In Hindsight: Review

Heart of Its Own: Review of the Home County Folk Festival

Music festivals have practically become a summer ritual. There is no shortage of large festivals to reach by road trips, even just in Canada, but real gems can also be found right in your own backyard. Many smaller cities host annual folk festivals, creating a perfect blend of music, food, crafts and community. In my case, there is the Home County Folk Festival in London, ON. The festival, now in its 38th year, is run entirely by donations. This year, festival fans donated more than $40,000 over the course of the weekend of July 15-17 to help support the event in years to come.

A full moon hung over the crowd on the first night, as people of all ages huddled around the main stage to catch performances from the likes the Basia Bulat and Sarah Harmer. CBC Radio 3’s Grant Lawrence introduced folk-pop singer Bulat, who was excited to be back in London’s Victoria Park after having lived in the city for six years. She told stories of her old apartments in between beautiful renditions of a variety of songs; ranging from single “Heart of My Own” to a song in Polish about a zoo.

As amazing as the main-stage performances were, the real strength of this festival was the afternoon workshops on the smaller stages, huddled under trees in the 30+ degree heat. I had the pleasure of seeing Basia Bulat perform a second time on a smaller stage with Ottawa-based band The Acorn and young folk singer Ariana Gillis. It was here that Bulat really shined: she played sparse versions of her songs, accompanied by trumpet player Shaun Brody and the members of The Acorn. The power went out for a few minutes mid-way through the set, leading to an acoustic rendition of Bulat’s “If Only You”, with Rolf Klausener of The Acorn singing backup and holding a microphone for her when the power returned mid-song. The informal atmosphere onstage led to some brilliant moments, such as Brody improvising on his trumpet over the Acorn song “Crooked Legs”; which really brought the song to a whole new level. Really, this man is incredible – he not only performed with Bulat and The Acorn--but also joined Dan Mangan’s band the following day. This lead Klausener to proclaim him “MVP of the festival”.

The performance of Vancouver-based Dan Mangan, on the final day of the festival, was a major stand out. His impressive set was a mix of old favourites from his Polaris-nominated album Nice, Nice, Very Nice and new songs from his forthcoming third album. Audiences tapped their feet along to the title track “Oh Fortune” and another new tune about post-traumatic stress disorder. Mangan was full of jokes and clearly loving the experience on the stage. He was recently saying to Grant Lawrence on a CBC Radio 3 podcast that he has never had a bad experience at a Canadian music festival. He added that every musician should bring a tambourine, and stayed true to that boast at this performance by using one to hit against his guitar in the middle of a noisy finish. The set ended with Mangan venturing into the crowd during a sing-along of his song “Robots”. Watching Mangan interact with his fans as we all belted the chorus: “Robots need love too!” was a major highlight of the weekend.

As I stood in the merchandise tent after the performance and watched people run to ask for Mangans’ album, I was reminded of something he had said on stage: “Everything you can do to support music in your community will make your children better people”. Well I do not know about my children yet, but I definitely feel fuller after a weekend of sitting outside in great weather listening to even better music. The Home County Folk Festival created a beautiful feeling of community, and that is everything a successful festival can hope to do!

-Written by By Elena Gritzan