*Title Image by Mariposa Folk Festival and The Art of John Fearnall – Good Noise
The 65th anniversary of the Mariposa Folk Festival has come and gone. Once again music lovers turned out in numbers, and for the fourth year in a row the festival was sold out. For those of you who have never been :
The 3-day festival “ is a family-friendly celebration of song, story, dance and craft in the bucolic setting of Tudhope Park.”- From the Mariposa Folk Festival website
Typically, over 60 artists perform on up to 11 stages scattered around the spectacular waterfront site and on Orillia’s downtown main street. To address the ongoing needs of attendees, a thriving compound of talented food vendors and skilled artisans offers a wide range of high-quality food and artisanal products. Additionally, there are three licensed venues.
A unique children’s area hosts children’s activities, including a musical instrument “Petting Zoo” presented by the good folks at Long & McQuade Musical Instruments. Another special area hosts community groups. This entertainment setting truly has something for everyone, on top of the exceptional music.
Mariposa is one of those musical experiences that is hard to describe. It is a wonderful place to hear favourite artists and discover new ones. In the evening you might see and hear a famous act on the main stage that you’ve been dying to see for years, and during the day, you might see an act that you’ve never heard of before that will absolutely blow you away.
Despite its name, Mariposa showcases a wide and varied range of musical genres. This is because folk music has evolved into a diverse form in the modern era. As the saying goes, “this ain’t your grandma’s folk music.”
Mariposa still showcases artists performing many of the traditional forms of acoustic music associated with grassroots musical gatherings, like historic Celtic tunes, politically oriented ballads, the blues, and country. But now, you will most often hear contemporary versions of all of those, often referred to as Roots music in Canada, or Americana in the United States. And Folk Rock is a thing.
The Vibe
“A “vibe” is a casual word people use to describe the general feeling, mood, or atmosphere of something.” – ChatGPT
The other big attraction that Mariposa offers Is its incredible “vibe”. And I have to tell you; it has maintained the exact same vibe since its early days in the 1970’s. It is very much a relaxed, laid-back approach to experiencing live music.
And while you are there, you don’t even have to listen to music all the time, even though it will be there in the background. It’s a great place to simply enjoy some delicious food and beverages in a shared experience. Basically, it is a 2 ½ day casual party with great tunes. Many folks keep coming back to Mariposa year after year simply because they know they will run into friends that they only ever see there and will have a great time reuniting and catching up.
One of the other delightful aspects of Mariposa is that you will often run into the artists who are performing as they stroll around the site. Most will be happy to have a quick chat and even have their picture taken with you. Here I am in 2017 with a fellow board member doing the “selfie” thing with Matt Andersen, the outstanding Canadian blues artist.
My History with Mariposa
This year’s Festival had special meaning for me. It was 50 years ago that I first attended Mariposa on Centre Island in Toronto, where I was attending university. Digging a little deeper, I have to report that I remember the very first Mariposa Folk Festival in 1961 when it started out in my hometown of Orillia before it slipped into a gypsy like existence, wandering around the province of Ontario. Ironically, and given how things tend to circle back on themselves, Mariposa returned to Orillia in 2000.
I did not attend the first festival, but I remember coming into town with my father from the family business the day after, and we drove around town checking out the damage and detritus left by “the godless beatniks”… probably not my father’s exact words, but I do remember him being appalled by the situation. 🙂
And, in the spirit of full disclosure I should report that I am a former Mariposa board member. At various times in my tenure, I served in the roles of Vice President and Treasurer on the board executive. I have always considered it a great privilege and honour to have had the opportunity to serve.
Hangin’ out at the 2022 festival with some of my former board colleagues.
My Mariposa Mission
I am putting this piece together because I would like to paint you a picture of what this amazing event is all about. Now that we are abandoning travel to the United States, it’s probably good to share amongst ourselves some of the wonderful and interesting places and events that we can visit in our own country. Attending a musical festival in the summer is certainly one of those things. I am championing Mariposa, but there are many other wonderful music festivals going on across this country all summer long. I suspect it costs less per person to attend these extended events than you might spend to see a big time American performer at any of the major concert venues across Canada.
The approach I’m going to take is to break this down into individual days and try to share the experience through the photos and videos I recorded as each day progressed – to give you a sense at least of what the music is all about. I should add, to preface things, that I did not intend to do this before the festival. It just struck me as a good idea after the fact. So, I didn’t really get pictures of some of the more interesting things that are peripheral to the music like the great children’s activities and food vendors, and artisans. I had to wrap the narrative around the pictures that I had spontaneously take. A few are even from years past. Yes, I am forever, taking pictures.
