A Folking Good Time
The rare moment of catching happiness in real-time.
As we get older, capturing a slice of magic isn’t so easy.
Somewhere between invoices, status updates, and Uppababy strollers, we forget to find the fun.
It’s harder to get the band back together. And when we do, the greatest hits hit different.
But occasionally, we get a gift.
This is what happened a couple of weekends ago at a folk festival.
If your eyes rolled at “folk festival,” I get it. Or if your reaction was, “A folk festival…sounds nice,” we’ve likely bumped into each other at a farmer’s market.
I see both sides, and would estimate that a folk festival runs a 50-50 shot at being one long shoeless trust circle of tambourines and slacklines.
Having never been to a proper folk festival, I envisioned scenes from A Mighty Wind. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s a Christopher Guest mockumentary about folk musicians who look like they smell of mothballs and barely-there natural deodorant. It’s chock-full of banjos, ukuleles, and closed-eye singing in billowy blouses.
While my assumptions à la A Mighty Wind weren’t entirely off, there was range.
The three-day bill was filled with small Canadian indie bands, some radio names, and a couple of bigger acts that kept the lights on. In fact, there was enough range that our senior tent neighbours were pissed. More on Bridgett and Peter later.
When we bought tickets in the winter, we were charmed by the idea of camping. The thought of sleeping in nature and waking up to the gentle can-cracking of tent neighbours sounded quintessentially summery.
However, as it turned out, this weekend came on the heels of Canada Day, which fell, rather inconveniently, on a Wednesday. This meant that we, along with four other adults, three dogs, two kids, and a baby, had already spent the week overdrinking and undersleeping at a family cottage.
By the time the folk festival began, we hadn’t been home in over a week. We were bloated, covered in bug bites, and our car had taken on the form of a donation dumpster in a thrift store parking lot.
Lacking much camping know-how, we didn’t pack just one tent for the weekend. We brought a hodgepodge of tents and a rat’s nest of poles in a garbage bag.
The tents were leftover carnage from our outdoor wedding, where we kindly invited guests to camp on my parents’ property in a torrential downpour.
Wet and quite literally deflated, many guests opted to “abandon tent”.
Instead of an air mattress, we had two yoga mats and one beach chair held together by duct tape. My clothing for the festival was strewn across several grocery bags and one BÉIS wheelie suitcase.
I did, however, manage to pack three western-style hats. One of them, a relic from the Calgary Stampede, has a crown so comically tall that I hit my head getting into the car.
I knew I’d be too embarrassed to wear it, but made sure to pack it anyway.
By the time we’d mustered the energy for this final leg, the campsites had been open for a day and a half. While no bands played until late afternoon Friday, first-come, first-served camping started on Thursday morning, ensuring that those of us rolling in before the first guitar strum still felt late.
My husband Kevin and I, our garbage bag of tents, and two Ziplocs of pasta and bean salad arrived late Friday afternoon. Thinking alcohol wasn’t permitted in the campground, we spent an extra hour skilfully hiding every can beneath the trunk floor, where you’d normally store a spare tire.
We rode in dirty, avoiding eye contact with organizers, like two middle-aged traffickers.
Unsurprisingly, being fashionably late—like being fashionable, period—was not immediately rewarded in folk world.
On-site, we discovered there were virtually no campsites left.
I also found the term “campsite” was being used rather loosely.
Instead of carved-out plots, the campground resembled a Black Friday parking lot. Like a Type B game of KerPlunk, there were cars, tents, and lawn chairs scattered everywhere.
Sensing there was nowhere for us to park or set up our vinyl shop, an organizer offered to help.
He enthusiastically pointed to a vacant eight-by-eight-foot patch.
“Oh, okay. You mean on top of that blue tarp?” I said, trying not to sound too perturbed.
“No, sorry, that spot is taken. I meant in front of the tarp,” he gently corrected.
He was pointing to a narrow strip of weeds wedged between the occupied tarp and the road. It somehow made the blue-tarp site feel aspirational. The new spot placed us inches from the road, where we’d surely be trodden by both man and roof-racked Subaru.
Desperate for a solution, I pointed at an open patch of dirt between a couple of VW Westfalia campers.
“Ah, yes. Unfortunately, that’s a special section reserved only for Volkswagen vans.”
Without replying, I squinted.
In a way that’s specifically Canadian, we locked eyes and smiled, waiting to see who would crack first. I knew our weekend depended on it, so I rattled off a “close to the road,” a “think they’d mind?” and one long “we’d be soooo grateful.”
After a few beats, the organizer broke and went off to ask if two chumps without a VW crest could enter the exclusive territory.
