Merry Music Makers an Owen Sound entertainment tradition since 1982

Click this photo for an Audio Slideshow of the Merry Music Makers entertaining at the Georgian Heights retirement home on Jan. 17, 2012.

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
Alex Semple learned to fiddle at his father’s side, playing dances as a teenager around Markdale.
He set music aside for several decades, picking it up again in his 50s. Now close to 92, with hundreds of old dance tunes in his repertoire, Semple is the senior string musician with the Merry Music Makers and “very fond of the violin.”
With their familiar red vests, this group of old-time musicians, mostly fiddlers, has been a musical tradition around Owen Sound since 1982, when the outfit launched as a harmonica group.
Semple has been a regular for 27 years. Many members have passed on. Most most of the nine or 10 members still active are into their 80s now, keeping the tradition going with a regular circuit of shows each month at 11 area retirement and nursing homes and hospitals.
“They seem to like it and we need something to do,” Semple said after a recent show at Georgian Heights retirement home in Owen Sound.

Fiddler Alex Semple, 91, performs with the Merry Music Makers. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times/QMI AGEN

Watching the way the older people react and respond to the familiar, beloved old-time music is what keeps the group’s main organizer Don McMillan coming out to perform.
“Just to see the faces and the movement of the seniors, that’s my whole desire,” said McMillan, who will soon be 82. “It’s entertainment for them.  All of us play for that reason. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
McMillan was raised near Shallow Lake in Keppel Township where with his father, brother and three sisters the family was known for musical entertainment at house showers and other gatherings. He backed the music with chords on the piano, sometimes with a steel guitar.
But it wasn’t until his 54th year, at Green Acres camp in Florida, that he finally took up the violin.
“My dad was a fiddle player, but he wouldn’t let us touch the fiddle. I didn’t know a thing about a fiddle,” McMillan said.

Fiddler Don McMillan, 82 took up the instrument at age 54. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times/QMI Agency

It was at that Florida camp, where by chance Semple also spent his winters then, that the two musicians met. When the piano player left the jam session, Macmillan took a turn and became a regular. The next winter, he tired of chording on the piano and finally took up the fiddle.
“I never went back to the piano.”
Back in Owen Sound that spring, Semple encouraged McMillan to join the Merry Music Makers and he’s been a regular now for 25 years.
Leora Boyd, almost 81, a step dancer and fiddler, is a relative newcomer to the Merry Music Makers over the last four years.

Leora Boyd, 80, kicks up during the Merry Music Makers perform at Georgian Heights seniors home in Owen Sound on January 17, 2012. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times/QMI Agency

She answered an add in the Markdale paper for a $50 fiddle years ago, for her grandson, then four. He played it all through school in Meaford and returned the instrument after high school, just as Boyd was retiring from a teaching career.
“So I picked it up and that’s when I started playing myself,” she said. “My first song was There’s a Gold Mine in the sky. I sang it and as I sang it I played it and then I was away.”
Twice widowed, Boyd said her music and her violin are company now. “It makes me happy. That’s what keeps me going is my music.”
Her dad was known for step dancing, but she kept her own footwork to herself around home until recently. She was kicking up a bit as the band warmed their fingers and someone suggested getting dance taps and adding some lively steps to the program.
“They love it. They can’t wait until I get up and dance, some of them.”
The group plays for about an hour at each nursing home. They change up the repertoire each month. This January show was very Scottish, for Robbie Burns. Love songs and the like are next month for Valentine’s Day, with Irish tunes in March and a selection of springtime music in April, McMillan said.
The group’s catalogue runs now to about 1,000 tunes, and during 2010 they featured more than 160 different tunes, according to McMillan’s records. This show featured well-worn fiddle favourites like St. Anne’s Reel and Ragtime Annie with Scottish numbers like Bonnie Dundee, The Hundred Pipers, Scotland the Brave and the Scottish Soldier.
That’s what the residents want to hear, activationist aid Wendy Woodhouse said.
Music has a way of giving life to them,” she said. It doesn’t matter who they are, it’s something that crosses all boundaries, the familiar tunes, the beat. I don’t know where we;d be without music.”
Current Merry Music Makers include Semple, his wife Jean, piano, a member for 22 years, McMillan, for 25 years, Art Mulder, violin and recorder, 17 years, guitarist Elgin McMillan, 15 years, pianist Dorothy Robertson, 10 years, Hope, five years, Gilbert Rice, violin, five years, Boyd, for four years and violinist Mac Irvine, three years.
Every player is featured at least once during a show, with solo fiddle tunes, songs or a dance step, and there’s usually a birthday tribute for the residents, with tea and cake this day at Georgian Heights.
Banjo and mandolin player Bob Hope, the group’s youngest musician, has an outside perspective on this old-time music. After 35 years in Toronto, he “semi-retired” to Owen Sound several years ago.

