The streets of Lethbridge will be alive with the sounds of music for Canada Day.

 As per usual there will be something for everyone, at both Henderson Lake Park all day long until the fireworks and in Galt Gardens during the day.
While Henderson Lake has a variety of family activities from 10 a.m. until the fireworks, it is all about the music in Galt Gardens.

“The only requirement was that they be good or show promise,” said Jill Skriver, who has been organizing the music in the park for the past seven years.
 Bridgette Yarwood kicks things off with a solo set at 10 a.m..
“How do you get better than that,” Skriver asked.

“The band Bridgette was in, NSR, were amazing. They could have been picked up at any time. I’m surprised they weren’t,” she enthused.
“And talk about promise, we’ve got Matt Robinson,” she said adding she is also excited to have Steve Keenan on the bill.

There is a variety of music in the Gardens including some outlaw country with the Smokin’ Pistols, a solo set by bluesman Steve Keenan at 1 p.m., country pop with Alyssa McQuaid, folk and blues with Matt Robinson, progressive rock with the New Weather Machine and classic rock with Who’s Yer Daddy. There will also be some belly dancing from the Desert Wind Belly Dancers.
“It will be a  party in the park,” Skriver said.

Skriver is also excited about adding a couple young bands to the bill— Sole Survivor and Shocked Standards.

While the Galt Gardens program has never been aimed at children, Skriver noted many children and their parents are drawn to it anyway. She is hoping more will come out to hear these young bands.
“We just hope and pray for good weather and that everybody will enjoy the line up as much as I’m going to, because it really is a a good line up,” Skriver said.
“I hope people will  come and hear all of the good music and start the day off with it,” she said.

There will also be music and a lot more all day long over at Henderson Lake,  as well as lots of family orientated activities.
“I didn’t do everything,” said Jackie French, who organized Henderson Lake’s Canada Day musical entertainment for the fourth year.
 While the Galt Gardens line-up tends to focus on original music and music for the adults, the Henderson Lake line-up is geared towards cover bands who play an array of music everybody knows and loves. So there will be the usual suspects including  the U of L Steel Drums, Texas Flood, Hippodrome (who play leading up to the fireworks).
 “Basically we try to do the best we can for family entertainment on a small budget,” French said. She said they have scheduled a variety of dance acts to perform while bands are setting up to avoid downtime.

“We wanted to try to have a variety of different  kinds of music and we wanted to implement the dancers in between the bands while they set up,” she said.

There will be the Sudanese Dancers, the Irish Dance Academy, The Canadian Rocky Mountain Cloggers plus the Ammena Dance Company, who will be performing twice.
 A couple nice surprises include local rockabilly trio Bent 8 plus Jason and the Diatonics featuring Jason Poulsen who is known as an actor on the TV show Hiccups as well as Smallville and even performed with New West Theatre. The Vancouver based band was booked at the last moment  due to a variety of factors.

This year, organizers had to overcome a few issues with the stage not being up to new safety codes implemented after the death at the  big country music festival last year. It resulted in the Community band not being able to play this year as there were too many members to fit on the stage.
“We had a little glitch with the stage,” she said adding it didn’t pass the inspection, so they had to use the same stage used for LSCO Rocks the Block.

“We exhausted all resources trying to bring in another stage, but it’s Canada Day and they were too expensive or too far away,” she said adding they offered the Gold and Silver Community Bands a variety of options, but weren’t able to work it out.
“We offered them an early slot  to play on the dance floor in front of the stage,” said French. She said bigger bands like Hippodrome will be able to fit on the stage because they are using the backline provided, but the drum riser would have to be detached and moved to fit the community band on the stage and there wouldn’t be enough time to do it.
 In addition to lots of music and dancing there will be vendors. There will be one at Galt Gardens and lots at Henderson Lake. Also at Henderson Lake will be face painting, a giant mural for children to paint, reptiles and even karaoke.

There will also be dog agility demonstrations for people to watch the cunning canines being put through the paces on a variety of obstacles.
Youth bands will also be involved including Vista Park and Sole Rotation who are G.S. Lakie students under the tutelage of Sheldon Arvay.
“So we’re really excited to have them. It’ll be great,” French said.

Something new this year is the fireworks at 11 p.m. will be synchronized with music to be played live on Country 95 and B-93.
“We thought it would be cool to put the music to fireworks and it worked out,” she said.

A version of this story appeared in the June 25, 2011 edition of the Lethbridge Sun Times

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