BeatRoute Magazine [AB] print e-edition - [June 2018]

NORTH COUNTRY FAIR
40 years of illumination and weird fun under the Slave Lake sun BY MIKE DUNN
46 | JUNE 2018 • BEATROUTE
Most of us festival humans have a personal
affection for one festival or another, and
that’s natural – our formative experiences in
those settings, surrounded by like-minded
friends getting wild and seeing really cool
bands while free and slightly crazy, is an experience
that hangs with you awhile. As always, I
was late to damn near every party I ever went
to, and only first attended the North Country
Fair in 2010. As happens with magical places,
we somehow found our way, unguided and
in the twilight, to the exact spot I’d camp for
the next seven years along with my pals, who’d
made my mind up to go in the first place.
The thing about the Fair is that unofficially
it’s a weeklong event for a lot of people, although
formally held over the solstice weekend
from Thursday night to Sunday. While I’ve never
spent the week out there, it’s where I learned
the first rule of festival partying – It’s only
Thursday, bud. When the chains of cars and
trucks and phones and houses and jobs get cut
loose, it’s the easiest thing in the world to get
just as loose and see exactly how far you can
ride that train. You find yourself kicking up the
dust and still in the dusk at midnight. By the
time the bands finish, around 4 a.m. nightly, the
campfire jams are in full swing, friends singing
along to each other’s songs, and laughing as the
sun makes its quick pass over Lesser Slave Lake
and then high up back over the trees.
The artist lineups have always tended to
move from easygoing and laid back in the daylight,
to full-scale, trip-out weirdness stretching
into the wee hours. It wouldn’t surprise me
this year to see the tightly-arranged folk of
Tequila Mockingbird Orchestra, the theatrical
indie rock of The Mariachi Ghost, the sweatsoaked
dance party of Five Alarm Funk, and the
Indigenous electronic blast of DJ Shub within a
three-hour span. And as an Edmonton-based
artist, there’s always been a special feeling
when you get the opportunity to play the Fair,
whether it’s the first time or the fortieth time.
It’s a feeling you’re going to get to play for your
whole community at once, a sentiment likely
shared by both veterans Scott Cook & The
Second Chances, Boogie Patrol, and Dana Wylie,
and first-timers Bad Buddy.
It’s a hard thing to put into words the effect
the festival has blowing minds wide-open to the
vast possibilities of live music, performance and
community. I attended the Fair for seven years
in a row, and five of those years I got the opportunity
to play, whether as backup for my pals or
with my own music for a musical community
that gave me more than I ever gave it. I haven’t
been there since I moved to Calgary, and I miss
it. The camaraderie, the wild-eyed insanity,
the schedule that veers from traditional folk,
juke-joint blues and honky-tonk into absurdity
and mayhem. I miss all the late-night fireside
jams and solutions to the problems of the world
that float by the river, to the inability to get
any self-induced sleep whatsoever, or the pals I
made that I might never have met - none of it is
a blur to me. Well, there’s one exception – that
one night I got lost as a result of overconsumption
and had to be dragged, in the friendliest
of ways, off the roadside where I’d decided that
sleep was inevitable. Definitely looking to avoid
such kind-hearted drunken rescues this time,
but sometimes that’s where the most memorable
stories (of sorts) come from. Once you get
to The Land, Fair Time becomes reality, and it
really is the best time.
The 40th annual North Country Fair runs from June
22-24. Go to lslncca.ca for all the details.
ROOTS