Hang Down Your Head

by Janice Macdonald

  After he left the stage, a group of adults in white silk outfits entered. This was the tai chi class, and they began the fluid movements that I loved to watch. A man walked the perimeter of the stage offering brochures from the tai chi college, and I took one. You never knew.

  Woody must have been watching the exchange; as we turned to leave the area, there he was. I introduced him to Denise, and it said a lot for both his charm and her tact that they managed a civilized exchange even though he looked like a clown covered in all his purchases. He invited us back to see the Fullers, who were dusting the grass off themselves and getting ready to mosey further on to the German tent. Denise knew my Dr. Fuller through an arts council group they’d both sat on a year or two before, and apparently Mr. Dr. Fuller had been the external examiner on her dissertation, so it wasn’t necessary to introduce her. As we walked en masse toward the bratwurst, Woody and I found ourselves falling in behind Denise and the Fullers, who sandwiched her.

  “I saw your knight in shining Kevlar today, peddling along the highways and byways. I’m not sure he recognized me.”

  “What had you bought by then?”

  “Oh, I think I had the hat. The shoes came later. Aren’t they great? I figure in a flood I could just float along in them.”

  “Maybe he recognized you and was just trying to avoid you?”

  Woody laughed. “You could well be right. That’s the beauty of heading into middle age. As John Hiatt once said, it gives one the right to dress like a clown with impunity. Oh well, it would have been nice to say hello to Steve. Has he had any leads on the murder and the break-in?”

  “Not that I know of, and I don’t think he’d tell me if he had.” I hoped I didn’t sound as bitter as I felt. Woody had managed to zone right in on a sore point between Steve and me. I wondered if he meant to.

  “Well, we can hope that whatever is going on has nothing to do with the Folkways Collection, right? We’ll just mosey along, record our artists, run our stage and launch our website. Oh my gosh, will you look at those shirts!”

  I lost Woody to a discussion of Polish soccer shirts for a bit. I stood outside the pavilion, watching Denise and the Fullers amble toward us, and considering what a pretty, manicured park this was. The fountain splashed high in the middle of the pond, and Canada geese hugged the shoreline, despite the crowds of small children running toward them, trying to either herd or stomp on them. The geese just hopped into the water and floated away, leaving the children screaming happily, proud to have rid their imaginary country of this terrible pestilence.

  Woody emerged with a red bundle in his hand, which I assumed was a Polish soccer shirt. I was wrong. He presented me with the bundle as if handing over a coronation jewel. It was a crocheted ladybug tea cozy. I must have looked puzzled, because he hurried to explain.

  “It’s for personalizing your bicycle helmet! Let me.” He unlatched my helmet from my backpack and stretched the tea cozy-like monstrosity over my helmet. Antennae bobbled and wobbly eyes looked at me. It was insanely ridiculous, of course, but anything would be an improvement on what bike helmets look like in general. I put it on, in the spirit of international harmony. Denise and the Doctors Fuller rejoined us and commented on my gift with near-hysterical laughter. Perversely, I decided to keep it on and bobbled my antennae fiercely in response.

  Denise was taking the shuttle bus up to the university stop, where she’d parked, and Woody and the Fullers were heading to the Irish stage to see the Irish-African fusion dance, so we said our goodbyes before the next set of tents began along the west side of the layout. I figured I would walk Denise to the shuttle stop and wait with her.

  It wasn’t a long wait, and I waved to Denise as the bus took off. Wearing my bobbly ladybug helmet, which was getting far more attention than I figured it deserved, I reclaimed my bike and rode to the park entrance. I decided to push my bike up Emily Murphy Hill and pedal home past the Faculty Club and the Tory Building.

  Festivals are a lovely part of Edmonton summers. They’re just a little hard on the hamstrings.

  30

  ~

  The next four days flew by, what with all the preparations for the Folk Festival, along with having to man the phones and do all the filing and taping that Paul was normally responsible for.

