Mariposa Day Two
By John Swartz
Saturday at the Mariposa Folk Festival was interesting. There were a few performances of note and I don’t know how anyone can go during the afternoon on a Saturday or Sunday, walk out to Barnfield Point and not have your spirits lifted seeing the hundreds of kids running amok and having the time of their lives.
Tempering the good times was the weather. Friday was a nice summer day, Saturday turned out to be hot – hot, and humid. The order of the day was to drink, some said water, to replace the gallons of sweat lost. I had this thought later in the afternoon a light sprinkle might do some good to take humidity out of the air.
Basia Bulat returned to Mariposa to open the proceedings at 5 p.m. on the Lightfoot Stage. She performed at Mariposa a long time ago and it was good to get reacquainted with her music, but that was short-lived because at 5:30 it rained.
That is a bit of understatement, it rained Maine Coons and St. Bernard’s for 35 minutes. I had just gone to my car to grab something when the light stage of the storm began, then spent the whole time looking through my windshield at a open patch of the sky which seemed to be hovering over Orillia’s north end. On the plus side I never did get the chance all week to wash my car, so mission accomplished anyway.
The storm shortened Basia’s set and the next act, Holly Cole, ended the rain delay at about 6:30 p.m. which was rather quick considering all the rain that dumped on us. The main stage order of appearance schedule was only behind by 20 minutes.
Holly’s band included George Koller on bass. He always looks like he’s having too much fun on stage and like he’s plotting to do something to make the other band members laugh. That attitude comes through in the music he makes. John Johnson was along to play saxophone. He was last in town in May as part of Lance Anderson’s Music of Duke Ellington/Count Basie concert at the Opera House. Every time John gets a solo he seems to contribute just the right thing for the song. He doesn’t just blurt out run after run of wall-to-wall 16th or 24th note passages. I don’t think we get to hear enough of his playing up here.
Backtracking to the afternoon, or morning actually, I was at Tudhope Park at 10:30 a.m. instead of mid-to-late afternoon. These things don’t write themselves, so you can imagine I lost a bit of sleepy time. The reason I was early was because I was announcing the first act at the pub stage, a workshop with Run With the Kittens and the Boo Radley Project.
The former is a trio of musicians from here, Oro-Medonte, and Barrie who at times sound like a nine-piece band. For this workshop they have a nine-piece band joining them. The Boo Radley’s are from Guelph. When I was checking up some info on the band, their bio mentioned a list of bands they’ve been compared to, last on the list was Tower of Power. This was exciting information to have. I did not expect a large band and when I got to the backstage area I saw a person holding a trumpet and a person holding a sax and I thought, “This is good, they don’t just shuffle horn parts off to a synthesizer like so many other bands playing Funk, R&B and Soul do.”
The thing about these workshops is most bands and musicians don’t know how each other’s songs go and figure it out as they go along. It was humorous watching Nate Mills direct everybody on stage when a Kittens tune was being played. On one song he kept calling out the different instruments for solos and the results from the Boo Radley band members was excellent.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned before how creative Jake Oelrichs is playing drums. A large part of it comes from the inherent sense of humour necessary to keep up with Nate; he’s always playing something strange and interesting in the same way a comedian tells a joke you have to think about for a second before laughing. Well, in that same song Nate called out – everybody out but drums and percussion.
What followed was eight counts of silence. I was laughing so hard at the idea when it was Jake’s turn to have the spotlight, he and the drummer and percussionist of the Boo Radley’s, who were supporting the song with various ging gong’s played absolutely nothing. Jake then started playing all whole notes, a beat every four counts, adding more notes as you went along, turning it into a proper drum solo. Afterward I asked him if he heard me laughing, which he didn’t. He told me he didn’t hear what Nate had said and really didn’t know he was supposed to take a solo. I told him I just thought he was once again screwing with everybody’s heads.
Creating with clay 
Will McGarvey
Then I took some time to go out to the Point. A good portion of the activity is opportunities for the kids to make art. The Schillings, Will McGarvey, Tanya and Annie Kmyta Cunnington and various others set up next to Brewery Bay every year to do some painting and provide opportunities for kids to learn. While checking in with them I found Waldo. John Emberson puts the costume on every year which seems to delight the youngest ones. This time he was on the water and much easier to spot.
Found Him 
Dr. Bonkers
I caught a bit of Dr. Bonkers’s (Nate Mills) show. He’s not just funny in a bent kind of way, he’s a really good ventriloquist. When he was wrapping up and putting his dummy away in a sack, the dummy said goodbye a few times from inside the slack and the voice Nate was using sounded like it was in the sack too. We should do an a Orillia’s Got Talent show, actually we are having one later this month, but have performers doing things they’re really good at, but not doing the things we already know they’re really good at.
I caught a bit of Ronnie Douglas’s afternoon solo gig at the Village Stage. It played songs from his solo album, Music Is Medicine. He included a brand-new song he just put on all the music services this past week called Too Many Hearts.
Back to the other side of the storm. Elisapie’s set on the main stage was not what I expected. To begin with she wore a cream coloured costume that had fringes, from left wrist all the way around behind her back to her right wrist, which had to be two or 3 feet long which she used to great effect. This makes sense when you learn she’s from a small village in Nunavik.
She opened with Time After Time. The music sounded like Time, but the lyrics didn’t. It turns out she recorded an album of covers, but with the lyrics translated to Inuktitut. She also did very different arrangements of the music. She also covered a Led Zeppelin’s Going To California and Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams mixed in among some of her own songs. I’m glad I got a chance to hear this music.
The Pub Stage was running about an hour behind. I caught the first bit of Goldie’s (Boutilier) set. It’s clear she’s aiming at much bigger stages. Sex appeal is central to her act, with complementary costuming and choreography. The music I remember at least seems to be keeping pace with the image.
I also caught this incredibly good band called Bros, which is a side project for Ewan and Shamus Currie of Sheepdogs. They had a horn section and an extra percussionist playing congas. This was not going to be rock ‘n roll. A brass section with three players would normally be trumpet, sax and trombone for most bands but in this case they dropped the trumpet and Shamus was the second trombone of the trio, and he doubled on keyboards.
They started their set with of funky fanfare and you can’t have a fanfare without brass instruments, who led the sound of the band through a series of ensemble hits and power chords igniting the audience. The crowd was ready for this band but I’m not so sure they were ready for the 2 x 4 between the eyes the band delivered.
(Photos by Swartz – SUNonline/Orillia) Main: Elisapie made her costume part of her show a the Mariposa Folk Festival
