Workman, Buckley set to revel in open air of North Country Fair
Mariel Buckley and Hawksley Workman are no strangers to outdoor music festivals — in fact they thrive under the open sky. But neither musician has ever played that ember of love annually glowing under Lesser Slave Lake in the Driftpile Valley: the inimitably feral North Country Fair, which runs all weekend in its 41st year.
The two aren’t playing together — I’m just shining a spotlight on them on account of affection — and their styles are certainly at least around the bend from each other.
Perpetual motion machine Workman started out nearly 20 years ago with heart-on-hissleeve indie pop that took over the nation’s radios in 2001 with the songs Striptease and Jealous of Your Cigarette, sharing most of the ride with pianist Todd (Mr. Lonely) Lumley.
Over the years, he’s experimented and evolved in the oddest directions, including a pair of 2010 albums called Meat and Milk, a Christmas EP, and a couple years back a children’s book about collectively making soup.
Calgary’s Buckley, meanwhile, feels like a naturally occurring antidote to corporate d-bags in plastic cowboy hats throwing up outside Flames Central, showing up in 2012 with her self-titled EP then an album called Motorhome, soon enough opening for the likes of k.d. lang, Serena Ryder, Hayes Carll, and The Deep Dark Woods.
Her voice, often oddly compared to Loretta Lynn’s, is honestly its own thing, and there’s a mix of strength and tenderness, all deployed in a traditional country way, that if anything reminds me of Neko Case’s black-magic alchemy, if not sound, with a pinch of Springsteen, too. Dirt road music — and her recent album Driving in the Dark is her best work yet.
Of the Lynn comparisons, she says with a laugh, “It’s a bit aggressive. I couldn’t say I’ve got the longevity to be anywhere close … but it’s always nice. I mean, a kind word is a kind word; I’ll take what I can get pretty much.
“Americana is working its way into mainstream country in a lot of ways,” she muses, “but a lot of the comments I’m getting are it’s refreshing, a good live show, traditional without being old school, that kind of thing. We did well on our radio campaign so the live shows are always busier than I’m expecting them to be.”
She’s specifically looking forward to the free-range party vibe of North Country Fair, bringing along a four-piece band, which should get exciting. “I haven’t had that kind of grassroots experience yet. I’m doing Ness Creek, which is kind of like the Saskatchewan version, really looking forward to both.”
Just this week, Buckley released Casting Stones, which has a rusty outlaw vibe, in support of a tour taking her across Canada, down to New York and Vermont before circling back to Lethbridge. She plays NCF Friday and Saturday.
“We do a lot of house shows,” she notes, “it doesn’t really matter the size of show at all. If people are engaged and present and want to chat after — awesome. It’ll be f—ing great,” she predicts with a laugh, “I’ll be as effed up as everyone else.”
Workman, who now lives in Montreal after years in Toronto then a five-year stint in the country, is as always philosophical and thoughtful — even about getting utterly wasted.
“The greatest thing about festivals, if you were to ask any musician, is the opportunity to hang with other musicians. You get to hang with people for a few days with whom you only have relationships that are ships passing in the night. Everybody’s locked into a town. I think of an incredible hangout I got to have with Martha Wainwright at Edmonton Folk Fest.”
Listening to Workman’s latest album Median Age Wasteland, you can tell Montreal’s been good to him. It’s a bittersweet album full of nostalgia, but also confidence without being showy — even though it was produced by gear wizard and the Dears lead singer Murray Lightburn.
“It’s a city filled with arts and ghosts. It’s the city of Mordecai (Richler), the city of Leonard (Cohen),” Workman purrs, “I’m in that neighbourhood, even, surrounded by independent, hardworking indie rock and roll musicians who were famous
15 or 18 years ago, and we take breaks from our weightlifting and just chat about what a bizarre conundrum the music business is. I love it.
“My Toronto years were never really accompanied by a community of people. I was living on airplanes and didn’t build a community, and I really have here.”
Speaking of communities, we get back to festivals, which are always just that, down to having their own mythology. North Country Fair especially so.
“In B.C., I made kind of an interesting discovery,” says the singer. “I did a mainstage show on a Sunday, and it was early afternoon. You could just feel that tent was hot, everybody had been drinking and doing drugs for an entire weekend, and there was a real feeling of that Sunday repenting, that self-loathing edginess that comes when you’re in a room full of people who are sweating out a little bit of excess.
“There was something so bloody raw about that show. It’s made me cognizant of when I get to play throughout the festival weekend. Everybody who’s at a festival is on their own trip, to have a great time and probably to engage in a bit of excess.
“There is sort of a bacchanalian element to what’s going on at these things,“he laughs.
Ticket info, directions, a helpful FAQ section and a full list of acts are online at lslncca.ca, some of the names including Bad Buddy, Celeigh Cardinal, Carmanah, Carolyn Mark, K-Riz, the McGowan Family Band, Mercy Funk, Nanise, Physical Copies, Reverend Horton Heat, Scenic Route to Alaska, and of course the luminous Scott Cook.
A regular adult weekend pass is $180, $120 for youth, and both 12 and under and 65 and up attendees get in free. Don’t show up before 6 p.m. Wednesday, music starts on the mainstage Thursday, expanding across the fairgrounds on Friday.
There’s a midway where you can buy everything from drinking horns to the best cheeseburgers in the galaxy, and the camping is nothing short of magnificent — though be prepared for hot, cold, wet and dry weather, sometimes all at once.
What more can I say? There’s no festival like it, which is exactly why it’s so good. See you at the Sunday repentance under the non-judgmental whispering of the trees.