Meaford’s Scarecrow Parade is just the beginning of a busy weekend in Meaford. The weekend traditionally anchored by the Apple Harvest Craft Show – a show of carefully selected artisans and craftspeople from near and far offering everything from toys to tinware to needlework to folk art to stained glass and much more – has grown busier every year, as events and exhibits appear to tempt tourists and locals alike.

This year, the Meaford Museum is open with free admission all weekend – and on Saturday, you can can. That is, you can learn to can. Well, let’s see how the museum puts it. “Learn the steps to effective and safe canning with Isobel McInnis as she does on-site demonstrations at 1 pm, 2 pm and 3pm. Printed material will be available and you are invited to ask Isobel any questions you may have. Each demonstration will take approximately 30 minutes.”

Meanwhile, the Heatlamp at the Harbour Music Festival kicks off at 11 a.m. on Saturday with a vendors market opening, followed by a music show for the kids, a Tex-Mex food bar featuring chili, pulled pork, nachos and a selection of hot sauces, and a series of three performances offering gutsy blues, folk, and more through the afternoon.

That’s a taste of this weekend’s events. To learn more, just head to Meaford.

Mick turns 69 next month. Keith will join him in December. Charlie just turned 71. And Ronnie Wood’s a spry(?) 65. Are they ready for retirement?

Apparently not.

The latest word in this speculation-denied story (in which the press first generates a rumour, and then reports the denial of the rumour, thus getting two stories about nothing, really) is that the Stones aren’t going to retire after headlining the Glastonbury Festival in England later this summer.

Apparently they were “said” to be planning to strut off the stage into a well deserved retirement after celebrating their 50th anniversary with a few gigs this summer, culminating with Glastonbury.

“But representatives of the band have since told NME there is no truth to the reports,” The Sudbury Star reported this week.

Here are Mick’s and Keith’s takes on the road versus retirement (from the official Rolling Stones website):

“If we were bored to death, honestly I don’t think we would do it,” says Mick. “We do enjoy ourselves doing it. Everyone has been saying, How come they can enjoy themselves? They should be bored to death doing this. We’re still having a lot of fun.”

“My question [to those who wonder why the Stones are still on the road] would be, Why not?” asks Keith. “Come up with a reason why not. This is what we love to do. And quite honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without it. It’s almost a duty. How many millions are there out there [who want to see the Stones]? Who am I to deny you me?”

After the jazz appetizers of Friday night, you might still have an appetite for the three-course musical menu on Saturday. It starts with the Big Band Era on Saturday afternoon at the Beaver Valley Community Centre, featuring the Georgian Sound Big Band, the Lighthouse Swing Band, and the Toronto All Star Band playing jazz, swing and current “standards”. And a bevy of swing dancers will inspire you to try out some new old moves.

Had enough big band music? No, you haven’t. Starting at 7 p.m., the Georgian Sound Big Band and Toronto All Star Band lead off the evening performances. But as the night grows dark, the Martels kicking into gear with high energy 50s and 60s rock and roll hits. (The core of this group got together in 1957 and backed up teen idol Bobby Curtola.)

Or… as dusk falls, get ready for Dawn – Dawn Tyler Watson, that is – at the Westin Trillium at the Village at Blue Mountain. Dawn has won Best Female Artist at the Quebec Lys Blues Awards six times in a row, and took home the 2009 Album of the Year honours.

Dawn Tyler Watson

Don’t worry, you can sleep in Sunday morning. The musical brunch at the Golf Club at Lora Bay doesn’t begin till 10:30, and the gospel/spiritual music at St. Georges Parish Hall starts at 2 p.m.

Lora Bay’s popular 5-course brunch features the Dixieland style of the Regal Jazz Band, and the afternoon performance introduces gospel singer Dave Randall and a group of young spiritual singers, Chaverim.

In the Southern Georgian Bay area, April showers bring jazz in the wee hours… and in the afternoon… and at brunch. Just down the road, in Thornbury and Clarksburg and at Lora Bay, you can fill just about every waking moment from Friday to Sunday during Jazzmania listening to jazz, big bands, swing, gospel – and even rock ‘n’ roll.

