Reviews

All Folked Up

Kris Rothstein

In the late 197s, when I was a child, I went to my first Vancouver Folk Music Festival, held at Jericho Beach. I was awed by the music, the sunsets, the food and, particularly, by the American singer-songwriter Elizabeth Cotton, who was then almost 9, and was known best for her song “Freight Train” and for playing her guitar upside down because she was left-handed. Folk music and festivals have changed a lot since then. This summer I attended Pickathon, a festival on Pendarvis Farm just east of Portland, Oregon, which features traditional folk and world music as well as rock and roll. This year’s Pickathon line-up included some of my favourite bands: Meatbodies, Wand, Ty Segall, Viet Cong and Summer Cannibals, musicians from Western Canada and the US who rock out hard, influenced by punk and psychedelic rock and glam. Other impressive acts were Shabazz Palaces, an experimental hip hop group from Seattle, and Strings and Julin, a bluegrass duo from Michigan. Most of the sets I saw were urgent and intense, probably because the organizers look for artists who are “creatively on fire.” Pickathon started as a party thrown by a bunch of friends, and it still retains that feel. Like the Vancouver Folk Fest, Pickathon is organized with an aim to leave no mark upon the land: we all brought our own plates and cups; stages were built with recycled materials, like wooden pallets, hay bales, branches and cardboard. All of this made for a particularly Pacific Northwest vibe.

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