Hang Down Your Head

by Janice Macdonald

  “I’ll be watching you and listening, too. Don’t worry; all of this will be mixed later. Right now I am just trying to get as many tracks as possible cleanly picking you up from various points on the hill. The idea is to have the Festival experience of Tom Paxton, not the studio experience.”

  “Great stuff,” Paxton nodded. “I’ll be looking forward to hearing it. It always strikes me that the most sincere version of the song is the one that comes from the sun-drenched stage of a festival.” It occurred to me that he seemed as fascinated by the bells and whistles of Nathan’s system as Woody had been. Honestly. Boys with toys.

  Just then, boys with instruments began to arrive. I turned on my pre-show mix tape and welcomed Bryan Bowers and Larry Reese backstage. They were dressed to go, and pretty soon were out front, setting up their instrument stands and talking things over with the stage crew. Leo Gosselin showed up with a long case that looked like it might hold an extra-fancy pool cue, but it turned out to be his Chapman Stick. In minutes he, too, was out on stage, mucking in and doing sound checks on his mike.

  I gave Dr. Fuller the script I’d printed up for her introduction, and she was scanning it distractedly. She looked extra nice, even for her. The long lines of her linen sundress enhanced the select strands of silver in her hair, making them look planned by her rather than Nature. Her Birkenstocks were a stylish variety, with thin bands of leather over the toe and sliding up her arch at an angle. The old water buffalo sandals of our youth had gone high-tech and healthy. She looked as much a star as Paxton, and just as gracious.

  I set out a few more bottles of water on the beach towel I had brought as a tablecloth, and poured some cold McIntosh apples into a plastic bowl. A couple of Festival personnel had come along, ogling Nathan’s set-up backstage and helping themselves to apples. I diplomatically shooed them out to the side chairs that had been set up for what passes for dignitaries at events like this.

  Beyond them I could see people beginning to claim spaces up the hillside. A couple of girls were setting out an elaborate gourmet supper, with gauze platter covers over the plates they were laying out. I hoped there weren’t any ants up the hill. They were wearing showy sunhats and gloves, and I think the idea was to outdo the other festival patrons. Well, I don’t know if it was going to make people trade in their T-shirts and cut-offs for lawn party dresses, but I was willing to bet there would be a load of people salivating over what looked like a platter of Camembert and green grapes, and a whole plate full of dolmades.

  That was one of the things I loved in particular about the Folk Fest. It was everyone’s personal festival, whatever they made of it. Whole tribes of people formed at various places on the hillside, identifying themselves to their kin by mounting huge stuffed green frogs on poles to mark their site, or by spreading out specially striped tarps to indicate their place. Some people aimed for the same place on the hill each year. Others had a special wardrobe they wouldn’t dream of wearing at any other time, or of wearing anything else come Folk Fest weekend.

  Some folks spent their whole Folk Fest in the beer tent; others never left the kids’ area. Some followed one particular entertainer everywhere; others plotted their workshop days based on musical preferences. Still others aimed for the mainstage and stayed there.

  I was amazed at how trusting people seemed to be on the hillside. I suppose the thinking was that no one would risk stealing something in front of so many onlookers, but really, how could anyone on nearby tarps tell that you weren’t part of a group, coming to pick up their cooler or umbrella or backpack and take them to another stage? People didn’t seem as cautious as I was, though; they would pitch a tarp in the morning and leave foodstuffs, cameras, sleeping bags, down vests, and all manner of other portables, trusting to the good hearts of people who knew all the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

  You were supposed to pick up your tarp each evening, allowing others a chance at good viewpoints the next day, and Festival staff went around and tossed anything left overnight before they let the crowd in the following morning. Aside from the Gold and Silver tarps, which were prizes offered in the Festival sweepstakes, everyone had to take a new shot at a place on the hill each new day. I suppose it was as fair as any system could be.

  Dr. Fuller cleared her throat beside me, bringing me back to reality.