Banjo player Bob Hope. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times/QMI Agency.

“I didn’t really know the music of the area,” Hope said. “It took a little searching around to find the old-time players and I discovered that the music tradition here goes way, way back.”
As well as joining the Merry Music Makers for performances over the last five years, he’s launched a project to document and archive some of the fiddle music and tunes specific to this region.
He said playing regularly with the older fiddlers  who keep the old music alive is a privilege.
“It’s the realness of it. It’s very, very real,” Hope said. “It’s very earthbound. It’s part of the culture here. You go into a home that’s built 100 years ago and you know the music that was played there is the music we’re playing now with these folks.”
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca

Songs, novels just different ways for musician Rob Ritchie to tell his stories

Novelist and musician Rob Ritchie. WILLY WATERTON/OWEN SOUND SUN TIMES/QMI AGENCY

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
A one-time hockey jock, raised in a home filled with singing and music, the pianist, songwriter and novelist Rob Ritchie has performed across Canada and around the world.
Inevitably, his youth, his travels, his environment, the people he’s met and especially his experiences as a touring musician, are all part of his books.
Hockey was a main theme throughout Orphans of Winter, Ritchie’s first novel in 2006. In a Company of Fiddlers, published last fall, he looks in part at the classical music world, sometimes using settings around his home area in Wiarton.
Both novels ask why such passions are often pursued so seriously, but without joy.
“They don’t have to be,” Ritchie said recently. “When the joy is put back in, those are the people that are doing it the best.”
Now Ritchie is 100 pages into a first draft of book three.
“I’d like to do something that’s kind of fun loving that has to do with a band out on the road, since they say write what you know and I certainly got to know that.”
Ritchie spent more than a decade in two long stints with the award-winning, five-piece, Owen Sound-based folk and roots music group Tanglefoot, which included his brother Steve. Tanglefoot disbanded two years ago.
During what he called a “paternity leave” hiatus from the band several years ago, Ritchie recorded his solo CD project Five O’Clock Shadow, shortly before publishing Orphans of Winter, his first novel.
Ritchie has toured as a solo performer, but said he prefers others on stage to interact with, and most of his solo shows lately are local. That includes a show Saturday night at 7 p.m. as part of the monthly SOUNDS at the Market series, where Ritchie will be both the featured musician and the featured spoken word artist.
He’ll play songs from Five O’Clock Shadow, with some new music, and read from the novels.

Life lessons in West Hill Wizard of Oz production at The Roxy

Glyneva Bradley-Ridout, left, is Dorothy and Jennifer MacKinnon is The Tin Man in the West Hill Secondary School music theatre class production of The Wizard of Oz which open Friday night at The Roxy in Owen Sound at 7:30 p.m.