Let the Mariposa Experience Begin!
The festival begins at the main site at 4:00 PM on Friday night. The free downtown stage in the town itself starts just before noon.
As I said, part of the great joy of attending Mariposa is gathering with friends. For several years now, a posse of my music loving pals has attended Mariposa with the Love-goddess and me. It would be fair to say that this may be an ongoing attempt to re-create “the Big Chill”.
We often will head up to Orillia early in the day on Friday and gather at the location in which we all stay and have a quick catch-up before we head over to Tudhope Park. When we arrive at the site, the first thing we do is set up our chairs in front of the main stage and then make a beeline for “Alice’s”. Alice’s is one of the three licensed areas on the site and one which faces the main stage where we can listen to the early acts while we continue with the catch-up and enjoy some food and drink.
Friday
1) We always make a point of entering via the rear entrance, which has us passing through the on-site camping along the shore of Lake Couchiching. This gate is considerably less congested and busy than the main entrance.
Camping was sold out once again this year. It typically sells out early, so if you think you might like to go that route, you need to buy tickets and book early. In the background of the first photo, you can start to see the vehicles of the large group of dedicated folks who have been showing up in their Westfalia camper vans since onsite camping was first instituted. You can’t see it here, but the camping is right on the edge of Lake Couchiching, which is a wonderful spot for campers and other festival attendees to go for a swim.
2) Alice’s was humming on Friday night. It is a great place to connect with people you are meeting at the festival.
3) In this next shot, I am waiting in line to buy drink tickets to get beer at the beverage station set up at the far end of the tent. It looked like it was going to be a bit of a wait, but it all proceeded very quickly. Thank goodness, I was thirsty! 🙂
The other thing you can see in the following photo is that a lot of young people attended this year’s festival, which was great to see. I would have to admit that until a very few years ago this was very much a “Boomer” festival, offering up a lot of great singer-songwriters and bands from when we were young. We are, after all, the folks who remember the early years of Mariposa and understand what a historical event it is. But like many other things, Mariposa is evolving, as it needs to do.
4) This following shot of this year’s audience standing in front of the main stage provides a much better look at the demographic future of Mariposa. This year really felt like a passing of the baton to a younger generation moment.
5) Our thirst and hunger satiated, we head back to our chairs at the main stage to take in the evening’s performers. Each night, the main stage typically hosts five or six acts, including the headliners. But you also get to see very brief, musical appearances by “tweeners” to the side of the main stage as the big stage is being set up for the next featured act. Another great way to spot a new talent.
The first act we caught was someone I had not heard of or seen before, Langhorne Slim. He was a total hoot. Very energetic and so engaged with the audience that at one point, he leapt off the stage and wandered through the crowd to belt out a tune. Very entertaining..
This is a short video clip from his performance to better give you a sense of what he’s all about.
We did not hang around to take in the evening’s headliner, the Sheepdogs, so it was a relatively early night for us.
Saturday
On Saturday, we arrived in time to pick up some of the fabulous food on offer for lunch. Every year, I get the Curried Goat at Simmo’s food stall on the Saturday. Some of my annual Mariposa traditions include my food choices.
6) I took this next picture as we were wandering in. It gives you a sense of how everyone sets up their chairs in front of the main stage (Lightfoot Stage – named after Orillia’s most famous son, singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot) for the evening performances. There is no music on the main stage until 5:00 PM in the evening. Not to worry, there’s lots of great music happening on all the other stages.
Those clouds look a little ominous though, don’t they? A little prophetic, unfortunately.
7) Right after lunch, I managed to catch Charlotte Cornfield at the Bohemian Stage down at the end of the point. I love her songwriting and her music, and she did not disappoint. She was one of the two artists that I was really intent on seeing this year. She is very much an unheralded Canadian performer. She has a two-year-old daughter so I’m thinking she’s probably been absent from view for the last two or three years.
I suppose it’s a little disingenuous to say she is unheralded given that she attracted the attention of Rolling Stone Magazine a few years ago. But I suspect many of you have never heard of her. Photo from the Rolling Stone article.
Here she is performing a snippet of her song, “Silver Civic”. What an incredible setting for a stage, out at the end of the point.
A favourite Charlotte tune of mine.
8) By late in the afternoon, we are all settled in at the tented pub stage area. It’s a great place to hang out for we boomers because there are “chairs” and, as it happens, “beer”. All essential “Boomer” requirements.
And it is a fun, lively place! And the music is incredible! You get to listen to a wide array of talented artists as they cycle in and out every hour or so.