This popular event brings in bands from far and near, featuring prominent local acts, high school jazz ensembles from the surrounding area, and well-known performers from Ontario and outside the province. This festival brings fresh meaning to the cliché, “a feast for the ears”; in fact it’s a veritable smorgasbord.

Here’s what’s on the menu.

The Jazz Youth Invitational kicks things off early on Friday, with student ensembles performing before jazz professionals and getting feedback and commentary, followed by a performance by the Noodle Factory Jazz Project. You can drop in any time.

The Music Crawl has always been a popular way to sample sounds from a variety of acts, in a variety of venues on Friday night… but before you start your jazz journey, consider this year’s new Dinner Jazz feature. Choose by venue or choose by band, but be prepared to enjoy great food and music in one of the area’s fine eateries. Here’s who’s on where.

Allister Bradley at the Ruffed Grouse Bistro
Dixie Kings at the Marsh Street Centre
Jamie Ruben & Steve Zsirai at the Sisi Trattoria
Joe Huron & Dennis McAndrew at the Bruce Wine Bar
Karen Holgate & Jan Menkal at the Simplicity Bistro
Louis Lefaive at the L E Shore Library
Mike Grace and Friends at the Beaver Valley Community Centre
Shawn Mei Trio at the Mill Café
Wayne Buttery at the St. George’s Parish Hall

Visit here to check out the menus. (And get your reservations in early)

After dinner, get ready to “crawl” with jazz and blues at a number of “hot spots” open until nigh on midnight.

That’s just the first day. Rest up for a full day Saturday, and the popular Jazz Brunch at Lora Bay on Sunday. More tomorrow.

At a quick glance, you might think these four moptops are the real Beatles, magically, mysteriously on tour once again. But they’re Ontario’s own “The Caverners”, a remarkably faithful lookalike, soundalike, tribute band. (Your blogger caught them in St. Catharines a few years back.) And they’re playing Meaford Hall tonight! Call 1-877-538-0463.

The waters of Georgian Bay have inspired songwriters, surely, beyond recorded history. Its deep waters can be blue and inviting and a summer playground… or turn on you without warning. As Stan Rogers wrote in “White Squall”,

Now it’s a thing that us old-timers know, in a sultry summer calm
There comes a blow from nowhere, and it goes off like a bomb!
And a 15 thousand tonner can be thrown upon her beam
While the gale takes all before it with a scream.

That song, about a laker heading north on either Georgian Bay or Lake Huron proper after losing one of its crew to the “fury of the blow”, reminds us that a “red-eyed Wiarton girl” is left behind – and the liner notes explain that more than “30 percent of the Captains and First Mates employed in shipping on the Lakes came from this quiet fishing town in the Bruce Peninsula.”

Across the Bay to the east, Gordon Lightfoot’s “Christian Island (Georgian Bay)” paints a sunnier picture of our waters.

I’m sailing down the summer wind
I got whiskers on my chin
And I like the mood I’m in
As I while away the time of day
In the lee of Christian Island
Tall and strong she dips and reels
I call her Silver Heels
And she tells me how she feels
She’s a good old boat and she’ll stay afloat
Through the toughest gales and keep smilin’
But for one more day she would like to stay
In the lee of Christian Island

When Kevin Moyse, an Owen Sound songwriter, read tales of Georgian Bay shipwrecks written by Scott Cameron (Meaford resident and former principal of our high school) – he was inspired to create an entire album and DVD package called “Songs of Georgian Bay”. Visit here to learn more.

Other songs of Georgian Bay

Georgian Bay by Laura Ranieri
The Georgian Bay Suite by D. Bain
“Georgian Bay Sunsets” by Evan Paul (among other songs inspired by the Bay). Hear the CBC podcast.
Paul Motian’s “Georgian Bay”, featuring Keith Jarrett. Listen to a sample here.