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
Until she discovered the stage, Glyneva Bradley-Ridout wasn’t nearly so sociable.
“I’m naturally a shy person, and theatre has really helped me to come out of my shell,” the Grade 12 student said.
Bradley-Ridout plays Dorothy in the West Hill music theatre class’s new take on the classic Broadway musical Wizard of Oz. It opens Friday night at The Roxy Theatre.
With a cast of close to 40, and a technical crew of 10 or so, the team worked together on this project since September.
Jennifer MacKinnon, The Tin Man, said she isn’t shy, but has learned much about herself and working with others. She’s made connections and friendships with people it’s unlikely she’d have met outside this theatre project.
Both actors have been in several school and community productions before and said every show is a new challenge, building on their acting, singing and dancing skills. But theatre also teaches time management, communication, cooperation and other life skills, the actors and some production crew said.
“Since I’ve gotten into theatre I’ve gotten way more sociable with people and more comfortable with myself,” Bradley-Ridout said at a rehearsal Tuesday. “I’m more outgoing and more confident.”
Stage manager Samantha Blake and tech crew member Jantien Sneyd, also a theatre co-op student at The Roxy, said life and interactive skills they’ve developed go beyond the needs of this production.
“I’m generally an independent worker but working with everyone here has shown me that I can trust other people to do work,” said Blake.
She took the course to acquire technical experience and said working with the group has been a revelation.
“We have to keep very open lines of communication, which I think is another thing a lot of us have learned is how to talk to one another and say I need help, me especially, I don’t usually like to ask for help.”
An Owen Sound Youth Theatre Coalition veteran with a long interest in theatre and much organizational experience, Sneyd isn’t in the music theatre class this year, but lends her expertise as part of her Roxy co-op this semester.
She said theatre has taught her to work with others and manage her time in other aspects of her life.
“Before I started getting involved in theatre I was a bit of a slacker, not going to lie,” Sneyd said. “Especially as stage manager it helped me realize how much organizing your time and everyone else’s time makes things so much easier. It’s helped me in school and I know it’s helped other people in school as well. It kind of pushes people to do better than what they were before they were involved in theatre.”
Those life skills are as much the point of a music theatre class as putting together the production, said Emily Cameron, who teaches the class with Henriette Blom.
“Giving them the skills that they’re going to need to be successful later on in life. I think that’s the ultimate goal as a teacher,” Cameron said Tuesday at The Roxy.
“It’s teaching kids about life, how to cope with stress, how to get along with people you might not otherwise find yourself with, or even like. It’s learning about yourself as a person. What better way to put yourself in someone else’s shows than to not only pretend to be someone else but to have to deal with 50 other people everyday; deal with their emotions, their baggage, their problems as well as your own and get through it all.”
West Hill’s version of the Wizard of Oz adds some new staging twists to the classic script, with plenty of singing and dancing and some symbolic emphasis on the message within the simple story, both teachers said.
A dancer for 14 years with Anne Milne’s School of Dance, Jen MacKinnon brings that expertise to the mix as The Tin Man.
Nick Varley is Scarecrow. Aaron Crose is The Lion.
The Wizard of Oz is at The Roxy Friday night at 7 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m. and again Monday and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are availabe at the Roxy box office.
While Milne has choreographed the three main dance scenes for the group, MacKinnon has provided both coaching in class and some choreography for other scenes. It’s the first leading stage role in the community for the Grade 12 actor, singer and dancer who plans to study performing arts as a “triple threat” next year. She played Grace, an ugly step sister, in YTC’s Cinderella, was a witch in OSLT’s Macbeth and was Rose, a part created to feature her dancing in West Hill’s last musical, Beauty and The Beast two years ago.
MacKinnon also brings to the cast a positive approach she says is the reason she plans to pursue a performance career.
“I’m a very crazy person. I really enjoy acting,” she said. “If someone is a in a down mood, I will go crazy to make people happy. I just really enjoy entertaining people.”
This role has confirmed that career interest.
“It’s kind of my last chance to make sure that I’m feeling confident with myself. So far, so good.”
Blom, who is both music and artistic director for the project, said the intense, months-long project can be “a life transformative experience for students.”
“They are learning to interact with each other in ways they would never do. We’ve spent three or four hours together every day for the whole semester and now we’re up to eight hours a day together. There’s something about community in that.”
Everybody contributes a gift, on and off stage, with a goal of not just telling the story but sending audiences home with a deeper understanding of this classic tale, Blom said.
It’s about a lonely child discovering she is her own hero and realizing she is loved in ways she would never have understood without adversity.
“That’s part of the message here. Everybody came together for Dorothy, even though it was in her imagination, or was it?”
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca

AD James Keelaghan will “amplify” best aspects of the Summerfolk festival

Summerfolk's new artistic-director James Keelaghan at the Georgian Bay Folk Society offices. BILL HENRY/QMI Agency/The Sun Times.

