The secret of the Canadian folk festival: Chumbawamba-style

The Canadian Folk Festival - it's a closed secret. What happens over there
doesn't seem to happen anywhere else on the planet, but all the British
musicians who make the trip over there and play these things don't ever say
anything once they get back. Shhh! Canada? Folk Festival? Don't know what
you're on about, mate.

It's like the Freemasons. You meet someone who's played at one and suddenly
you're all fancy handshakes and nods and winks. Oh yes, ha ha, how weird and
freaky. But between ourselves, let's keep it quiet, eh?

Here's the big secret (what a blabbermouth. Half a lager and a cocktail with
an umbrella in it and I'll tell you anything). You go to Canada and play one
of the Folk Festivals. You may or may not get the chance to play on the main
stage (and to be honest, the main stage is an irrelevance there). You're
given an itinerary that tells you that you'll be doing four workshops over
the weekend, at any given time of day, sharing a stage with any given type
of act/musician/band. It's like opening Xmas presents. Ooh, what've we got?
It's exciting and weird and interesting.

Canadian festivals open their gates at some unearthly hour of the morning,
and hundreds - no, many thousands - of people pile through the gap armed
with folding chairs and rucksacks full of sandwiches. At one such festival
last year we were told that this morning rush was called (after the
preferred choice of footwear) 'The Birkenstock Dash'.

Those few hundred who get to the main stage first set up their chairs and
their little rugs and blankets, do their territorial pissing, and then
wander off to find coffee. The chairs and blankets stay put, ensuring that
the space is reserved for the time seven hours later when some ageing old
folkie strums his/her way through a couple of old hits as the evening's
finale.

Thus, the main stage audience is claimed and staked out first thing. The
only thing to do is see what's going on on the other stages. There are
usually four, five, six other stages. Here's where the interesting stuff
goes on. No Birkenstock 'claim your patch' bollocks here. Turn up and watch.
Elbow your way to the front, like at a proper gig.

The Canadian organisers call them 'workshops'. That implies teaching, or
demonstrating, or something. In reality they're loose gatherings of several
musicians, stick 'em on a stage together and see what they come up with. And
call it 'a workshop'.

Now anyone that knows Chumbawamba will know that we're not Grateful Dead or
Phish or any of those jamming bands. In fact, we are officially the
anti-jamming band. We don't jam. We meet. We don't play loosely together,
hoping for musical inspiration. We meet. We don't cruise the old twelve-bar
looking for inspiration. We meet.

We meet and discuss what we should sing about, and how, and why, and in what
form. It makes everyone's life simpler and clearer. It's verbal and open,
not hidden behind fretwork and foot-tapping and fancy musicianship. That's
how we see it, anyway.

So the idea of this band sharing music with other bands on stage at these
Canadian Festivals could be seen as the ultimate horror. But no! Because,
despite our aversion to jamming/noodling/communicating with the musical
muse, we love a challenge. Love being thrown in at the deep end. Swim,
y'buggers!

And this is what the Canadian Festival has taught us - get up there, and
make it work. There's an audience. Yes, we know it's 11 o'clock in the
morning. But the audience want to be entertained. Now! Fear and thrill all
rolled into one.

Over the past few years we've been up onstage playing with Scottish trad
fiddlers, fey singer-songwriters, African dancebands, the lot. This year at
Edmonton we were pitched right in with Arrested Development, fantastic
Atlanta rap group, great tunes, amazing history, great politics. But a
hip-hop group nonetheless, and how do we fit in with that? We shared a stage
for an hour. We played our songs, laughed together, sang 'Enough is Enough'
and kept the rhythm and chords going as Speech from Arrested Development
rapped over the top. We joined in with them, they joined in with us. We
marvelled at the ass-shaking women on stage (don't cry 'sexist!', we all
love to see a woman shaking her behind), they laughed at our ridiculous
Englishness, and we all met somewhere in the middle . somewhere that's
friendly and funny and political and audience-friendly and entertaining.

And half-way through the show I caught myself thinking, 'this wouldn't
happen this easily anywhere else in the world.'

I recently saw Tinariwen and Tunng playing in Leeds. Two different cultures
meeting in the middle. It was brilliant. And I thought then, as I think now,
this is what happens on stage at all those strange and obscure and massive
and amazing Canadian festivals. Every day of the long weekend, on five
different stages. Sometimes it's a disaster. Sometimes it's boring. But it's
always an adventure. Always.

We did other workshops that weekend. One with some bands I can't remember
the name of. One with Oysterband and Dick Gaughan (which, frankly, was too
easy - joining in with Gaughan on 'Diggers Song' and convincing Chopper from
the Oysters up to sing Johnny Cash with us) and one with Mongolian throat
singers Hanggai, which was incredible. Singing one of our acapella songs
along to a throat-sung drone was risky, ridiculous and beautiful, all at the
same time. Joining in with their Chinese drinking song was a joy.

So there you have it. The secret of the Canadian festival. It doesn't seem
to happen anywhere else in the world - the Canadians have their own strange
rules within their own cultural bubble, and I'm happy for them. Happy that
they don't think like we do, that festivals have to be neatly parceled into
genres and styles and boxes. Happy that they don't feel the need to massage
the artist's egos by keeping them well separated from the other acts. Happy
that it forces us musicians into thinking on our feet, working together,
dealing with stuff outside our cosy worlds.
And believe me, the Canadian Festivals are well outside this band's cosy
world. Good. I'm glad. Just don't expect me to buy a pair of Birkenstocks.