TeledyN

I'm going to take full responsibility, the failure was all mine and mine alone: we were ill-prepared and I let us fall right into the trap. I of all people should have known better. This is the aftermath of Eaglewood 2002 massacre at Campground E. It was like Vimy Ridge: Our supplies were cut off, air support never materialized, and while May and I and a handfull of other brave but ill-equipped footsoldiers stood the ground, abandoned by our allies, left to fend for ourselves under the battery of a well-prepared and well-funded business offensive. We didn't stand a chance, desite our losses, despite being abandoned by our allies, despite the defeat, we learned enough to chance a reprise for 2003.

So what happened? It was grim, my friends. It was grim. It was the day the folk music died. It was the triumph of the biz.

Far from the vibrant vestiges of Canada's last great folk festival, Eaglewood has become just another folk-music business festival, a precious chance for conference presenters to congratulate each other on another successful sales season, engage in professional development and career schmoozing while they do as little time as possible staffing the exhibit floor.

And Conference Management graciously isolates these 'performers' from the wretched and unwashed public, and the musicians, the conference staff, presenters and exhibitors, well, they buy into it; that's the way they like it. It makes them feel special to be a breed apart.

Ranting is one of the things I do best

Am I being too harsh? Probably. Ranting is one of the things I do best and you probably already think I'm off my rocker, way-over reacting to something as innocent as a Mickey Mouse. Their own self-congratulatory website review brims with accolades, how there was music scattered through the campfires, and how much fun they all had, so how can I be so down and negative about it? Am I just spreading bad vibes when I should have just attended the Greet the Nuclear Furnace Ceremony and be happy?

One reframing question comes to mind: "If all the star performers were mere holographic stage projections with CD-quality sound playback, could anyone tell?" It was all well executed and happy smiling people holding hands, but wasn't it just a bit stale? Wasn't it just product, recycled product at that? I get so sick of "here's one from the CD" instead of, "Listen here, this is important!" Over and over it's "please buy my CD, here's another free sample, please buy my CD" Is that folk music?

To my mind, folk music is the legendary Campground E, which is now sadly but a legend; despite the friction between E and the main festival over the years (we were told to cease and desist on many occasions) their website set us up as a product feature, even showing May as a "performer"; she appreciates the credit, but this is something she did for the love of both the music and the people, something done not because she was paid or appointed, but because she's participating in something greater, where she is but a cog in something larger and far more intrinsically human than merely self-promotion for the purpose of selling CDs.

Let's deconstruct some of the excuses the (ahem) real musicians gave me for their absense at Saturday Night Campground E:

"We were lodged off-site"

Ok, no one wants to go for a drive at 5 am, and there's the designated driver problem where wine may be flowing, but name me just one musician who never does this when its a jam of peers? Mose Scarlett managed a car pool ride for Friday night, and he's a pretty frail fellow; what's the excuse for the hot-shot young 30-somethings? I wasn't at the official lodging location, but I expect it was a time for "catching up with old friends" and other wine-primed professional conferencing.

Isn't NxNE or the Folk Alliance opportunity enough for schmoozing? Doesn't the word "festival" mean to celebrate something? Where else can you find the opportunity like Campground E?

"There were too many people, it wasn't intimate"

First counter fact is that there were less than a third the number we'd had at many previous Campground E's. It may be true, whether due to the legend or the website, that there was a much larger number of people who'd set themselves up to potato-out, to consume this "show" as just another scheduled stage. When "workshops" are only thinly veiled ads for CDs, how can you blame them? I did sense some people were there only because they thought it was included in their (unprecedented) $50 weekend pass entry fee, but I also sensed in general more people than ever who were perhaps dragged unwillingly to Eaglewood or just "not there for the music", like the teens who insisted on playing soccer around the dinner-hour barbeques or the owners of the sudden plethora of sociopathic dogs.

But beyond the increased numbers of them, let's look at who these spectators were, and also look at who the musicians should have been. Not counting the ones they dragged behind them, all these people came to Campground E out of a hunger; there were more souls there than for many of the daytime events, and I think they were there because they sought something in the loneliness of the clear full-moon country skies, something that was missing from the daytime schedule.

