Vancouver Folk Music Fest Day 1 plus a short interview with John K Sampson of the Weakerthans

Photos by Justin Cameron


Now ends my first day at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, it’d been great and I can’t wait for tomorrow. Tomorrow promises many workshops and events from 10a till 11p so it should be pretty awesome. Tonight was a more focused singular kick off concert at the main stage featuring the Weakerthans who I’ll focus on as they were one of two Canadian acts playing. The first act was Zal Idrissa Sissokho and Buntalo from Montreal who sounded interesting but isn’t really something I’m in to, still give them a try. After this was Joe Pug, a singer-songwriter from Chicago. He was good, felt to me like he’s been channeling his inner Bob Dylan, has a somewhat similar sound. Now, back on to Canadian music we have the band I was waiting for, the Weakerthans.


I’m sure many of us know by now that they can put on a damn good show. They tore into hits right away such as Night Windows and they just kept coming. In all honest I wasn’t that into the Weakerthans until I saw them live, some bands just blow me away live and this is one of them so if you get to see the Weakerthans on the Western sweep they just started, I’d recommend doing so.





I was fortunate enough to get to have a short talk with John K. Samson, fresh off the stage...

Alex: First off, I was just kind of curious. Do they make you pay for beer still, as a performer?

John: You get three free, and yeah, I’d pay for them. They’re cheap.

A: Yeah, they’re not too bad. $3 is less than you’d pay at a bar. It was a great set up there, I like the ending with the horns coming in.

J: Thank you, I enjoyed that too.

A: Have you played the Folk Festival before?

J: Not this one but we’ve played a lot across the country. Done almost all of them except this one so it’s nice to get this one done. It’s good.

A: Nice, how’d you like it?

J: I really enjoyed it, it was really hot but I did have a good time, yeah, it was fun. The crowd was really engaged and nice and mellow.

A: Yeah, they seemed to start really getting into later on. So, you’re starting a new tour now?

J: Yeah, we leave tomorrow down the west coast and then back home, it’s very quick.

A: Ah, so it’s just like a small west coast back to Winnipeg tour?

J: Yeah, exactly.

A: I was just surprised coming off of the Rolling Tundra Revue. It was a whole sweep of Canada, right?

J: Well, we didn’t hit the states at all, so that’s what we’re doing this time. We’re going down to LA.

A: So hitting more of that North/South expansion. How do you find you’re received in the States?

J: Same as here.

A: Do you find you’re as well known in the States as here?

J: I dunno, maybe a little less, crowds are about the same.

A: Seems good, like you can fill up the Commodore up here.

J: Yeah, I guess that’s a bit of a fluke, we don’t always do that. That’s a bigger show for us in Canada too.

A: Well, I’d say you’re guy’s name is big enough that you can kinda do those things.

J: It’s big enough for me, I’m fine with it.

A: So, do you guys have anything new for us coming up soon?

J: Not right now, we’re just taking the summer off and writing and working on other things. So no real plans as of yet, takes us a long time but eventually we’ll figure it out.

A: I heard you talking about the Olympics a little up there. Got any thoughts on that that you’d like to expand upon?

J: Well, like the guy in the audience asked me, what I had against the Olympics and there are too many things. A lot of things really. I think there’s never been a city that’s benefited from hosting the Olympics. I think it’s actually been detrimental to the city as a whole. It increases the infrastructure of some cities but I think to the detriment of it’s citizens. It’s all money that could have been spent in much more progressive and interesting ways and this is an especially poor city. You know, it has a real underbelly to it that needs to be addressed and I think its an insult to those people who are living on the streets, who have real problems getting by that they’re spending a billion dollars or however much it is on this sporting event. Much as I love the sports, I do love them.

A: Yeah, they’re nice but still, like you said, there are a lot better uses for the money than this stuff. Well, it’s good to see people out of town getting behind us on this kind of issue.

J: Yeah, yeah. I just thought, you know, that a lot of people worked really hard and it must feel really kind of devastating for those people that just worked and worked on it. So, it must, in a way, feel like a failure but it isn’t. I mean, people have to go out there and express themselves and challenge the powers that be and those people should be recognized even if they don’t succeed all the time.

A: I was wondering if you’d heard of us at all, North by Eastwest?

J: No, it’s clever though, I like it.

A: All we do is cover Canadian music.

J: Oh cool, is it a web only?

A: Yeah, it’s a web blog thing started by a guy in Toronto and he’s just kind of gathering people. We all volunteer our time and try to cover whatever’s going on in Canadian music.

J: That’s great, I’ll totally check it out.

A: It’s a really easy website to remember, it’s just nxew.ca. Well, good luck on the rest of the tour and thanks for your time.

J: Thank you very much, it was nice to meet you.

A: Nice to meet you too, I hope you come back to Vancouver.

J: Ah, we will, we always come back here.

Afterwards there was Iron & Wine and Arrested Development. Both great bands that put on excellent sets but there's only so big I'm going to let this post get.

This is getting up in length so I'll stop here but all in all, a great line up. A pretty awesome start to this festival and I can't wait for more! Hopefully I'll get to comment more on the festival grounds and set up in later posts. Remember to follow both me, @AlexOfAnders, and Brenda, @kn0ttyn3rb, on twitter for updates throughout the day. Oh, and tip one about this folk fest I learned: bring a hat.

Thanks!
- AlexOfAnders