Edmonton’s 40th Annual Folk Festival starts with Sold Out Thursday

For the past 40 years, music fans have invaded the slopes of Gallagher Park in Edmonton for it’s annual folk festival featuring 95 performances across 8 stages and 4 days.

This year’s lineup has been purposely inclusive of more pop-inspired mainstream artists, such as day 1 headliner, Hozier, to help bring in a younger crowd.  Based on the blocks-long lineup to get through the gates up to 4 hours before the opener was scheduled to take the stage and a sold out first day, I’d say the plan worked.

 

Touted as a “Juno-winning First Nations power couple”, Digging Roots kicked off the weekend with a powerful set of music.  There music, though sometimes ironic lyrically, as with their single AK-47, speaks to truth and love and the struggle for peace and connection in today’s world.

 

 

Trampled by Turtles is more bluegrass punk than folk that has played not only in every state in the US (except Hawaii) and internationally, but they’ve performed at some of the largest festivals in North America … from Coachella to Austin City Limits to Edmonton’s Folk Festival.  Not surprising when 3 of your 8 albums hit #1 and one firmly roots itself into the top 10 spot for an unprecedented 52 straight weeks!

There’s no drummer … just a full line up of stringed instruments … and the crowd had continuous bursts of rapid cheers courtesy their musical prowess.

 

If you were to watch a recorded performance by St Paul and the Broken Bones, you’d refuse to believe their a gospel / soul ensemble band.  To say that lead singer Paul Janeway’s stage presence is dynamic and energetic would be a gross understatement … but even more impressive is his vocal range.

 

Irish sensation Hozier closes out the first day of the 40th anniversary of Edmonton’s Folk Festival to a capacity crowd 25,000 strong that got up off their lawn chairs and tarps to mostly dance along for the set … or as much as Mother Nature would allow.  There was a 20 minute rain delay thanks to a thunderstorm that rolled through after the 4th song. A few people started leaving but most stuck it out and although a bit of a shortened set due to noise ordinances in the middle of the city on a Thursday, those that stuck around were more than fine with getting hit by the rain as a result.