"I stayed at my campground because it was more intimate" is like a relief worker saying they would only distribute food in smaller coastal villages because there were too many hungry people in the drought areas, or a priest saying they preferred to minister in the 'burbs because there are fewer souls in need. There's opportunity enough for schmoozing and private jams by daylight. As folk musicians, don't we have a responsibility to feed these people the culture they so obviously craved? Yet musicians recoil, they hide in the woods with their friends, afraid to face the needy.

"We had fun just jamming with friends at the hotel"

Ok, it's your holiday and I don't want to start demanding from you, but this is supposed to be a folk music festival, a time for sharing and celebrating our collective culture, and for transmitting this culture; it's weddings, funerals and festivals. Is Eaglewood 2002 only an opportunity to hang with collegues and shop talk, to attend sequestered professional development seminars, sell some swag and explore business opportunities? I know what goes on, I go to tech conferences. True I stuck pretty close to my campsite and was not privy to the backstage, but this fest seemed no different from a Comdex with nice scenery. The stages are the exhibit floor, there's swag in the bookstores, and you're friendly to the rubes and tire-kickers and answer all their questions, but there's still a level of contempt, an us-vs-them.

Seen as a business event, Campground E becomes wasted time, extra work for no pay, a freebie, time stolen away from personal schmoozing, at best a loss-leader. That's the impression I got from the missing faces, and even from some of those who, to their noble credit, took the time to drop by for the lesser Friday and Sunday nights. It's a chore, a bother ... instead of seeing it for what it really was, a sharing, an event, one of the last great mass hootenannies in this great land, one of the last places (in Ontario at least) where all people from far and wide can bring and share their stories and songs.

Someone joked that Star Trek has no banjo, but if you watch any of the Star Trek incarnations, you see an earth where people have no culture at all, they are Box-Mall people, millions served daily, they have nothing to share -- that's not true, of course, but the us-vs-them mentality overlooks that because the MadisonAve/Hollywood consumer model is easier on the conscience.

"It was an endless open-stage from hell"

Ok, maybe each person presenting a song dear to them gets followed by another all about me performance, but who's fault is that? Do we blame the young kid who only knows that they love music and have a gnawing craving obsession to participate? I blame myself, the so-called "trained professional" who should know how to mediate, how to manage the flow and keep things in the Universal. Instead, I fall into the same I me mine trap of songs more personal than used underwear. As artists, we should know work done only to please ourselves has no right to any audience beyond its patron. The hungry public come to us to be shown themselves, and the new fledgling folk singers come to learn how to get beyond their own hometown open-stages. They travel far and lodge themselves in dusty tents because there's something they couldn't get at home and couldn't get at the daytime show. Isn't it our failing as artists and musicians that we couldn't give it to them? Isn't it twice the failing when we won't even try?

Even some of the regular E amateurs (keep in mind that the Olympics are also "amateurs") surprised me with some of the above comments. There was no sense of continuity, of cultural responsibility, of preserving something precious. "All through the day, I me mine, I me mine, I me mine ..." sang the ghost of George Harrison. And even for those pop emoticons the novice might bring, what better to inspire them than to have their song held up sounding great backed by a band that only otherwise happens in their highway driving or shower-stall fantasies! Didn't we all start out just like them? I know I was inspired by the kindness of musicians at 70's era hootenanny events, so I stand my ground trying to give that to others, even if I can't really do it quite enough by myself.

I'm tired now, and in the drive back to Sauble I've coolled down a bit, but I was plenty pissed off at 90% of my distinguished collegues when I left, enough that I seriously questioned returning to Eaglewood for 2003 -- if all I want is a dog and pony show and biz-conference, I can get that more cheaply right here in Owen Sound. And yes, admittedly there were awesome moments of folk music here and there, the lady from the US who stepped forth and sang "Eilene Ireau" (?) at the openstage, the fellow who sang us the songs of contemporary Irish songwriters by the campfire, the woman who taught us "three little monkeys" in sign-language, the banjo solo on Space Oddity, they all taught us about community, about our shared history and about cultural differences, and they engaged us to participate together in a deep folk-roots, almost religious way.

