The Kate Wolf Music Festival, 2022

 

Like perhaps thousands of other couples, in 1984 Carol and I included Kate Wolf’s song GiveYourself to Love in our wedding ceremony.  I listened regularly to several of her albums in the early ‘80’s, after first hearing her on Mike Flynn's syndicated radio show, The Folk Sampler, and we got to see her perform and briefly speak with her, in Lansing Michigan in 1985. She died of leukemia at age 44 in December of the next year. This was a monumental loss for many, and in 1996 a memorial concert was held in Sebastopol, CA.  It became an annual festival, moving north to Laytonville, CA in 2001.  Once we heard of it, after emerging from the haze of early child-rearing, we vowed to go.  Finally, we arranged to meet two of our best music buddies there for the 25^th annual (rescheduled from 2020), said to be the last one.

We drove eight hours on the first day so that we would only have an hour’s drive the next day to the festival site. Having been advised by the festival info to not arrive before 8 am in order to avoid being turned away by the state police for blocking the highway, we approached the site a little after 8am.  It turned out that in reality what the police do is force the festival to allow early arriving cars in to clear the highway, and the majority of attendees being festival veterans knew this and came early, so by the time we were finally waved in the parking area was nearly full. 

We walked the ¼ mile from temporary parking to the wrist band area, where a long line had formed.  It soon became clear that we’d be waiting for about 3 hours (turned out to be exactly that).  The sun was rising and getting hotter; I walked back to the car to get hats and sunscreen. People were kind of seething with discomfort at this point, especially those near the back of the line.  Those further along had evolved to an acceptance of the situation and had settled into pleasant conversation with their new line friends (actually, line friend conversations are a favorite part of festival-going).  Pretty quickly, with our sun-screened and hatted bodies, we had traded curses for laughter. 

There was a festival volunteer whose job was to keep the people in line from blocking an access road.  He was 60ish, barefooted and dressed in loose, flowing tie-dyed fabrics, and he was barking at us to clear the road: “come on people, move to the side, what if YOU needed an ambulance!”  He seemed angry and outraged by our casual positional drifting. I thought “Wavy Gravy wouldn’t do it like that”.  I guess to me he looked like Wavy (psychedelic clothing and a rough-hewn face); I later learned that the land upon which we stood was Wavy’s place, Black Oak Ranch.  His spirit was in the air. More about Wavy below. 

One of our favorite artists we discovered at the 25^th annual Kate Wolf was John Craigie. I immediately thought of Dan Bern (see notes below) while watching Craigie perform, solo and with many of his friends and fellow musicians; I was mesmerized and lifted by his music laced with irreverence and rebellion.  I almost rushed to the artists tent afterward.  I had heard him tell the story of how sometimes he would be asked if anyone ever tells him that he looks like John Craigie.  He would tell them no, and then say yes when asked if he knows John Craigie…it’s a weird loop, and he, being a humorist and performer, tells it very entertainingly.  I wanted to hit him with another question sort of in that vein which was, “does anyone ever tell you that you sound like Dan Bern?”.  I waited in the (pretty long) line and popped my question.  To my delight, he said no at first, and then a hearty “well no but I wish more folks would say that and that more people knew of Dan Bern”, who he said was actually a big influence on him! In 1996 Dugg Simpson, then in his first year as the Artistic  Director of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival went to check out Dan Bern at the urging of a friend.  Upon reflecting on that, Simpson said that “when an artist is so good that they scare you, you should probably book them”. 

We are veteran fans of the Vancouver Folk Festival. Between 1995 and 2017, we attended (usually with our 2 sons) 19 times.  A standout performer in 1996 was Dan Bern, performing there for the first time.  A singer-songwriter performing solo with guitar and harmonica, he delivered a dark and funny-as-hell mix of politics, social commentary and traditional folk themes laced with vicious humor. Murray Foster, director of the Toronto Songwriting School says that for folkies in those days Dan Bern was “as close as we had to a rock star”. Murray and his band were on the folk festival circuit along with Bern in the late 1990’s. “All the other artists sitting backstage eating cous-cous would run side stage to watch his show”, Foster recalled. A particular magic for us was that our kids (at that time age 9 and 10) enjoyed his show as much as we did.  Dan was playing the role of the clown as well as the musician and singer-songwriter.  His clothes were deranged, his shirt ripped and worn and his lycra cycling shorts and work boots incongruous.  I vividly remember how we all loved his show and made sure we caught his next performance (artists would perform several times on different stages over the course of the 3-day festival).

We love these musical epiphanies, these magical moments. We love these troubadours of truth, these artists with their wands of transformation. When they are "killing" us softly, or singing our lives, or strumming our pain, or telling our whole lives, but in the best way possible for that time and place.  Joy!

NOTES on video clips

This is a short video that I think pokes fun at how sometimes people are incredulous about song-writing (how can you write so many?!)  For example, at one of Dan Bern’s return engagements at Vancouver, he claimed to have written a song while sitting in the park down the way, a few hours before his performance (it seemed like a great song).  I previewed his songwriter master class too and that looked interesting.

Dan Bern performs his song Jerusalem from his first album. We saw him do this one at Vancouver in 1996.  Olives.  

John Craigie at the Woods Stage, Pickathon (Portland, OR) 2018. Start the clip from the beginning. 

I think most of you will have seen the 1970 movie Woodstock; here is a clip of Wavy Gravy making one of his many famous announcements there. He was 34 years old.

 This is a short piece with Wavy explaining the big whale, a classic example of his tactical style (the red nose disappears before the clip ends).

 Kate Wolf performing Like a River. We fell in love with her.

Bruce Cockburn and Ruthie Foster, Kate Wolf Folk Festival 2022

The Utah Phillips memorial stage signage, Kate Wolf Folk Festival 2022