August 10, 2019
It's an odd thing photographing a music festival, trying to capture an event centred on sound and movement in a frozen image.
Veteran attendees of the Regina Folk Festival, celebrating its 50th year this weekend, know the three-day event is about much more than the music. It's about community, new experiences and bringing the world to Regina.
We can see an image of a sweaty performer on stage flipping their hair during a guitar solo or a photo of picnic blanket squatters, mouths agape mid-singalong. But those don't tell the stories that set one music festival apart from another. So, we went to the source: four photographers who have shot the Regina Folk Festival for several years.
Take that lead image by Carey Shaw. In that moment in 2016, Jay Kimball and his children caught her eye. Two little ones, dressed (and face-painted) to the nines for their big night out with dad when bedtimes and nursery rhymes are thrown out the window in favour of main stage jams.
Folk Festival has long aspired to be kid-friendly, offering a Children's Area for kids to find their inner performer and participate in a daily parade.
That's not to say you won't see kids rocking out at the main stage. Amidst the flower crowns and bucket hats, it's not uncommon to see bald scalps bobbing above the crowd, wrapped in noise-cancelling earmuffs.
Danielle Tocker snapped this pint-sized festivalgoer with his mother in 2017, and saw them again in 2018. The boy seemed like a harsh critic of whomever was playing at the time. Tocker hopes to run into the pair again this year.
Babies are not only brought to the Folk Festival, they are sometimes the — how to put this politely? — product of the event's magical ambience. Michael Franti met his wife at the festival in 2007. Eleven years later, he performed at the festival and invited her on stage. As you can see in this photograph by Rae Graham, the two are going strong.
That same year, Franti hosted a free yoga class — one of the many examples of festival offerings outside of musical performances.
Regina studio FadaDance is a festival mainstay, bringing workshops for all ages, performances, back-up dancers and other forms of joyous movement to the event. Last year, Tocker caught FadaDance's Heather Cameron in action in the Children's Area.
The festival's extra-curricular activities can also veer into the unexpected. In 2018, Ukrainian quartet DakhaBrakha performed, as caputred by Tocker in this photo. But get this: the group also hosted a borscht-making workshop. Tocker says she loves attending the festival because she'll always fall in love with a band she wouldn't have otherwise discovered.
Getting a bowl of communally-made borscht out of your concert experience is likely a welcome surprise for most. What's not so welcome is when the weather goes sideways, impacting performances.
In 2014, a powerful thunderstorm swept through downtown Regina, forcing an early end to one of the festival's evenings. Headliner Sam Roberts Band was cancelled. Soaked, disappointed fans turned up in droves to the festival's official after-party at The Exchange, only to be overjoyed to see Sam Roberts take the stage for a short acoustic set as the power flickered on and off. Fellow festival performer Elliott Brood joined him, as seen on the right in this photo by Chris Graham.
From tumultuous skies to dangerous heat, Mother Nature tested the commitment of Folk Festival attendees again last year when a heatwave hit the province. Regina set a monthly temperature record for the Saturday of the festival, reaching 41 C.
To keep cool, the members of Deep Dark Woods, Kacy & Clayton, and Ava Wild draped their heads in wet towels during an afternoon workshop performance shot by Chris Graham.
Even when the weather is co-operating, headliners can be sidelined. Sinead O'Connor pulled the plug on her top performance spot at the 2015 festival with weeks' notice. What Graham recalls, though, is how the replacement act — the Blind Boys of Alabama —wowed the audience in her absence. Graham was lucky enough to snag a photo of the band as blind members were led offstage by one of the seeing members of the group.
The group is performing on Saturday again this year.
The performers might get all the cheers, but the folks that deserve a standing ovation at the Folk Festival are the volunteers. With a small staff, the organization has relied on some 12,000 volunteers over its five-decade history. As Tocker shows here, volunteers customize their event T-shirts for a contest every year.
Do you have a photo from the Regina Folk Festival you'd like to share? Send it to saskphotos@cbc.ca and tell us the story behind it.