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
Important aspects of James Keelaghan’s life in music so far began at Summerfolk – his Laskin guitar, his long partnership with Oscar Lopez.
Keelaghan first played the annual Kelso Beach folk festival in the early 1980s. He has just signed on as artistic director.
The Calgary-raised guitarist and then-fledgling singer and songwriter was still a student, paying for a university history degree with music, playing Summerfolk that year behind the traditional folksinger Margaret Christl.
Garnet Rogers heard Keelaghan play, told Keelaghan he needed a better guitar, promised to look around. That October, Rogers showed up in Calgary with a guitar Grit Laskin made, and helped Keelaghan finance the cherished instrument he has played throughout his career and around the world over 25 years.
“That guitar’s been an integral part of my life,” Keelaghan said in Owen Sound this week. “Had he not seen me here, liked what I did, hated my guitar, I would not have that guitar that I’ve used to record every single one of my albums, written every one of my songs on.”
A decade later, Keelaghan’s long association with fellow guitarist Oscar Lopez also began at Summerfolk.
Booked under their own names, they met, jammed, joined each other’s bands for main stage sets, and pursued the mutual musical interests over several years and recordings.
Both stories illustrate Keelaghan powerful associations with the festival he has played maybe 10 times over the years, and is now programming for next August after signing a contract with the Georgian Bay Folk Society recently.
He was in Owen Sound in that new role earlier this week,
connecting with board members, local roots musicians, Summerfolk supporters and media representatives.

Ruth Parsons, left, president of the Georgian Bay Folk Society, shares a laugh Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011 with Summerfolk's new artistic-director James Keelaghan at an informal meet and greet event Tuesday at the GBFS offices to introduce the acclaimed singer-songwriter and his new programming role with the annual Owen Sound folk and roots music festival. BILL HENRY/QMI Agency/The Sun Times.

His plan for the festival, he said in a lengthy interview at the GBFS office, is to change very little at first. Most of his focus will be to “amplify” what’s best about the festival.
Essential to that is maintaining the sense among performers that Summerfolk is among the best festivals to play, largely due to the festival atmosphere which allows musicians to connect, coalesce and bring that energy to the audience.
“Summerfolk is one of the best festivals at that,” Keelaghan said. “I think there was a time when it was close to losing that and there’s been a lot of work to bring that back, and a lot of great work to bring that back. I’m not going to come in here and radically change things. I don’t think it needs that. It’s just amplification and helping the organization to attain the kind of sustainability that it needs to carry on for another 37 years.

Respected songwriter James Keelaghan is the new Summerfolk artistic director

James Keelaghan has signed a two-year contract with the Georgian Bay Folk Society as artistic director, programming the popular, long-running Summerfolk festival in Owen Sound.

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
One of Canada’s most prominent singer songwriters is Summerfolk’s new artistic director.
James Keelaghan signed a two year contract Thursday with the Georgian Bay Folk Society and immediately began contacting performers and programming next year’s festival, GBFS president Ruth Parsons said.
“He’s jumping in with both feet,” Parsons said.
Known for his compelling songs and stories, Keelaghan has been called “Canada’s finest songwriter” by the award-winning American popular music critic Dave Marsh. With 11 CDs in his catalogue, the Calgary native now based near Ottawa has toured the world with his music, performing several times at Summerfolk, first in 1984.
Keelaghan was touring with guitarist Oscar Lopez, a longtime musical associate, Thursday in the Northwest Territories and could not be reached.
The folk society announced the appointment late Thursday in a news release which included Keelaghan’s comments.
“I have played Folk Festivals all over the world from Hong Kong to Denmark and Summerfolk has always stood out as one of my favourites,” he said in the release. “In many ways Summerfolk exemplifies everything a folk festival should be: personal, ethical, open and exciting. I am honoured to become even more involved with Summerfolk and look forward to helping to bring the best in the world to Kelso Beach.”
Parsons said Keelaghan is expected to announce his new role at this weekend’s Canadian Folk Awards event in Toronto.
Keelaghan takes over booking and programming for Summerfolk, the long-running annual Kelso Beach folk event, from Walkerton-based singer, songwriter and children’s performer Richard Knechtel, who chose not to renew his contract again after four years on the job.
Two months ago, the festival’s future was uncertain.
Two days of rain washed out proceeds from beer sales and other merchandise last August and kept day-pass folk fans away.
Despite the event’s artistic success and strong advance ticket sales, overall proceeds fell short and depleted the group’s reserve fund. That prompted Parsons to announce in early October an emergency fundraising campaign.
Unless the GBFS could raise $25,000 by December, there likely would not be a festival next year, she warned.
Response was immediate.
More than $12,000 came in over the next few days and weeks through donations and GBFS memberships. A GBFS-organized concert and silent auction raised another $8,000. A week later, young Summerfolk supporters and musicians raised another $1,700 at a Singing for Summerfolk benefit organized by GBFS supporter Jerry Walsh.
And a new long-term sponsorship, to be announced in detail later, has recently put the campaign over the top, Parsons said Thursday.
“We’re happy with that. It’s been a very good response from the community” Parsons said. “It means we have the operating money to keep the office open and keep the planning going and hire a new artistic director with the confidence that we can afford to do that.”
Parsons said 10 people applied for the position, and a committee of GBFS board members and volunteers interviewed three short-listed candidates, then interviewed two finalists a second time before choosing Keelaghan. They were looking for someone thoroughly familiar with Summerfolk, with contacts within the folk and roots community, and a record of collaboration, Parsons said.
“We wanted someone that was a team player, that would work with us, given the age of the festival, so they’re not coming in and totally turning it upside down,” she said. “He certainly fit all those. He has ideas brought from his world wide travels but the first priority is to keep the good stuff and what can we do to enhance it?”
Parsons also said Thursday GBFS has a plan to build up its reserve fund and put in place a regular fundraising and sponsorship strategy she expects will avoid a similar emergency cash campaign.
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca

