Triple Song Contest winner releases new album.

Three of John Wort Hannam's Ship & Anchor and CFMF Songwriting contest songs are included on his new release. Congratulations John.

Songwriters - the 2010 song contest will be coming soon! We will begin accepting entries on December 15 with new criteria and categories. Stay tuned. (Word is that John will be a judge this year instead of a contestant.)

(PR) Black Hen Music announces a November 17 release date for Queen's Hotel, the latest album of songs from Canadian singer/songwriter John Wort Hannam. The Black Hen Music label is distributed in the U.S. by Burnside Distribution

Queen's Hotel is Wort Hannam's fourth full-length CD and second release for Black Hen Music. His last album, Two-Bit Suit, was released in 2007 and produced by Juno award-winner Steve Dawson, who again takes the helm producing 11 tracks of authentic Canadiana folk/roots music on the new CD. The writing, although true to John's narrative story-telling style, is tighter, smarter, more personal, and with a breadth of subject matter not seen on previous recordings. The upbeat "With the Grain" (a song for which Wort Hannam won Grand Prize at the 2009 Calgary Folk Music Festival Songwriting Competition) recalls the conversation where John tells his father he would quit teaching to attempt a shot at performing music.

"Worth a Damn", a timeless sounding duet performed with multi-Juno award-winner Jenny Whiteley, is reminiscent of a John Prine/Iris Dement collaboration. Despite the title, "Requiem For A Small Town" is a rollicking 3 and ½ minute look at the town that just never quite made it. The poignant but catchy closing song, "Lucky Strikes," was written after a visit to the infamous Queen's Hotel, located near the Canadian Rockies in the Western Canadian province of Alberta. "When I Drink Too Much" (winner, CFMF Song Contest 2007 - ed) is a humorous tune that begs for a sing-a-long in a funky barroom. Wort Hannam also revisits two songs from previous independent releases: "Church of the Long Grass," (winner, CFMF Song Contest 2004 - ed) which has been called by some "the unofficial anthem of southern Alberta," and "Pier 21," which recounts the immigration of Wort Hannam's family from the island of Jersey in the Channel Islands, UK, to Canada in the late '70s.

- from antimusic.com

The festival's international reach

We recently received a great email from Brasil regarding a CFMF sighting...

I must tell someone with the Festival Management about an incidence of amazing synergy involving mind boggling logistics and of course if there was such a thing as coincidence we could definitely use that term...

I am a former CFF goer - my absence in recent summers is due to the fact that I have relocated to Sao Paulo Brasil.

Sao Paulo is a monster city and amongst the 20 million or so residents are counted the largest number of Japanese people in a community outside of Japan. Sao Paulo has a "Japan Town" called Liberdade. There are a few Chinese and Korean businesses mixed in but anyway...I'm with a friend recently she was here on vacation- a Calgarian woman of asian origins and we are poking around in Liberdade. I was looking at some of the wares in this hole in the wall shop including beautiful Japanese pottery and mass produced Chinese dishes , I picked up a blue plastic plate with a cow sporting a guitar around her neck and a familiar logo. I bought it and the mate, for 4 Reals which is about $2.50 CDN. I always returned my plate for the twoonie back home. They now have an honored place at my BBQ here in Brasil and I am still trying to figure out what it all means.
I'm guessing global distribution has something to do with it...

Sincerely & with a chuckle from Brasil ,
Tracy Meier-Ragazzi

Thanks Tracy for bringing this to our attention - you got a steal of a deal!