A couple of minutes later, across the roped-off fence, a topless man in a straw hat waved us over.
Before anyone could change their mind, I wheeled my suitcase across the potholed dirt road and parked it behind their VW.
“Thank you! You truly just saved our lives! If we were allowed to bring in booze, I’d hand you a beer right now!” I said.
“No booze? Who the hell said that?” said Peter.
Only then did I notice that both Peter and the organizer were holding Molson tall cans.
Another sigh of relief.
Next came the difficult task of frankensteining one tent out of the wreckage of many.
During what can only be described as the absolute climax of a heat wave that was previously referred to as “hotter than Satan’s crotch” by a large woman on an outdoor escalator, we began to assemble.
With beads of sweat rolling into our eyes, Kevin and I began to unravel too.
“Hold it up straight!”
“That pole is fucked. Throw it away!”
“Wait, did you just mix up the good pole pile and the bad pole pile?!”
After sweating out a third of our body weight, we hauled in the last of our supplies, then stepped back to admire our crooked, mismatched tent.
“You’re gonna scorch to death in that thing,” Peter called over.
He wasn’t wrong.
On our folding lawn chairs, we sat in the shade of Peter’s VW trunk and cracked open a cold drink.
We drank in silence, slowly shedding everything the afternoon had just demanded of us.
Taking in our surroundings, I clocked that Peter and his wife Bridgett’s van was one of the few painted with sunflowers, raindrops and blue birds. It was also covered in bumper stickers—a collection of pasteable personality reveals.
Arms are for hugging.
I brake for cloud formations.
What if the hokey pokey really IS what it’s all about?
After a few minutes, we started getting texts that my sister, brother-in-law, and nieces were inside the festival.
And so, we did what any respectable 30-somethings would do at a family folk festival: we each hid a roadie on our person. Then, I stuffed a hunk of mushroom chocolate bar in my bra.
Now, it should be stated that I am not a drug person. I hate weed and hate the harder stuff even more. But on rare occasions, I dabble in the most microscopic of mushroom microdoses. We’re talking a dosage so small, a four-pound Pomeranian could eat it without incident.
With that, we were ready to head inside and test the limitations of festival security.
Having no bags, we were immediately waved through. All we had to do now was find our people and figure out which stage had better music.
The evening was a classic mix-up of grease-smelling food trucks, a plastic-chaired beer tent, and someone selling homemade soap and didgeridoos. There were silver-haired women dancing freely, children running around with glowsticks, and unattended picnic blankets and wagons everywhere, with trust the only witness.
While my sister and her husband chased after the kids, Kevin and I settled into our home for the weekend. Stretched out on our blanket, the day finally stopped asking anything of me. I even wondered if I needed to buy my own tie-dye, festival-branded hat with neck flap.
With the main stage beside a lake, thousands of tiny gnats and moths fluttered through the air as the sun fell. We ate our microscopic crumb of mushroom chocolate and invited the night in.
Around 10 p.m., Father John Misty walked onstage.
I’d seen Father John Misty a few years before at a theatre venue and enjoyed it, but wasn’t blown away. There’s something about a tight folding chair and a $17 drink that pulls you out of the moment.
But by this point, the silver-haireds and families had all gone to bed. This left approximately fourteen people at the festival, Kevin and I included.
To get to the stage, there was no weaving through the crowd. There were no “sorries” or “scuse mes” to secure a better vantage. We simply walked to the front and bellied up against the speakers.
And then, something shifted.
As the insects danced in the concert lights and a cool breeze came off the lake, I could feel myself letting go.
Father John is one part poetic lyricist and one part Righteous Gemstones-style old-Vegas pastor. As he performed the words I’d heard recorded but never fully absorbed, I found myself smiling with every tooth.
Then my eyes began to well up.
This was the summer moment we spend so much time trying—and often failing—to manufacture.
But this time, I knew I was happy while the happiness was still happening.
As Father John danced around the stage in a vintage suit, Kevin leaned over and said he could smell him.
Apparently, he smelled like mothballs.
Soundtracks of the weekend
Holy Shit by Father John Misty is the song that brought me to tears
Causeway Road by Adam Baldwin is East Coast Canadian storytelling at its finest
Feeling Fine by Ocie Elliott is easy listening from two harmonizing legends
The Obelisk by Wax Mannequin is an after-the-fact tune we have on repeat
Every Time the Sun Comes Up by Sharon Van Etten is a song I was excited to hear live
Peter and Bridgett must have curated those bumper stickers over a lifetime, amazing! I’m sad I missed father John but no way would I have enjoyed it with my tiny gremlin child going berserk 👹
Well written. You captured that outdoor music festival ambiance with your story.