Current page: Last Canadian concert 2009
Current page: Last Canadian concert 2009
Yorkshire has as many acres of land as there are letters in the Bible. We are kind of proud of this heritage and rightly so that is, of course until you end up in Canada and realise just how mind numbingly big it is. You fly above the broad reaches of the Atlantic, 38,000 feet below and to a renegade Englishman it is good to hear the captain tell you just how high you are in feet - NOT bloody kilometres - 3,000 miles give or take a yard or two of ocean and when you hit the Canadian land mass, it is another 3,000 to the other side.
You land having flown over Harvey's breed birthland, Labrador and an hour or so later the rubber burns the tarmac in Pearson, Toronto. Me, Linda and the Dutch Peril (Young Barnhoorn, starry eyed and hungry for the sound of Indian rollers on faraway shores) make it through Customs with little ado and there to meet us is old friend Piers De Jong. That was a real surprise as we did not know if he and Ineke were coming or not (they have a house in Norwhich).
He dropped us off at the Comfort Inn, a warm reception and great rooms all courtesy of Ted Comiskey the wonderful Canadian/Irishman who is the love, the drive and the heart behind the Ingersoll Festival. After checking in we drop onto the familiar Festival site and great music filling the sky and the usual family atmosphere around it all.
The next morning after I hit my new craze, Canadian waffles with maple syrup (surple) we bump into previous stars and old friends. Valdi is there, one of the most travelled and seasoned folk singers in Canada and Graham Wardrop, a fine guitar picker and singer from New Zealand. Beloved old pal McGoo is there too. A great living heart and man of a thousand costumes, most of the them in startlingly attractive bad taste, who links in between the sets and introduces the acts. Don Wolan and his wife Louanne made it seem like yesterday we were last here and the time flew by.
We performed our workshops, a sometimes disturbing form of communication where you demonstrate your 'art' or lack of it to a motley mixture of Festival goers. We asked the gorgeous Gerry, Ineke's brother to come in on banjo with us again. He works amongst the Indians, is hugely knowledgble on all things Canadian, and a fair picker. I told him Blue Grass pickers in my experience always seemed either crushingly earnest or downright miserable, suffering for their art.
We played our first workshop with two of the Dixie Fliers. Earnest as a puritan in the stocks and our sense of humour totally lost on them. We were in hysterics, the crowd at this early point numbering some six souls and one dog. Two old ladies eating hamburgers watched our session with passionate disinterest, rings of fried onion falling out of the ends of their hamburgers. Wonderful.
We played the main stage on Saturday night. The crowd had swelled to impressive, then the evil machinations of the English rain Godess (a sort of Hilary Clinton) reached out with satanic fingers from Yorkshire and rainclouds backed up over the Festival site. We appeared to go down so well, brilliantly set up by McGoo, who to all intents and purposes appeared to be wearing a culinder on his head. We were the first main shot of the big nigh and the crowds were less than later as folks were not sure if it was going to deluge or not- it didn't. We were on fine form, playing out our swansong as Linda, Matt and I, and the vibes were wonderful. Everything seemed to go so fast.
It was my birthday on Monday the 13th and we dropped into London (Canadian) for lunch, a strange straggling place without a seeming heart and then spent the rest of the day getting Matt to Pearson Airport, then Linda and I getting lost in Ted's pick-up and circumnavigating Toronto in rush hour. Went back to a belate BBQ with Don and Louanne, belated because they'd forgotten they'd asked us... but wonderful all the same.
Tuesday up to Stratford, the birthplace of Richard Manuel of Band fame and into our beloved Indian store, Indigena and a thoroughly happy time in the sunshine with Piers and Ineke. Topped off the tour and the trip with the unbelievably kind Ted Comiskey; Cherie, Chris and Little Ted, for stunning cuisine, love a, music and stories. What a way to end the trip. I just love those people.
G'bye to the great folk at the Comfort Inn; Pearson (again) and a check-out like a cattle market but on in the end. No sleep as we red-eye our back over the Atlantic and my stunningly funny comments like ' think of all the fish down there' fall on deaf ears. Heathrow-Grassington-Huddersfield and once again I feel like I have not slept for a week. Maybe I hadn't. A great trip. Thank you Ted, and Linda and Matt and Piers and Ineke for making it fun, and very special.
The next bulletin will be Tom Hoy and I in South Africa. Lord, do they know what's coming at 'em.
Love, Chris.
Huddersfield. August 2009.
Carré concert May 11, 2009
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South African tour 2009
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