9) The reason I said the clouds were prophetic was because as we were sitting there late on Saturday afternoon, the skies opened, and a downpour ensued for about 15 minutes. It was raining so hard I began to wonder if some of the stages would get washed out, but, in true Mariposa fashion the show went on uninterrupted and unabated.
I’m not sure you can get a sense of how hard it was raining from this video clip. Definitely harder than it appears. As you can see, a few folks have run in to get in out of the rain, but I’m not sure what the rest of the thousands of people were doing. Needless to say, we were thrilled about where we were when it all started.
10) Shortly after it stopped raining a couple people in our group headed over to dump rainwater out of our chairs and generally get things dried off before we headed over to the main stage.
Everything was nice and dry when we got there. The first act we caught was Canadian Inuk musician Elisapie, shown here on the Jumbotron doing an number a cappella with members of her band. I have seen her before, but I would have to say that she is one of those veteran Canadian performers who continues to improve with age. A really enjoyable set.
Here is a very short clip from her Saturday night show. I don’t think it really captures what a strong performance she was putting on, but it will give you a bit of a sample of her talent
I would suggest you go to YouTube and watch some of her videos there. A number of them are from an album (Inuktitut) she put out that covered several famous songs (Wild Horses, I Want to Break Free, Dreams, etc.) performed in the Inuktitut language. Oh, what the heck, here is her take on the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses.
11) And this brings us to the second performer I really wanted to see this year. Saturday night headliner, Waxahatchee, a.k.a. Kathryn Crutchfield. In a nutshell, she was great. The posse enjoyed her so much, we didn’t even bother sticking around to see the night’s final performer Iron and Wine. Image from The Americana Music Association Awards.
A short clip from her performance. This one, with her performing her song, “The Eye”.
And here is her video of my favourite song, “”Much Ado About Nothing”
Sunday
After running around to various stages on Sunday we ended up back in the beer tent… You get thirsty doing all that wandering around. But this stop reminded me that one of the great benefits of attending Mariposa is that you will typically see an artist that you have never seen or heard of before and you will be absolutely amazed by their talent.
12) This year, for me, one of those was the artist “Corook” a.k.a Corinne Savage. Corrine identifies as queer and non-binary, uses they/them pronouns, and typically refers to themselves as being “awkward. I was wondering how such an interesting individual, who typically plays in a frog hat, might go over with an audience who generally knew nothing about them and probably didn’t share their identity position.
That said, there were lots of folks in the audience who clearly knew who they were and had come to see them specifically. But I think for the most part, this would be an unrecognized artist to most attendees.
I think I can speak for everyone when I say that they totally enthralled the audience. It was a stellar performance, that had everyone captivated by their “They/Them Energy!”. A unique and incredibly talented young adult. Photo from Atlantic Records Press.
13) The last act we saw in the beer tent very much epitomized the direction that Mariposa is going musically. Young bands on the outer limits of what would be described as folk music, who attract younger music fans. The Born Ruffians put on a high energy, loud show that was much appreciated by young, and those of us who still identify as being young rock ‘n rollers. 🙂
14) For the special 65th anniversary, there were a number of artists who were hired to perform because they had played the festival at various times over the years, and had developed into crowd favorites. I generally avoided catching these “repeat” artists, having seen them several times before at both Mariposa and at another venues.
But the final act we took in Sunday evening on the main stage was one of those, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings… and I will never get tired of listening to Blackie. Apparently, right after their set ended, a member of BARK – Colin Linden was headed for California to play guitar in a band celebrating Ringo Starr’s 85th birthday. We weren’t invited to go along.
15) What? You don’t believe me about Colin flying off to play at Ringo’s birthday celebration? Here he is, playing his ever present resonator guitar on the left… Jackson Browne and Joe Walsh doing vocals on the right. The female vocalists were Molly Tuttle, Sam Phillips, Jess Wolfe, and Holly Laessig. Molly Tuttle seems to everywhere these days… she played Mariposa in 2018.
Congratulations to everyone involved in putting on this magnificent event. It is a much loved, well-oiled machine that has a reasonable chance of making it to its 100th anniversary.
A Few Additional Ramblings
And to wrap this all up, a special shout-out to the many folks who have attended Mariposa as part of our music-loving posse. Some come every year, and some come when they are able, but the event is much loved by them all. Clicking on the individual photos will pop them up in a larger view.
So, what do you do after an amazing event like this. Why, you head up to a friends’ cottage to recharge your batteries – and to quote John Prine – “we found ourselves in Canada trying to save our marriage and perhaps catch a few fish. Whatever came first.”
The marriage did not need saving and we caught no fish, but we had a wonderful relaxing time after our busy Mariposa weekend. 🙂