Broadway hit is about music’s power, OSLT’s MacLachlan a natural Maria

Leanne MacLachlan, (3rd from left) stars as Maria in the Owen Sound Little Theatre's production of The Sound of Music. MacLachlan and other members of the cast were photographed during a dress rehearsal at The Roxy Theatre on Tuesday November 8, 2011. (L-R Seated) Simon Smith (Friedrich), left, Leanne MacLachlan, (Maria), Emma Wright (Gretl), Holly Melson (Brigitta). (L-R Standing) Olivia Smith (Liesl), Kiahna Long (Louisa), Connor Bye (Kurt), Kathryn Low (Marta). --JAMES MASTERS/QMI Agency/The Sun Times.

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
It might as easily have been called The Power of Music.
That’s what the much-loved 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway hit – opening at The Roxy Thursday, Nov. 10 – is really all about, Owen Sound Little Theatre performers said this week.
Set in pre-war Austria, it’s a well-known story of love and triumph featuring some of Broadway’s best known songs.
It’s that music which distinguishes the play and carries forward the relatively simple story, cast members said.

Maria, played by Leanne MacLachlan, in the Owen Sound Little Theatre's production of The Sound of Music is admonished for her poor dress by Captain von Trapp, played by Rick Twining during a dress rehearsal at The Roxy Theatre on Tuesday November 8, 2011. JAMES MASTERS/QMI Agency/The Sun Times.

Singing has been banned from the Austrian hillside villa since the death of Captain von Tropp’s wife. When the eager, musical young governess Maria arrives to educate his seven children, music’s power explodes throughout the home and the story.
Leanne MacLachlan, plays Maria.
A relative newcomer to Owen Sound, the London native and part-time first grade teacher brings to her first OSLT role a clear, powerful singing voice, past stage experience, enthusiasm, charm and the perfect personality to win the children’s confidence.
“She’s perfect,” said producer John Prettie, who also plays Uncle Max. “The children all love her, not just on stage but backstage.”

Young musicians ready to sing for Summerfolk

24th Street Wailers guitarist Emily Burgess performers during Summerfolk last August. The blues band shares the stage with other youth performers Singing for Summerfolk Saturday in Owen Sound. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times.

BILL HENRY
The Sun Times
Another, younger group of musicians will be singing this weekend to help keep Summerfolk alive.
First Rate People, the popular music collective with Owen Sound area roots, has just been added to the roster for Saturday’s Singing for Summerfolk fundraising event, organizer Jerry Walsh said in a news release.
First Rate People will join the hot, young blues band 24th Street Wailers, just back from the Bleus Sur Seine festival in France, to co-headline the event at St. Thomas Anglican Church.
Although not directly organized by the Georgian Bay Folk Society, this concert of mostly youth performers associated with the GBFS Young Discoveries program, was first announced soon after the society called for help. A month ago festival organizers said unless GBFS supporters could raise $25,000 by December to seed next year’s festival, Summerfolk could fold.
Last weekend, the GBFS raised an estimated $8,000 with its own benefit concert, to add to about $13,000 raised through donations, membership sales, sponsorships and other events since the cash crisis was made public.
First Rate People were a hit at Summerfolk 2010, while the 24th Street Wailers, just nominated for the Maple Blues Award for best new band or performer, drew crowds during last year’s event.
Chesley area singer-songwriter Anne Beverly-Foster will help host the event, with Donna henry, the release said. Other young area performers Singing for Summerfolk Saturday include Liam Sanagan, Kildear, Brontae Hunter, The Electric Environment, The Davids, Ben Turcotte, Mary Cassidy, Jake Scott, Cody Zevenbergen and Mack ‘n The Boys.
All proceeds to to the Georgian Bay Folk Society. Tickets are $7 at Randy’s Records and Fromager Music.
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca

Musicians, fans, folk society rally around Summerfolk

CLICK THIS PHOTO to see the audio slideshow. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
Among Tara MacKenzie’s first questions when she heard about Summerfolk’s cash crisis was “how can we help?”
She quickly volunteered the hot, new MacKenzie Blues Band — closers during a full-house Summerfolk benefit Saturday night — then got to work.
“It wasn’t an option not to help,” MacKenzie said Saturday night. “I just feel so fiercely loyal about what this festival has done for myself and for Trevor and all the musicians around. It’s important to be on board.”
She put her web skills to use at the GBFS office, helping set up an online donation button for the Summerfolk website.
“Then I went home and I clicked the donate button and I gave money, because the festival has paid me time and time again,” MacKenzie said.
“What is it to me to give a day’s wages to the festival. It’s a cultural event that is critical to our area and it’s critical that musicians pitch in help.”
Which many did Saturday, donating a set of songs for a fundraising concert and silent auction that GBFS President Ruth Parsons said Sunday brought in $8,000.

Jensen and Walker, Summerfolk's first performers in 1976, reunite for benefit concert. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times

Appropriately, Larry Jensen and Al Walker kicked things off.
A working duo at that time, Jensen and Walker were also the very first act at the very first Summerfolk festival in 1976, and played, they think, at least three of the first five years together.
Among the region’s most admired and respected musicians, both remain active and have pursued their own musical pathways, despite what Jensen called “endless get back togethers” since their formal partnership ended in the 1980s.
Getting back together Saturday, for a five-song set of tunes dating back to their early years – including Jensen’s Five Weeks, Dead Man Go and Peculiar – was important to both musicians.
“This is really significant for me. Totally,” Jensen said after their set. “It’s a chance to give something back . . .I think I played the first 18 festivals. I don’t think there was a break in there.”
He said he wasn’t thinking as much about Summerfolk’s current cash crisis as he was about the music.

Coco Love, who recently relocated to Owen Sound largely as a result of her 2009 Summerfolk experience. BILL HENRY/The Sun Times

“It was more about putting tunes back together with Al and doing a kind of nostalgic, historical thing,” he said. “I’m really happy to have been immersed in it that way as part of the history.”
Walker, playing electric guitar for part of the set, remembered early festival organizers refusing to let him plug in, also insisting the trio’s drummer Mike Malone lose the kit and confine himself to hand drums.
He said he was happy to help.
“I just think it would be a shame if (Summerfolk) disappeared, because there’s a lot of young people coming behind us and it was a good influence,” Walker said.
“I hope it works out,” Jensen added. “And to tell you the truth, I can’t imagine it not working. I’m of the mind that something will happen. It’s too important.”
Younger musicians like Samantha Martin, based in Toronto, and Coco Love, who moved to Owen Sound two weeks ago, largely because of Summerfolk, have more recent, powerful connections to the festival, they said.
Martin went to school in Lion’s head. Encouraged by Tara and Trevor MacKenzie, among her first live performances were at Summerfolk’s open mic stage. Five years later, in 2010, she was among headliners hired for the festival.
Martin said she began “pestering” organizer Steve Ritchie to be part of Saturday’s show as soon as she heard about it.
Coco Love Alcorn played Summerfolk in 2009, loved the town, came back later for a Knox Acoustic Cafe show.
She set her sites on living in the Owen Sound area. After a year in Markdale, the couple have just bought a house in Owen Sound.
“Summerfolk was huge. There’s a really great feeling in this community. That’s the whole reason why we came here,” she said Saturday.
Richard Knechtel, Rob McLain, The Arrogant Worms and Mike Ford also performed at the event.
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca

Funds raised to keep Summerfolk alive

Ruth Parsons, president of Georgian Bay Folk Society at the Summerfolk benefit concert held Saturday November 5, 2011 at the Harry Lumley Bayshore Community Centre. WILLY WATERTON/OWEN SOUND SUN TIMES/QMI AGENCY