  “Wish me luck!” she whispered, and moved up the two steps at the back of the stage to introduce the first workshop and the whole folkwaysAlive! concept. Woody and I grabbed a couple of handfuls of hats each and headed out to either side of the stage. As Dr. Fuller finished explaining that we’d be recording all weekend at the stage, she welcomed anyone who wished to make history to clap and cheer as loudly as possible, and then buy the album to hear themselves. We took that as our cue and started flinging hats like Frisbees into the crowd. They were a great success, and people put them on right away, preening in the reflection of their friends’ sunglasses to see themselves.

  Nathan was nodding as he monitored all the mike feeds and matched them to what was happening on stage. Woody was swaying along to the music and tapping his hand against his key-filled pocket. It seemed I was the only one awake to the fact that Bill Bourne had arrived and was unloading what looked like the same number of instruments as had been enough for three musicians before him.

  Woody got my whispered hint as I rushed to help Bill, and we crept back and forth from his golf cart behind the stage, bringing in his equipment. He was dressed in black trousers and vest, with a white poet-style shirt and his trademark idiosyncratic top hat. He was availing himself of a bottle of water by the time Larry, Bryan and Leo returned to the backstage area. The stage crew swarmed the stage; Tom Paxton gave Dr. F a peck on the cheek and a thumbs-up to Bill Bourne, then he went out with the first musicians to grab a ride to the mainstage area on the golf-cart and get side stage seats for the evening show.

  More people were clambering up our hill to see Bourne, a local boy who had made his mark internationally. He was someone who came to mind whenever I thought of the ultimate in musicians. Every time I saw him he was trying something new, sort of like Joni Mitchell in a top hat. This evening he was playing a solo show, and going by what he brought out on stage, he’d be playing two guitars, mandolin, harmonica, and fiddle. My favourite of all his songs was “Dance and Celebrate,” but there was nothing he played that I wouldn’t listen to happily. I was really pleased he was part of the folkwaysAlive! recording list, especially considering the workshop possibilities on Saturday.

  There would be no one else on our stage after he finished, but from the work he put into his act, I had a feeling Bill would be very thirsty after the performance. I set out three bottles of water, put the rest back into the cooler, and hefted it into the bottom of the locker. If this balmy weather kept up, I’d likely be schlepping more water into the backstage by Saturday afternoon. As it was, I had enough on hand to keep us rolling through the morning workshops, as long as I didn’t forget to bring along more ice for the cooler.

  I tidied away the hats and napkins and general paraphernalia into the locker, and went to the side to watch the finale. It was great to see the concentration on the audience’s faces as Bourne sang a wordless song redolent with primordial rhythms and joyous primitive ritual. Who knows, maybe that was the ­closest we’d come to tracing back to the first music—sounds of joy and transport. Maybe our ancestors’ ancestors had sat out in the open on a hillside and listened to music much like this. That sort of continuity to history often floored me. It was like you were walking along a shady path most of the time, admiring the wildflowers by your feet and the trees around you, but every once in a while you came to a high clearing and could see how far the path wound behind you and how far ahead it cut through the forest. It wasn’t earth-shaking, but it just adjusted your perspective for a short time.

  Thunderous applause marked the end of the concert, and pretty soon Bill was backstage, chugging the water I’d laid out and smiling the smile of the just.
Woody was congratulating him and briefing him on the setup for the recording through the weekend workshops, so I just gave him a thumbs-up and kept working. I bundled up the soaking wet beach towel that had covered the table and popped it into a plastic bag for laundering at home, set the combination on the locker, and waited for everyone to precede me out so I could close the tent flap behind me. Woody helped Nathan pack up most of his equipment, as no one carried enough insurance to leave it all on a hillside overnight. He was going to help Nathan haul it to his van, which was parked near the volunteers’ entrance, and then meet me back at the food tent before I went up to find a place to watch the evening performances. Nathan would then head back to monitor a few ambient feeds he wanted to leave running to get hill noises.

  Woody planned to watch from the performers’ side stage seating, but that notion didn’t seem authentic to me. There was joy to be found up the hill that I didn’t want to miss out on just because I was working the Festival. I wandered over to the food tent and got into line for some amazing-looking fare.

