Despite its relatively small size, Winnipeg knows how to throw a summer party! From late June until the end of August, this prairie city known mostly for its cold winters and newly-returning hockey team comes alive with festival after festival celebrating music, theatre, and culture.
The Winnipeg Folk Festival finished its five-day celebration of folk, roots, and traditional music on Sunday with another day of beautiful (and sunburn-inducing) weather and a solo performance by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy.
Saturday was a busy day for ShowbizMonkeys.com at the 2011 Winnipeg Folk Festival! We interviewed a couple critical and audience favourites -- Vancouver singer/songwriter Dan Mangan and Winnipeg folk-pop band Imaginary Cities.
Friday evening brought the first rain of the festival (not the most fun for our first night camping at the festival campground), but most of the day was sunny, hot, and humid. Highlights from Friday's line-up included Dan Mangan, k.d.
Unfortunately, as we alluded to yesterday, there won't be any big posts for the next couple days from the Winnipeg Folk Festival, as the exhaustion (and let's face it, fun) of camping is taking up a lot of our time over the weekend.
Thursday night at the 2011 Winnipeg Folk Festival featured some pleasant surprises, but it was indie folk mainstays Tegan and Sara who rocked the Bird's Hill Park field to a delighted and uncharacteristically raucous crowd.
Back in 1993, the iconic Canadian roots-rock band Blue Rodeo released their album Five Days in July, probably their most defining work in their nearly three decades as a band.
There are lots of bands and musicians out there who are really impressive recording artists, but maybe not the most exciting (or even very good) in a live setting. For some, it's just a case of utilizing a lot of great production that can't translate, while others are clearly aided in the studio and just can't cut it in on stage.
In the relatively short time he's been a full-time musician, singer/songwriter James Struthers has been compared to several established and popular artists. And while the comparisons may be fairly accurate, saying Struthers sounds like Jason Mraz or John Mayer doesn't fairly represent how fresh and original he and his music really is.
Dozens of acts, tens of thousands of festivalgoers, and countless hours of great music helped make the 37th Annual Winnipeg Folk Festival a memorable five days. The weather held up for the most part, while the music certainly did.
I'm going to be honest here...
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