  We heard from Paul’s wife that the doctors were cautiously optimistic that he would mend up fine, and that the police had been in to see him, but he still couldn’t really communicate anything of use. They figured it was partly traumatic amnesia and partly the angle of attack. It was very possible that he had no advance notice of who or what hit him from behind.

  Dr. Fuller was almost as excited as she would have been heading for a field excursion to India. It turned out that she had nursed a huge fan crush on Tom Paxton since her university days and was thrilled to be meeting him. Apparently he and his small entourage were touring the province, heading down from Jasper to Banff, and then over to Drumheller to see the Royal Tyrrell Museum. He would be back in town on Friday afternoon, and Dr. Fuller was going to take him out to lunch before the Festival began. She was glowing as she sorted through her business. Waiting behind her at the photocopier, I was certain I heard her singing “I Thought You Were an A-rab” under her breath.

  Her excitement was contagious, or maybe it was Woody’s enthusiasm for everything, or perhaps just the whole fun of heading down to the river valley with thousands of other would-be and former hippies. I was perfectly willing to get caught up in the glow, and too busy to notice that Steve wasn’t all that forthcoming about work when I actually managed to see him. I think that first week of August was likely the least amount of aggregate time I’d spent with him in over three years. If I had had more time to think, I might have been worried.

  The Edmonton Folk Music Festival is held right in the heart of the city, on what is, in the wintertime, a ski hill. The stages are set at the bottom of the runs, and the crowds sit on tarps and blankets and low-slung lawn chairs up the hills, in a natural amphitheatre that has one of the most famous and least acknowledged skylines as a backdrop. In fact, I’d been told that Edmonton’s pretty cityscape was often used in movies as a stand-in for cities that didn’t quite measure up.

  Woody and I averaged two or three trips to the Festival site per day, lugging equipment for Nathan the sound guy, setting up liaisons with the stage crew and regular sound man for the folkwaysAlive! stage, and helping to sort out airport pickup and hotel arrangements for our designated artists. By the time Thursday morning rolled around, I was already pretty sick of the sight of lines of blue porta-johns, and the four-day marathon was just beginning. Luckily, Thursday and Friday were evening-only events. The daytime workshops began on Saturday and ran through Sunday as well. I knew that by the time the Sunday evening concert began, every muscle and joint in my body would ache from hauling me and my stuff up and down hills in the constant outdoors. Although I knew from experience that a melancholy would flood over me with the final chords of Sunday evening’s traditional last song, “Four Strong Winds,” I don’t think I could handle the Festival being any longer, or more often than once a year. Maybe this was a sign of actually getting old.

  I was hauling two covered plastic bins filled with moist towelettes, bandages, antiperspirant, throat lozenges, duct tape, masking tape, writing paper, permanent markers and Folkways hats. The hats had been my idea, and I thought they turned out beautifully. Shaped like an actual Folkways album (the same double thickness), they were made of foam and cut in a basket pattern in the middle to create a crown when pushed up. The brim consisted of the outer platter of the “record.” On an average-sized head, it stuck out enough to provide anti-glare for eyes and neck shade behind. We were going to wing them out into the crowd like Frisbees in the hope that they’d publicize the folkwaysAlive! collection and the Smithsonian Folkways label. Woody was thrilled with them, and swore he’d be promoting the idea that Washington make them a staple for festival tents across the continent.

 
We chose two different record labels to print, one on each side of the platter: Woody Guthrie on one side, Leadbelly on the other. I thought that combination was appropriate and would resonate with the largest group of people.

  “You’ve earned your keep by thinking up this hat, Randy,” Woody gushed, in earshot of Dr. Fuller, which made me especially chuffed. She nodded beatifically and pulled one of the hats on at a rakish angle, making her seem even more like a bemused angel wandering about the earth. She stopped as her cellphone played the opening strains to “Scotland the Brave,” and turned her back from us slightly to answer it. It had to have been Tom Paxton’s party calling, because she lit up as she listened and nodded several times as she responded. Clicking her phone closed, she turned back to us and made her apologies.