  Soon, laden with a plate of chicken wings, three different salads, cornbread and homemade chutney, and balancing a bowl of bread pudding on top of a cup of coffee, I inched my way across a flooring of grass and cables to find a place at a table that seated more than one. Woody and Nathan would be back soon. It felt like I was back in the high school cafeteria trying not to look too pitifully alone and vulnerable.

  I steadied my plate on the edge of the table and pushed it in to safety, and then moved my pudding, sloshing only a little scalding coffee onto my wrist in the process.

  “My mother used to say, ‘The lazy man’s load is the overload,’” Woody’s smug voice drowned out my muttered curses.

  “Damn it, I am going to have to put a bell on you,” I growled. I was thankful I hadn’t still been balancing pudding when he snuck up on me or I’d likely have been wearing it. “Where’s Nathan?”

  “He decided he didn’t want to sit outside all night, and he wasn’t hungry. Can you believe it? I wonder if you could just sit here all day and eat? What a spread. Save me a spot, I’ll be right back.” I was halfway through my potato salad and started on the Greek when he returned with a plate even more loaded than mine. I looked pointedly at his three pieces of cornbread.

  “Oh, one of them’s for you. I noticed you’d only taken one. Well, girl, you cain’t eat but one piece of cornbread!” And with that, he plonked a piece down on my plate. I ate them both, and the pudding. So much for trying to act the part of the svelte young thing. I was destined to be a big-boned girl from Northern Alberta, to paraphrase k.d. lang.

  Woody matched me bite for bite, and it was half an hour before we got up and cleared our plates. I looked at my watch and realized that the opening act of the mainstage performances had already begun. It was a ska group from Winnipeg—not really my cup of tea, but it would likely energize the early hillside denizens. I walked with Woody toward the mainstage and left him to head into the backstage area. I turned left and headed for the rows of portable latrines. There was no way I wanted to slog up and down the steep hill more often than absolutely necessary.

  The second act was just starting as I joined the constant line of people trudging up the hill. My red-striped tarp was in place about halfway up the hill, just past where the huge video screens were set up. I couldn’t see it from where I was yet, but I had no doubts it would be there. Occasionally, large groups of people crowded the next person’s tarp and overflowed into their personal space, but I had never heard of anyone actually moving or totally usurping someone else’s designated area. It’s not for nothing that every Canadian kid reads Never Cry Wolf in Grade 8 or 9. We know how to mark our territory and how to recognize the next guy’s.

  Sure enough, there was my tarp, my denim backpack, and my folded short chair. I scanned the people around me. I spotted Brian, who ran CKUA, and his wife, Frances, who suffered me to jog with her whenever I was feeling virtuous. I waved, and she spotted me and waved back. Denise wouldn’t be here. I’d dragged her to the Festival one year and she had been like a fish out of water, a fish sitting primly on the edge of a tarp slathering sunscreen on her arms and cocking her head to try to digest the lyrics to rockabilly songs, with that same look people have when trying oysters or curried squid for the first time.

  So, I wouldn’t be seeing Denise on the hillside, but chances were I would see someone or other I knew. To that end, I had shoved a tiny pair of opera glasses into the bottom of my pack. They were mostly for watching Ricky Skaggs pick or Jerry Douglas play, but at the moment, Son Egal, a French-speaking, reggae-styled group from Senegal were dancing and leaping on the stage energetically enough that I didn’t need the glasses to enjoy them. So, instead, I turned the glasses on the crowd.

  I tried looking right down in front of the stage but I was too far away to see who won the Golden Tarp this year. Besides, they had their backs to me. I checked to see if I could spot anyone on the sinewy line of people walking up and across the hill from the record tent side of the stage. I saw Jim De Felice, whom I knew slightly from the Drama department; he was a playwright and retired professor of directing who always made a point of taking the time to walk posters for Drama shows down to the English department and over to the Education Building. I liked the widened sense of collegiality he showed. Not everyone was like that. A lot of people saw the university as a set of connected fiefdoms rather than a whole. Perhaps now that Grant ­MacEwan College was fully degree granting, the University of Alberta would band together against a common foe instead of spending so much time with the infighting.

