Recently posted by Zach Goudie

At the NL Folk Festival on Friday night, Hey Rosetta! did what they usually do on stage - they blew the roof off the place.  Considering this is an outdoor festival, they had to work even harder than usual to do it, but this is a band that never backs away from a challenge.

Musically they were tight, tight, tight.  The new songs were fantastic, and many old songs have been retooled, filling you with the joy of hearing an old favorite for the first time.  Especially cool was the anthemic "Epitaph", rejigged from a folky power-balled to a jangly bone-shaker, complete with looped vocal-chaos.  Tim Baker also managed to work one of my favorite Tragically Hip songs, "Thompson Girl", into the bridge of "I've been asleep for a long, long time."  A very cool, it-could-only-happen-live moment.

But it's the little moments that were the most telling, the little things a band does live that lets you know they've played the song live a thousand times.  They hold some notes a little long and play others a little soft, they do things differently than they do on the album version of a song because with time, the songs have grown, evolved.  

It's like when a hockey team has been playing really well together all season long, and by the playoffs, people are making no-look passes left, right and centre.  A good team makes winning look easy.  It's not easy - it's practice, practice and more practice.  These days, Hey Rosetta are operating on the level of a championship team.

Good thing too, because after the Folk Fest gig, the band got on a plane at 5am the next day and left for China.  They're playing at the Canada Pavillion at the World Expo in Shanghai, a nice follow-up to their gigs at Canada House and Athletes Village during the Olympic Games in Vancouver.  

It's not a coincidence that this band has now twice been asked to step-up when Canada wants to show the world it's top musical talent.  At Friday night's concert, a friend was telling me that he had heard an advance copy of Arcade Fire's new album "The Suburbs" (one of the most anticipated album of the year, worldwide), and an advance copy of Hey Rosetta's new album, and he said the local band's is better.  That kind of stuff can sound like hyperbole, except that people have always talked that way about Hey Rosetta!, and wise listeners have learned to take it seriously.  For the first year of the bands existance, I'm quite sure the size of the crowd doubled at every performance they played, until there were more people lining up for Hey Rosetta than the H1N1 vaccine (now that's hyperbole).  

When the band went on it's first national tour, I tried to keep up with the press they got along the way.  No surprise that reviews of their show's consistantly had the same kind of awe-struck, "You've got to check out this band..." quality as had the word on the street back home.  People see this band, they immediately want other people to see them too.  They get excited about them.  Let's hope the worlds most populous country feels the same way!

Apologies for the shaky pics, if you've seen them play you'll know they're not exactly into standing still...

In the grand tradition of spending Monday reminiscing about the weekend, here's a few pics from this weekend's Festival Fun in St. John's.

First up, the Buskers Festival.

The East Rock Crew were a huge draw this year.  NL's B-Boy's are the perfect act for this kind of festival, the kind where you only need to stop and watch for a few seconds to become invested in the performance.  If you're walking down the street and you see somebody doing this...

...you're probably goin go to stop and watch some more.  And give them money.

A mix of live and pre-recorderd music (courtesy of Greg Bruce, aka B-Boy Square) was a great touch.

Here's another of my favorite performers from the Buskers Fest:

Thank you, Human Statue, for livening up my weekend (pun intended).

You know you're awesome when you start attracting wedding parties.

Wouldn't be a Buskers Fest without a little face-painting.

Now, here's a few from Folk Fest:

Jim Payne, Daniel Payne and Fergus O'Byrne, 3 of the 5 Crowd of Bold Sharemen on Friday, opening night.

Old Man Luedecke was a crowd favorite on Sunday night.

His breezy banjo hit all the right notes.

But here's the guy I was most looking forward to:

David Francey.  The Festival headliner from a few years ago was back, and juding by the rapturous response from the crowd, people have been waiting for him.  Sorry I don't have a better shot, it was good and dark by the time he got onstage.

I've got a few of headliner Hey Rosetta's barnstorming performance from Friday as well, I'll post those in a seperate entry about the summer that's in store for them.

Cheers!