Another Celtic Roots Festival come and gone. And I feel it pretty necessary to sing its praises to the mountains and brooks. This folk festival feels like a living entity like none other, but perhaps its unfair to say that this festival lives while life escapes others, so our excercise in personification should be applied liberally to all contenders. Given that, the Celtic Roots Festival is like one of the nicest, friendliest people you know. Fun, vibrant, beautiful and well put-together. There’s really nothing to complain about, except a slight lack in cooking skills but the neighbours (the Park House Tavern) cover for that admirably and even offer take out.
The greatest thing about the Goderich festival is the sense of community. Every year it’s mostly the same artisans, and mostly the same sound technicians and a whole lot of recurrent performers and volunteers and even attendees (a lot of ‘em coming from pretty far away), so there’s friendly familiar faces everywhere. Soppy community-loving aside, there’s also some really goddamned good music. They call in the cream of the crop in celtic music from Canada, the US, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Listening to some of those people work a fiddle or guitar is jaw-droppingly spectacular. Tony McManus (“One of the world’s greatest and most innovative guitarists”, “The best Celtic guitarist in the world”) and Alisdair Fraser (“recognized throughout the world as one of the finest fiddle players Scotland has ever produced”) made an awesomely unstoppable duo, that often sounded like 10 people playing rather than 2. Trinque L’amourette (a band playing, singing, and dancing in the Acadian vein) convinced me that maybe I can admit to not hating the french; and damn that song was catchy. All the other artists were quite excellent as well. And I still can’t quite figure out how to pronounce Gearoid Oh’Allmhurain. It costs 40 or 50 bucks for a weekend pass but it’s definitely worth it and it tends to weed out the… you know, the lesser, undeserving whipper snappers. Vive la celtique!
This year we (me n’ the ‘rents) stayed at the same nice little bed and breakfast a bit outside of Goderich that they (me bro me ‘rents n’ gramps) stayed at last year when I was notably absent. It was a nice place and the hosts were really cool. The weather for the entire weekend was also bordering on perfection–sunny, nice breezes, and low 20s degreeage. It was really quite lovely all things concerned. I spent most of my time at my dad’s booth pimping out harps. Since my disastrous failure as a telemarketer, my family has decided that I am now the salesperson of the family. It was actually quite enjoyable standing around being friendly with strangers and expertly and politely fielding harp-related queries. I met someone who lives really close to where my work in progress is set, someone who went to my high school but 40 years ago or so, and with one of the infamous South London Hardware Mumas, two lasses who buy really old pianos and restore them in their workshop, and even some people quite interested in harps. I also got my picture taken for the Goderich Signal-Star (not sure if the editor liked my face enough to actually put me in, though), and my dad got interviewed by the “Beach Buggy” which is some on-air feature for localish radio station … W K something something I think it was. Add that to my mom being on the new PL playing the harp at Home County a couple weeks ago and it’s clear that we’re takin’ over the frickin’ world! The highlight of the entire weekend though had to be that in the program my dad was listed as Roger Muma Musical Lust. Which likely relates directly to the large number of kanteles we sold over the weekend, including the one that sold in the silent auction for 40% more than its retail value. Sex sells. And when that fails, lust le.. la… . Well there’s just no word in English appropriately beginning with the letter l that is appropriate here, so my attempt at cleverness has been ruthlessly defeated. Regardless, this past weekend was one of the finest of the summer. Sláinte!