  “They’ve arrived at the south end of town and aren’t too sure what the game plan is. I’ll head out now to sort them out, and I’ll bring them down to the site for four-thirty or five, okay? He’s expressed an interest in seeing what we’re doing with today’s recordings. I’m sure you two can manage from here, right?”

  Not actually waiting for our response, she strode off. Our stage wasn’t far from the volunteer and performer entryway, and I knew her car was parked on that block, so it wouldn’t be long till she achieved her goal to meet with Paxton et al. Woody and I continued to sort out the backstage materials. We wanted our performers to feel like they were receiving a certain level of care above the rest, even though they weren’t getting mainstage evening concerts. The recordings were one thing, but we wanted the atmosphere to be really special around the folkwaysAlive! tent. With most of the funding aimed at the recording, preservation and promotion of the original collection, we needed word of mouth to cover the shortfall to performers and industry insiders. I was hoping a battery-operated massage chair pad, a cooler full of bottles of ice water, and funky Smithsonian hats might help.

  We had two hours till the first two of our hour-long sessions took place. After that, the evening mainstage concert would send the crowd back to the main hill. Woody was schlepping cable for Nathan, hauling it up the hillside along the snow fence boundary. A couple of the volunteer sound guys for the Festival were bemused, since no one before had ever recorded except through a clean feed from the monitors. Woody and Nathan were adamant, though, that an authentic sense of the performance could only be achieved through microphone placement all over the hillside.

  Nathan was shinnying up a medium-sized tree in the brush between the two stages. I wasn’t quite sure how he got up as far as he had with his utility belt full of wire, tape, and who knows what else, with the cable looped round his right shoulder. Of course, I’d been in the back of the tent and wasn’t even sure how he managed to get on the other side of the snow fence. I was, however, pretty sure the Festival guys weren’t going to approve of this stunt. Sure enough, the next thing I knew, Aric Skurdal was striding up the hillside to speak to Woody. It appeared to be a rather heated discussion, but Woody’s charm seemed to hold up against the onslaught. Skurdal eventually moved back down the hill, pausing only to bark a terse comment to Nathan, who gave a nodding salute. He didn’t even bother to acknowledge me; given the glower on his face, that was just as well, I figured.

  “When he hears the mix, he’ll be apologizing all over the table,” Woody grinned as he nodded after Skurdal. “Innovative methods take time to absorb, but I’m sure he’ll come around. After all, the man loves music enough to shoulder the headache of a summer festival every year, right?”

  “How exactly are all these mikes going to work again?” I inquired.

  “Well, Nathan has them connected to three different recording boards, alternating so there isn’t any bleed between the adjacent mikes. When he gets to the studio, he realigns the tracks so the hill is recreated placement-wise. No matter where you sit on the hill, listening to that recording will give you a dyed-in-the-wool accurate version of the performance. All you have to do is move between your speakers relative to your seat on the hill.”

  Woody seemed enthused and Nathan was too taciturn to elaborate, so I figured I’d just leave it all to them. As a fellow I knew used to say, “That’s not in my job specs.” Technically, none of this was in my original job specs, but with Paul’s attack and the effervescence of Woody, it seemed perfectly logical that I would be putting a hold on the website and database content, and pitching in with the Festival process.

  Steve came round the side of the tent just as Woody was heading back up to the other side of the hill.

  “Hey Officer, where’s your trusty steed today?” Woody waved as he trudged up the hill, cable threading out behind him.

  “No bike tonight,” smiled Steve in his even, dealing-with-the-public voice. We stood and watched Woody until he was about halfway up, then I shook myself and invited Steve to see what I’d managed to create in the backstage tent. He whistled when he saw the massage chair, and nodded at the boxes of supplies I had hauled.

  “Pampering the talent?” he grinned.

  “Something like that,” I acknowledged. “Not that they don’t get pampered in the dining tent and at the after-parties, but we wanted them to feel that being folkwaysAlive! performers makes them something more, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure, well they’re the ones getting tagged for being original, creative and worthy of preservation. Why shouldn’t they feel special?” Steve reached for a cookie from the tin, and I let him. It helps to have the police on your side. Besides, they were his favourite monster cookies with Smarties baked into them.