But those moments were rare and the rest was fan-zine material. Packing up, though, bouncing all these thoughts off people, the real people, the gentle listeners and musicians not too much of a star to talk to someone like me, their eyes and their thanks for our just being there for Saturday night made me consider that maybe Campground E 2002 was not a complete failure, that maybe it was only a botched opportunity: If Doug MacArthur and the Biz Folkies are going to sway the 'real musicians' away from E (not just that campfire, but the spirit of that campfire) then it was pure folly for May and I and the other brave few to fill the void by ourselves. It was folly because we were only a few.

No, dear reader, in retrospect our correct strategy, the winning strategy would have been to convert all those 'spectators' into 'real musicians'. Because they are, it's in them, it's there and I know it because I know that is why they brought the folding chairs and sat there in the dark vicariously doing what they know in their hearts they really can do. I know they can do it because this is folk music, it is the not digitally postprocessed music made by trained dogs and precious ponies who can count, but the music made by just plain folks.

folk music is not a consumable

Ok, I'm done, that's my rant, that's my post-mortem bitchfest for what went so wrong at Campground E 2002, and that's my mission objective for 2003. I don't know yet how we'll justify the cost of a return trip, but it does seem a worthy and vital cause and even maybe important we return in 2003 to free the songs and demonstrate that folk music is not a consumable, that folk music is more than and will prevail over the folk music business.

May and I are contemplating strategies to dig deep into the primal folk roots of the participants; chemotherapy and electroshock failed this year because they were too far afield from where our audience sat, it assumed too much prior art we'd normally find when there's other touring musicians present. We also fell for the trap that such gatherings are about "my" songs and "your" songs when we know in our hearts it is not --- for the depth of the hunger left in the void vacated by the headline musicians, we need to go back to basics, to the raw core of our songs --- we must resort to deep genetic manipulation to wrest the folk spirit from their DNA and unshackle their lost voices.

I don't begrudge them their festival

Let me be clear: I have no cause for complaint. It is, after all, their festival and they are completely within their rights to run their festival any way they wish. I'm not on their board, I'm not a sponsor, I don't volunteer and it's not mine to command or demand one way or the other; I'm just a lowly attendee, just another weekend pass holder, one of the handful who return year after year, and all the others seem happy enough with the way things are going. Whatever I might wish for, Eaglewood is nothing more than a gift they offer to me and I can take as it comes or not; it is a product they make and which I can buy or not buy, they owe me nothing. I don't begrudge them that. I don't blame them if what they want is just another Ontario Council of Folk Festivals star studded stage show, and I can't blame musicians for preferring a quiet night among friends instead of facing the starved monster that has become Campground E. That's their perogative.

All I am really lamenting is that we had something rare, and we lost it; maybe Eaglewood has just "grown up". Maybe the festival has just evolved beyond it, maybe Campground E was obsolete, maybe it's unrealistically idealist of me to cling to it, maybe it was only special in my own head (a legend in my mind), but I still sense a sad loss, I sense others sense this too, and I feel compelled to say something and to do something. Campground E is a fragile opportunity for tiny bit of paradise regained if we can find and kindle its spark.

Submitted by mrG on Tue, 2002-08-27 17:54

EPILOGUE

Fri, 2005-08-19 02:05 : As it turned out, we never did return. We thought about it, wrestled with it, and backed off ... just like everyone else. Other things to do, y'know and all that. We just moved on.

This weekend being Eaglewood weekend, I got caught in the grip of nostalgia and loaded up their new homepage; I'm honored to be remembered in their pages still, thought not as a performer, not for any of the songs we sang 'til dawn or even for any of my debauched wreckless abandons, and not for standing among the catalysts of Campground E. I am honoured to be remembered, but note that I enter their scrapbook as a photographer, and, ironically, for my contribution of the photos I took at this, our last Eaglewood, 2002.

I suppose there's some poetic justice in that :)

I am glad they liked the photos. Always nice to have one's work appreciated.

I also notice they have moved on in artistic direction, appointing long-time main-stage MC and resident poet Holmes Hooke which I hope may real the machine back to ground.

I notice there's still a warning to light-sleepers about avoiding Campground E too, but I also notice there are only CD-sampler clips under the soundbytes. Same old or the edge of a new? Time will tell, I suppose. Always does.