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Another Sunday at Blue Skies, another early morning wakeup courtesy of Magoo and the children’s parade. It used to be that when the living, breathing, marching Sunday morning alarm clock snaked through the festival campground I was either rudely awakened from a deep REM tent-sleep by the colourful cavalcade of cuteness and cacophony or I was still awake and prowling the grounds in search of the last remaining campfire jams. By the time August 4th, 2019 rolled around, however, I had aged and mellowed to the point that I was already wide awake and into my second cup of coffee when the parade began.
As a matter of fact, I questioned why it was starting so late this year and was told matter-of-factly that it started at 9am every year. News to me…I could have sworn the parade used to wake me up at the crack of dawn. Interesting how longevity has affected my relationship to time…the more I experience it the less I understand it.
You’d think that having a headstart on the day would have got me to a bevy of workshops on that fine Sunday morn, but as far as I recall I didn’t go to a single one. Strange, that; lover of workshops that I am. But then, I was probably busy relishing the fact that after a lifetime of camping in The Finger right next to their rehearsal spot, for the first time the Blue Skies choir had decided to move their practises to a different area altogether. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of amateur choral singing, especially when the singers tackle fun pop songs like these folks generally do, but they spend all weekend working on just three songs, over and over and over again, right next to our tents. And while I further appreciate the amount of practise required to get even a short mini-set of music performance worthy, well, let’s just say I used to be extra-motivated to hit up the workshops on Sunday mornings, and the farther the workshop was from The Finger the better.
And so morning turned to noon and with it came lunch, likely courtesy of a friend’s grill (everyone brings much too much food to Blue Skies and I learned long ago to take advantage of the ubiquitous calls of “Who wants a burger?!?”), noon turned to afternoon which was bridged to evening by the daily square dance, a rather massive affair that takes up an hour at the mainstage adjacent to The Finger.
And finally came the usual wide variety of music from the beautiful little Blue Skies stage, which was headlined on this evening by the Urban Science Brass Band, who played stuff by Kendrick Lamar and Dr. Dre and the like. You know…folk music*.
What with moving far away from Ontario just a few months later, it could very well be that this would be my last ever Sunday (or any day) at Blue Skies, which would be a shame. Blue Skies is really quite remarkable and undeniably unique in a world awash with folk festivals, plus it’s heavily populated with really good people and some of my greatest friends. Plus the freakin’ choir finally moved!
Ah well.
*”All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard a horse sing a song.”
-Louis Armstrong
Todd Man Out 