Rocking with the Folk at Red Rock

Our last stop on Saturday was the small town of Red Rock, located some 8 km from the Trans-Canada Highway on the shore of Lake Superior.  By now we were a full 100 km east of Thunder Bay.  The weather had improved from the foggy, cloudy climate we'd experienced so far this day. We were optimistic that we were going to have clear skies for music.  Our hopes were doomed to be dashed on rocks more jagged than those gracing the shores of Lake Superior.  Never mind, we still had fun.

As we drove up to the festival site, our first view was of the Red Rock Inn, an older resort that, at one time, had probably faced a relatively pristine shoreline of the lake:

Now, however, the resort looked out on a sea of tents, RV's and cars, with a marina in the background:

The festival grounds were filled with the comings and goings of attendeeds.  There were craft vendors and food vendors.  Why, the festival even boasted a pub serving beer, wine and harder stuff. The festival grounds boasted a beautiful view of the cliffs across the bay:

We found places near the sound tent and set out our camp chairs among those of others before we headed over to find dinner:

Once our tummies were full, we got back to our chairs just in time for the first act in a long list of entertainers for the evening:

The most well-known performer was Sean Ashby, one of North America's most accomplished studio players, who travelled and played with Sarah McLachlan for a number of years.  While his music was excellent, his style was a little too loud and electric for us.  We enjoyed a children's music group called The Campfire Crew and were very interested in the acoustic work of Sweet Alibi, a trio of women from Winnipeg – whose banjo work was really exquisite.  Another performer who wasn't on when we were there, but who came highly recommended by a local, was Petunia.  We purchased his CD and find his music very intriguing – we're still exploring it to make a final decision.  The absolute most top-notch performer, in our estimation, was Rita Chiarelli, a blues singer-songwriter with a great range of material and voice, and we want to hear more of her music.  Again, however, she wasn't on the program the night we attended, so we had to be satisfied with a CD for the time being.

Halfway through the evening, the winds started whipping and the rains started pouring.  We held on until about 8:15, having come dressed for weather --

– but the concert was scheduled to continue until past 10:00 pm, and it would be dark and rainy and we had a more-than-an-hour's drive ahead of us to fuel up on diesel and find our way back to the campground, so we broke for home early, missing some of the performers.

This region of Ontario is relatively sparsely populated so, although festival-goers flocked here from miles around, particularly to stay in tents and RV's on the festival grounds, the Red Rock folk fest was only a fraction the size of the Philly Folk Festival.  We missed a long list of true folk music performers, as Red Rock favored rock and R&B.  Still, it was great fun to hear some of Canada's best singer-songwriter talent in a personal, live venue.