Northern Pike in Great Slave Lake!

I just returned home from the Folk on the Rocks Music Festival in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. I had never been to the NWT, and was extremely excited when the wheels touched down on northern soil.

The festival itself is special in that it was celebrating its 30th anniversary, and its roster of musicians is 50% Northern artists (from our three territories) and 50% artists from the southern provinces. I couldn’t help but wonder how that would work, but work it does, and amazingly so. It opened up my eyes to an entire other world of Canadian culture and the deep and passionate connection to music that the Northern people of Canada have… I was able to sit in on a huge collaborative practice featuring many legendary Northern players… so connected are they to their instruments that they just keep on playing, even on smoke break. The sound of the drums are everywhere.

I’ll be talking about Folk on the Rocks on CBC Radio 3’s Summer of 2010 Roadtrip Mixtape Podcast (out July 30) and watch for our video footage of the festival in an upcoming edition of R3TV, our video podcast, out soon.

I must thank some of the special people of Yellowknife who made my virgin voyage to Folk on the Rocks and the NWT so memorable: Lynn Feasey, Sarah McLeod, and Claudia Haas from FOTR, Matthew Grogono for the bicycle, Pablo Saravanjaand for the photos, and Mike Bryant for the amazing fishing adventure!

A heavily armoured starfish from 300 feet under.

Chimo! I just finished up a lovely week in Desolation Sound, double-checking facts, legends, myths, and complete horseshit (all important elements for storytelling) for Adventures In Solitude as we get closer and closer to finishing the editing stages of the book for the fall release.

I just arrived in sweat-soaked Toronto which begins an extremely busy sched of criss-crossing of Canada over the next few weeks for me. Today I’ll be announcing the Polaris Music Prize Shortlist, the ten best Canadian albums based solely on artistic merit according to the critics. I love this Prize and I can’t wait to see the List. My picks included Jason Collett, Tegan and Sara, Hannah Georgas and a few others. That will be a live broadcast on Sirius 86 and CBC Radio 3. A Podcast will follow later tonight, and then I’ll be here in Toronto doing my live show Wed, Thu and Fri.

I’ll be in Calgary for the Stampede this weekend, followed by Folk On The Rocks in Yellowknife, which I am extremely looking forward to. It will be my first time in the Northwest Territories. Any tips? After that I’ll hit Evolve in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, then the Regina Folk Festival, followed by the Peak Performance Bootcamp in BC, and finally back to Desolation Sound to close out the summer.

If you’re in any of the above towns or cities, be sure to say hi and let’s tip a jar!

I just got back from the NxNE Festival in Toronto and I must say I had an absolute blast! One of the big reasons are the fantastic and gracious fans of CBC Radio 3 who are such a fun-loving, passionate, positive bunch of people that it just becomes infectious. Believe me, I haven’t partied ’til 5am in… awhile… and they had both myself and fellow R3 host Craig Norris out to all hours. And I think I can speak for Craig that he doesn’t do that too often either. There’s lots of video and lots of photos.

It helped that it was just full-on summer all weekend long, blasting temperatures of over 30 C, making cycling and hanging out in the park, and wearing little clothing, and drinking a lot, very easy. I even saw Saskatoon band The Sheepdogs perform in a giant tree in the middle of Trinity Bellwoods park, the most unique performance I saw over the weekend. My #1 show would be gorgeous Hannah Georgas, who brought her Polaris Prize-nominated record This is Good to loud rockin’ life at the Horseshoe on Saturday night.

I also picked up a beautiful original painting from The Weakerthans bassist Greg Smith (talented and gracious fellow) after seeing their new tour documentary We Are The Weakerthans We Are From Winnipeg at the NFB, met Chris Murphy‘s brand new three week old son Santiago, had my first Father’s Day with my father-in-law, announced the Polaris Prize Long List with Jill and other pals, re-staged meeting my wife at the exact location with Jian Ghomeshi, rode around town on the Bonecrusher, and managed to score yet another painting, this time a beautiful wedding gift from John “tb3” Teeter.

Who knows? Maybe the wife and I will be moving to Toronto sooner than later.