  Something caught my eye; someone looked familiar. Stupidly, instead of moving the lenses back and forth to recapture the moving shape I took them away from my eyes. I had no idea where I had actually been looking. I tried once more to focus but the flow of people was continuous, and it had only been someone’s back and hat-covered head I’d seen, anyhow. Not much to go on. It was just something about the way he or she moved that looked familiar, if that wasn’t too ludicrous.

  My moment of detective-like behaviour had me wondering about Steve’s whereabouts. He would likely still be at the beer tent, though he might head up the hill via my side of the mountain. I settled back in my chair to look at my spiral-bound Festival program. Now was a good time to read through all the biographies and details about performers I didn’t know so I could make some informed choices for my infrequent off-duty moments this weekend. Well, it would have been, except that James Keelaghan began his set just then, which had me swept up in historical cameos, from the Hillcrest mining disaster to Louis Riel’s lonely librarian dying alone in New York. If there was anyone who could shake Canadians up and make them feel proud of their own history, it was Keelaghan, who until recently we could count as an Alberta boy. I made a mental note to discuss the possibility of him being signed onto the folkwaysAlive! crew for a fall concert.

  The rest of the evening went by in a blur, but I think that was because I was so gosh-darned tired. We had literally lugged in everything for the folkwaysAlive! tent ourselves, and Woody, Dr. F and I had been clocking fifteen-hour-plus days all week. My week still wasn’t over by a long chalk, but I had this evening, and my body just decided to avail itself of that fact by conking out on me. I actually think I fell asleep through most of Harry Manx. Either that or he only played one very long song, which just didn’t seem possible.

  I shook myself, tidied things up around me so I’d be able to grab everything up easily in the dark at the end of the concert, and pulled my woolly sweater over my head. With it out of my backpack, everything else could fit inside. I could easily lug the tarp in one hand and the chair in the other on my way up the hill. The final act of the evening, Tanglefoot, were being introduced. They bounded out on the stage, looking like long-haired gypsy pirates. I loved these guys. They wrote rousing songs dealing with Canadian historical events, and had started out touring Ontario schools. Now they were a much bigger deal than that and could sell out
a folk club in ten minutes. As Al Parrish spun his enormous double bass, they launched into their hit, “­Secord’s Warning,” which had even enjoyed airplay on the space station when Chris Hadfield was up there. In my book, that was truly making it.

  Although they played a solid set of more than nine or ten songs, it seemed far too short. That was the one trouble with Festival concerts: if you were in the mood for one particular sound, then you likely wouldn’t be satisfied with just a taste of it among the rest of the potluck on your plate. From the sounds of people around me, Tanglefoot had made themselves a hillside’s worth more fans with this performance. With any luck, I could catch a full evening of them sometime this winter, if rumours of their impending retirement weren’t true. Someone would no doubt be booking them, after the ovation they’d just been given.

  The overhead lights designed for night skiing came on to light the hillside for people rolling up their tarps and gathering their empty water bottles and detritus. I hurried to catch the wave of people heading to the upper exit rather than having to fight those heading downward. Why feel like a spawning salmon if you don’t have to? I made it up to the top with my backpack on, my chair slung over my shoulder, and my tarp under my arm. I spotted Steve standing and eyeing the crowd near the Nut Man’s booth. He lit up when he caught sight of me, which did more to warm me up than the hot coffee he handed me.

  “I figured you might need this,” he said. “I’m off duty, so we can head out now if you want. Hand me the chair.”

  We wove our way out the exit and down the street. Steve had parked across Connors Hill Road, just past a church parking lot, earlier in the day before his shift. It felt great to sit in an engineered car seat after perching on the hillside all evening. My heart might belong to folk music, but my skeletal system was starting to tell me it might be time to stay home and listen to Mantovani records.