vintage

All done for another year!

I’m sorely lacking in sleep, so there won’t be a full review until tomorrow, but I do want to mention a few things while I’m here.

First things first: Bellowhead are your new favourite party band. If they are ever in your neighbourhood (if you live in the UK, the chances of this happening are far greater), see them. You will not be disappointed. They tore up the mainstage crowd on Saturday night and promptly sold out of CDs at the record tent before I got to it.

Australian duo Luluc are among my favourite discoveries of the festival; I believe they are playing in Toronto and Montreal shortly, although they haven’t posted the dates on their websites, so it might just be up to chance. If you live in either of these cities and see them on a poster, check it out. More about them soon.

Another favourite discovery is Toronto’s The Good Lovelies, who are exceptionally good and, yes, really lovely too. More about them soon too; they’re just such a fun trio that I will probably spend pages talking about how great they were this weekend.

I’d say everything added up pretty well today too. Overcast skies and a perfect temperature, no rain, and magnificent workshops. Justin Rutledge and Carolyn Mark rode gaily by me in a golf cart during the evening mainstage performance; Mavis Staples played her cover of “The Weight” and closed with the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There”; Loreena McKennitt played “The Mummer’s Dance” and “The Lady of Shalott”, and Bellowhead’s John Spiers, Jon Boden, Gideon Juckes and Brendan Kelly treated us a second time to their version of “London Town”, the one that had turned Prince’s Island Park into a 12,000-strong dance party on Saturday night. Not bad for a lazy Sunday.

Full recaps, lists, and a handful of mp3s to follow! But first … to bed. Ahhhh.

(Addendum: I just had a look and my top search hit since this post is “michael franti appendix”. I’ll leave you to think about that one yourselves.)