And now for some shameless self-promotion. Back in 1994, the communities ringing the Bay from Owen Sound to Midland held the Georgian Bay ’94 Marine Heritage Festival, which featured numerous events and visits by tall ships to many of the ports, including Meaford. Organizers held a song contest, calling for songs that celebrated marine heritage, and your faithful blogger got to work on a lyric – “The Dance of Georgian Bay” – asking Sean Keating and Maureen Keating to join in to write the music and perform the song.

“The Dance of Georgian Bay” won the contest. If you’d like to listen, here’s the original contest demo. (Right-click to download the song or left-click to play.)

THE DANCE OF GEORGIAN BAY
© 1994 Maureen Keating, Sean Keating and Vic Michener

Cedar and birchbark sewn taut as a drum skin
Whispering paddles wove spells in our lees
Lost in the wake of the timber and iron
Rolling like thunder from over the sea.

We’re born to the slap of the waves on the pilings
And someday we’ll rest as our bones are picked clean
Stranded on sand like our poor sister Nancy
Or rotting in drydock for want of a dream

But for one sparkling moment
We’ve lived on this water
We’ve weathered her anger and dreamed through her calms
Passing on secrets
From daughter to daughter
As long as she’s here then our dreams will live on.

Sing us a song to the wind in the rigging
Sway like a bride to the beat of the waves
Sweep us away on the breath of a storm cloud
Dance the dance of Georgian Bay

The turtlebacks challenged the old wooden schooners
And now their own nets lie there dry and unused
Even trusty old freighters rust sooner or later
Each weary side wheeler limps through her last cruise

So drive deep your paddle and fire your engines
Cast for your luck in the old fishing hole
Ride on the wind till the land dips astern
Oh, your voyage may end, but they can’t sink your soul

And for one sparkling moment
We’ll live on this water
We’ll weather her anger and dream through her calms
Passing on secrets
From daughter to daughter
As long as she’s here, then our dreams will live on.

Sing us a song to the wind in the rigging
Sway like a bride to the beat of the waves
Sweep us away on the breath of a storm cloud
Dance the dance of Georgian Bay

Back in 1975, brothers John and Tim Harrison got the idea of starting a folk festival in their hometown of Owen Sound, just 20 minutes down the road from Meaford. Searching for a suitable site for their first, low-key event, they settled on Kelso Beach Park, on the west shore of Owen Sound Bay. And settled is the right word. At the time, the park was a flat, almost marshy area nearby factories often used as a dump. The inaugural event featured such artists as Shirley Eikhard, Willie P. Bennett, and the Original Sloth Band playing on makeshift stages, and in lieu of ponchos and branded seating pads, the organizers sold garbage bags to protect folkie butts from the wet ground.

Tomorrow at 5 p.m. the 36 edition of the Summerfolk Music and Crafts Festival kicks off. In the years since that quiet debut, the festival has grown into one of Ontario’s premiere music events (indeed one of the most respected folk festivals anywhere), showcasing remarkable international artists on numerous outdoor stages – including the permanent, covered main stage, which faces a limestone and grass amphitheatre and hosts the main nightly events – and the large and popular “Down By The Bay” tent, which features performances throughout the day and into the night in a licensed setting.

Summerfolk mainstage

True to its folk festival roots, the event features “workshops” throughout the day at various stages – gatherings of different musicians from different acts who interact and play music around each workshop’s theme.

And from the beginning, Summerfolk has been about more than music. Artisans and craftspeople of remarkable talent and range offer their wares for sale in booths in a small, friendly, outdoor market. Of course, there’s a variety of food for all tastes, too.

Each year, the festival is notable as much for the new discoveries as the established artists. This year features such folk stalwarts as Tom Leighton, James Gordon and David Francey, as well as up-and-comers The Once (the Newfoundland vocal group that’s been showing up at all the award shows the past couple of years) and Australia’s “alt-pop darlings” The Little Stevies – along with more than two dozen more other performers and groups.

Try it once, and you’ll be hooked.

Summerfolk traditionally closes with many of the artists onstage performing Stan Rogers’s “The Mary Ellen Carter”. In 2007, Stan’s son, Nathan fronted the crew. (You’ll need to click twice on the video below to see it on YouTube.

