Saturday.

 The Skilletlikkers were up first with a strong set of country rock including Taylor Ackerman on steel guitar.
 All of the performers shared the stage, with  Treeline backing Calgary cowboy singer Tom Phillips featuring Taylor Ackerman on stand up bass and Tyler  Bird on accordion and the Skilletlikkers’ Andy Macnamara adding extra guitar. Phillips voice cracked in places, but he told stories and pulled off a fine Johnny Cash baritone with just a touch of Blaze Foley and Gurf Morlix quirkiness.

Treeline was up next with Sean Brewer adding a little extra guitar. Ryan Dyck sang most of the lead vocals including a couple excellent songs about his grandfather’s southern Alberta hometown and another excellent one called “Tennessee Sweater. ” plus a new crowd favourite  called “Michael.”
 Treeline stayed on stage to back Sean Brewer’s set of  upbeat  country. And even Andrew Neville joined the crowd on stage to add some extra guitar.

Neville took the stage well past midnight , backed by Treeline as the surrogate Poor Choices (his main backing band) to rock the night to a close and to get the surging crowd dancing— Waylon Jennings country style.

He sang a variety of quirky original songs about beer drinking, his home town of Winnipeg, an awesome song  about road rage as well as a Dale Watson song about new country music called “Country My Ass.”

 He wound down his set on a couple upbeat Telecaster twangy note with “Prairie Boy” as well as  crowd favourite “Stupid F*****G  Things I’ve Done.” And being up well past 4 a.m including  daylight savings time definitely wasn’t one of them because it was totally worth it.