  “So, what’s the game plan for your time tonight?” he mumbled, his mouth full of cookie.

  “I have to be back here minding things while the sessions are on, and then it will take about an hour to lock up everything for the night. After that, I was thinking of heading up the main hill, above the screens, for the concert. What about you?”

  “I have to patrol the site for about another three hours, focusing mainly on the beer tent, of course. Then I figured I would take up point at the top of the hill, so I can watch for people trying to sneak in contraband and still hear the concert. Do you have a ride home?”

  We agreed that I would head to the top of the hill to find him at the end of the evening concert. This was good, because it meant I wouldn’t have to fend off the idea of heading to the post-concert party with Woody. I kissed Steve briefly, catching a whiff of deodorant, sunshine and the starch the cleaners put in his uniform collars. I watched him head out, looking tailored and trim. There was just something about a guy in a uniform, for sure. While Steve much preferred a detective’s plain clothes, he agreed with the thinking that had all festival personnel in uniform for easy identification, not to mention low-grade intimidation. If the cops were near, the jerks tended not to act up in the first place. For what it was worth, he looked a whole lot more intimidating in his long pants today than in his bike shorts from Heritage Days.

  I finished in time to crack open a bottle of water before anyone showed up in the backstage tent. I held the bottle against my temple to cool down. The weather wasn’t killer hot, but the combination of hard work and the close confinement of the tent had me sweating.

  “Getting a case of the vapours?” Woody inquired in his best Scarlett O’Hara. I jumped, even though I had been halfway expecting him. He was just a little too fleet of foot for me. You never knew when he was going to appear right behind you.

  “Nathan should be back any minute now. He’s said ambient noise won’t bother him because he’ll be wearing a headset, but I still think we should keep the noise down back here during the sessions, all right?”

  I had a feeling this meant I was supposed to play bad cop and tell people to shut up while Woody schmoozed, but nodded and drained a bit more of my water bottle. I could see the hillside beyond Woody, and considered that this might be the last time I saw it bare and green all weekend.

  “What’s he doing up there?” I asked, looking at Nathan clambering to the top of the sound
booth halfway up the hill. Woody turned to look, then shrugged.

  “He’s putting up a digicam that will take in the entire stage. Apparently it won’t be too clear, but it should be enough to let him watch what they’re doing on stage so he can manually adjust the tracks as he’s recording.”

  Nathan was back down and heading toward us, smiling. “Ready to rock and roll,” he announced, and took off his leather work gloves. “Now for the fine tuning.” He motioned to the two tables covered in metal suitcases. “I’m going to be over there, Randy. That gear won’t be in your way, will it?”

  “Not at all, Nathan. I’ve got all the room I need here, and I’m going to try to keep folks on this side of the tent, anyhow.” I held out a bottle of water to him, which he cracked and downed in one long slug. Woody checked his watch.

  “I’ve got four-thirty, what about you?”

  I glanced at my wristwatch. “Yep, the gates are opening right about now. Bring me your sweaty, tie-dyed masses.”

  Woody grinned, and Nathan hooked up his laptop to the grid of recording track boards, humming something under his breath. I couldn’t make out what it was, but I had a feeling it wasn’t folk music. Oh well, most musicians I knew found something of value in all sorts of music. It was only the rest of us who created either/or positions on country versus classical, and roots versus rap.

  Dr. Fuller bustled in with Tom Paxton, who greeted Woody as if they were old friends. No wonder he was such a star, with that sort of memory for faces and names. I hoped Woody had mentioned to Nathan that Paxton was just as much a raconteur as a musician, but I needn’t have worried. The man himself was over talking with Nathan within a few minutes, giving him a copy of tomorrow’s set list and mentioning possible idiosyncrasies that might crop up. Nathan walked him outside to the stage, after showing him the set-up on the computer.