Electric Eclectics snuck up on this year (as did the “August” long weekend, which mainly takes places in July). But this crazy weekend of experimental music, sound art and, well, they’ve called it this themselves before, noise, is something everybody should experience at least once. (And then you’ll want to be back again.) The sixth Electric Eclectics is on this weekend.

The blogger has managed to be away the last couple of years during the event, but attended the second and third editions, and with the way the weather’s shaping up this weekend, might just be able to make it this year.

Highlights from those years, which have acquired the tinge of some psychedelic memory, include listening to the weird dissonance of the Nihilist Spasm Band while gazing across the rolling pastoral beauty of the drumlins from Scotch Mountain; theramin suites to die for by Dorit Chrysler; catching some old favorites (Chris Bottomley, Richard Underhill and Mary Margaret O’Hara, among others) in an extremely intimate setting and with new perspective; and an amazing midnight laser light show of the quality you’d find at a major event for thousands occurring under a tent packed with fewer than 200 people. And then there was the on-site camping.

The costs have gone up a bit in the short years since, and the crowds are getting bigger, but this is still a truly an event like no other in the world – this type of music, sound art and installations in this unparalleled setting.

Rather than trying to imagine it from these pale attempts to describe it, start by visiting the website to see what’s on offer this weekend, check out the Meaford Independent’s video from 2009 (below)… and then be there!

Discovered that the benefit for the Sweetwater Music Festival featuring renowned conductor Bramwell Tovey has been cancelled due to illness. Best wishes for a speedy recovery to Mr. Tovey, and ticket holders should know that they can still enjoy a performance of light jazz by Mark Fewer and Friends in the Meaford Hall Galleries tomorrow night. (Plus free appetizers and a cash bar.) Fewer is the Sweetwater Music Festival’s Artistic Director, and was to have played with Tovey in the second half of the performance, which will be rescheduled soon.

Back in 2004, the first Sweetwater Music Festival introduced yet another world class option for music aficionados in the Meaford area. (I usually hate the term “world class”, but in this case, it fits.)

Founded by Keith and Jean Medley and guided by Mark Fewer, the annual festival showcases internationally respected classical music performers in the splendid acoustics of the 146 year-old Leith Church and Owen Sound’s grand stone Division Street Church.

These musicians usually play before large crowds in large centres, but over the three-day festival, you have a rare opportunity to see and hear them in unique, smaller scaled and accessible environments. (The acoustics at Leith’s “auld kirk”, in particular, are perfect for quartets and soloists, and the audience has an opportunity to meet the musicians in the post-concert soirées.)

We’ll check back in on the festival closer to the date.

Last night they were literally dancing in the aisles of Meaford Hall. Attending dozens of musical performances over the years, I’ve never seen the like. The grand old Opera House, elegantly renovated in recent years, rarely echoes with such abandoned behaviour. But when Spirit of the West, the Canadian Celtic/folk/rock fivesome, launched into “Home For a Rest”, a good chunk of the audience leapt from their seats and rushed the area in front of the stage to jig and reel. The overflow spilled into the centre aisle and halfway to the rear. The band capitalized on the giddy momentum with their encore, another rousing crowd pleaser, “The Crawl”, with Geoff Kelly noting, “Okay, we’ve got you pegged – here’s another drinking song.”

The band keeps a shine on the bar with their sleeves

John Mann and a Meaford fan

(Hope to post a video clip here soon)

I’ve written here before about some of the opportunities to hear live music in Meaford, but this seems as good a time as any to bring it up again. Last weekend, it was GBSS Idol. And still hyped from hearing Spirit of the West last night, we’ll be catching Fred Eaglesmith, another Canadian stalwart, next Friday night in the cool upstairs bar at McGinty’s.

And I haven’t even mentioned the Sweetwater Music Festival. While it’s held in September, it kicks with a fundraising performance by Grammy award-winning conductor Bramwell Tovey, Music Director of the Vancouver Symphony and Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

More on that in a bit.