082899 Trout Fishing in America/Vance Gilbert/Jane Siberry/Jane Radmore, Ottawa, ON

It’s kind of ironic how vividly I remember certain flashes and scenes of my day at the CKCU Ottawa Folk Festival on August 28th, 1999, for every memory is bookended with a maybe on one side and a might have on the other.

Take for example the reason I was there in the first place, which was to back up Jane Radmore for one song on the main stage.  At the time Jane might have been eleven or twelve years old and she had been asked to play between acts at the festival.  I’m not sure if we had gotten a band together by this time, but we certainly played this gig as a duo.  I believe it was my first time playing a festival mainstage and it was definitely the biggest crowd I had stood in front of up to that point in my career.

I remember the festival had a masseuse backstage for the artists which I didn’t partake in but it made me feel like a rockstar (folkstar?) just having it there.  I vividly recall standing in the wings with Jane and looking out at the crowd of 6,000 or so people; I was a bit nervous but trying to play it cool for Jane’s benefit.  We played her song about a prostitute in Vancouver but I can’t recall anything about it aside from the fact that it was in G, I played slide guitar on it (which I have always sucked at), and that it was the only song of hers that I helped with the lyrics.  But boy, I sure remember standing there and trying to play it in front of that sunny-day crowd with absolutely none of my guitar coming out of the monitors.  Which is to say: my guitar part was surely coming out of the main speaker columns loud and proud from the audience’s perspective but for my part, I could hear none of it.  All I could hear onstage was Jane’s voice and her strumming, loud and shimmering.  What a time to be playing with a slide!  I’m sure I was out of tune all over the place.  Hopefully the soundguy noticed and adjusted accordingly.

But the funny thing is [shrug], there’s a good chance that we had actually played the day before instead.  

This was definitely the day that I saw Vance Gilbert for the first time and I remember with a Holodeck-like precision the dismissive, condescending interaction I had with him when I asked him to sign the CD I convinced myself to buy despite not at all being able to afford it, though I don’t remember his actual set at all.  It must have been good though; I bought the CD.

And Trout Fishing in America* was there, and they were super-great as they always were.  They are/were a Laurel and Hardy-ish doublebass/guitar acoustic comedy duo who moonlighted as children’s entertainers, and it’ll take more shows than I’ve seen for the novelty of their act to wear off of me.  I’ve seen the adult sets and they are awesome.  I’ve also seen them play their children’s music and it’s equally good, though not as wordy.  And this time they were playing…

…one or the other, I can’t recall.  Logic tells me they were doing an adult set but c’mon, folkies always have children with them.

Now here’s the true crux of the wonder, though wonderful it wasn’t:  Jane Siberry was there too – for sure – and while I have nothing against Jane Siberry as a person or a gigging performer (or do I?  I certainly respect the fact that she opened the premiere performance of Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells II with Bob Wiseman backing her up but I can’t think of [m]any other instances where she racks up brownie-points in my aesthetic), she played a leading role in one of the more atrocious and embarrassing displays of “professional gigging” that I’ve been witness to.

And that train wreck either happened on this day or about four years later, on August 24th, 2003.  If you turn to that entry you will find a full description of exactly what went down on that day or this one, though I will paraphrase my memories of the event once again here in as few words as is possible (I am trying to conserve my vitriol):

It was a song circle in the sidestage tent.  The TFIA guys were there as well as a couple of other stand-alone guitar players, and Siberry was onstage with a big digital keyboard.  As song circles go, each musician took a turn leading the rest on a tune – usually a pretty straightforward three-chorder or perhaps a well-known cover song so the others could easily hop on board – before handing it over to the next musician..

When it got to Jane Siberry’s turn she played two or three chords before stopping abruptly and fumbling with the keyboard’s sound patches, then she started again with a completely different couple or three chords.  And just when the other guys started to jump in whattya know, she would flounce and flounder yet again, stopping on a dime and muttering to herself (into the mic) whilst punching buttons on her board.  The other musicians were looking at each other wondering what the hell was going on, and so was the crowd.  And so was Siberry.  Nobody knew what was going on…my gawd it was so unprofessional.  

I don’t know how they got through her “song” but they did.  But of course after everyone had another turn leading the group it was back to Jane Siberry and again she did the same thing.  If she was a pitcher she would have balked the other team’s entire batting order all the way home.  It was like Trey playing YEM at Coventry, but without the drugs to blame.

As I ponder it all these years later I wonder if it could have really been all that bad?  I had blocked it out of my memory for so long I wonder if I’m now just recalling little snippets of horror and stretching them out to encompass the entire experience.

Let’s just say that maybe Jane Siberry didn’t deliver the sorriest excuse for a live performance I have ever been cursed to stand before but she very well might have.

*As an aside, Richard Brautigan’s 1967 novella Trout Fishing in America is a really interesting read.