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
Summerfolk will survive, at least for another year.
A save the festival concert celebration Saturday night moved organizers within reach of the emergency $25,000 needed to seed the 37th annual festival in August.
Beyond that, expect big changes within the Georgian Bay Folk Festival, the organization’s president and treasurer both said on the weekend.
“The expenses are out of line for the revenues. That’s where we really have to start to look,” treasurer and finance Chair Deb Blackshaw said.
“I think we live beyond our means a little bit,” agreed President Ruth Parsons. “That catches up with you.”
Which is why a month ago Parsons called on the community to help save the festival.
Despite unusually strong advance sales, two days of rain virtually eliminated single-day visits. The GBFS, with an annual budget approaching $500,000, came up many thousands short of expected revenues from beer, food and other on-site merchandise.
After several years of steady losses, the weather disaster depleted what was left of an emergency rainy day fund and created a cash crisis, although not a debt crisis. Everyone has been paid, Parsons said.
But without raising $25,000 by December, to initiate next summer’s event, Parsons announced in early October, the festival could not continue.
Saturday, with $13,000 already in from donations, new sponsorships, some 200 new supporting memberships, early ticket sales for 2012 and an expected $8,000 or more from Saturday’s concert, Parsons said she was “99 per cent confident” GBFS would be hiring a new artistic director within weeks and carrying on.
equire more regular fundraising events, a hard look at all expenses, tendering some of the major rental and supply contracts to get a better price, finding new sponsors to support specific aspects of the event, and adjusting marketing to boost ticket sales, the GBFS board members said.
Ticket prices won’t go up, and the artistic budget won’t be cut, Blackshaw said.
“This is the wrong time to do that. But what we’re going to be doing is taking some real hard looks at the festival costs,” she said at the Bayshore community centre as musicians and technicians fine-tuned the sound system before Saturday’s benefit concert.

Georgian Bay Folk Society seeks new AD for Summerfolk

BILL HENRY
Sun Times staff
Summerfolk needs a new artistic director.
Richard Knechtel will step down once his contract ends this fall, he confirmed.
Knechtel, who first performed at Summerfolk in 1976, then at all but three or four festival since, has been the popular annual roots music and craft event’s programmer for five years. Before that, he assisted former AD Liz Harvey-Foulds with programming for two years.
Knechtel said Friday he parts company with the GBFS on good terms and it was entirely his decision not to renew his contract.
“And it was a hard one,” Knechtel said. “It can be an all consuming job.”
The folk society’s board of directors learned of Knechtel’s pending departure in an e-mail Friday from President Ruth Parsons.
“These are BIG SHOES to step into,” she wrote “I will miss Richard’s humour, artistic vision in the programming, and many other of his fine contributions. I have appreciated working with him in my first year as president.”
The GBFS also issued a news release Friday announcing Knechtel’s pending departure and saying the board is now seeking someone to program the 2012 and 2013 Summerfolk festivals, and noting that Knechtel will not be renewing his contract.
“It was very hard, because I love the festival and Summerfolk is the festival that influenced me and affected me in terms of my love for folk music and all that incorporates,” Knechtel said.
Parsons was out of down and could not be reached Friday for more details. Two board members contacted by The Sun Times both said only the president and the artistic director are authorized to speak to the media about GBFS business.
With the Discoveries competition to recruit young performers, the new dance area, the instrument petting zoo, the popular Jumble Jam and Sharing Circle and other aspects, Knechtel has emphasized audience participation during his tenure with the festival, while programming main stage, beer tent and workshop entertainment at the festival.
“I placed a real emphasis on breaking down the barriers between performers and the audience,” he said. “So many people that come to the festival are perfomers themselves, or players, and everybody dreams of playing on the Summerfolk stage … they get a chance to do that and the energy that creates is pretty fantastic.”
He has also given the society a higher off-season profile through partnerships with community groups to host such things as Monday music nights at the Downtown Bookstore.
Knechtel said five years in the exhausting AD role is long enough and he will now concentrate again on his own music career. He performs both as a singer/songwriter and as the popular regional children’s entertainer Dickie Bird.
“I’m going to just breathe for a bit,” he said. “It’s just tiring. It’s a lot of details and some days I would just like to wake up and play my guitar for awhile.”
With several projects on the go, including deciding a theme for next year and completing an important grant application, he will stay on until the folk society finds a replacement.
”I’m still on the job until somebody takes over, as much as I’d like to walk away and get a good night’s sleep.”
bhenry@thesuntimes.ca