SUNDRE – Smoke that lingered in the air this past weekend as well as a sudden Saturday evening downpour that came with lightning was not enough to stifle bluegrass fans’ enthusiasm to come out for the Shady Grove Blue Grass Music Festival.
Among them was Bonnie Knox, a longtime, loyal blue grass aficionado who has followed the festival since its roots south of Calgary in the Nanton area.
“I love it; it’s just laid back and you just hang out,” said Knox, who seemed comfortably tucked into a lawn chair as she enjoyed the show from a spot in the shade near the outdoor stage that was set up immediately behind the Wild Horse Saloon at the Sundre rodeo grounds.
“We have some favourite bands – don’t ask me to name them, I can never remember!” she said with chuckle, grateful to have such a lineup of bands, including but certainly not limited to Under the Rocks, John Reischman and Old Acoustic, The Slocan Ramblers, Over the Moon, as well as Jake Vaadeland and the Sturgeon River Boys.
“It’s a lot of fun,” she said.
Knox, who roughly a couple of years ago moved to settle in Didsbury from Calgary, had initially thought about camping out on the grounds for the weekend. But courtesy of the relatively short travel distance coupled with the desire to escape the somewhat hazy air in the evening, she instead decided to drive back out for all of the weekend’s performances.
“Well, like everybody else, it’s annoying,” she said when asked how she was handling the conditions. “We’re pretty healthy, so we don’t have too much trouble, other than a bit of coughing.”
But the shady spot offered a chance to cool off a bit.
“Im actually feeling great,” said Knox, adding when asked that she’d for sure be back next year.
Overall, more than 500 people are believed to have come throughout the festival, which started Friday evening and wrapped up Sunday afternoon. That was up a bit from last year’s roughly 450, said organizer Eric Holt.
While everything went off without a hitch with wonderful performances on Friday night, Holt said rain started coming down along with thunder and lightning relatively early during Saturday evening’s shows. On the advice of their stage hands, he said the decision was made to shut down the outdoor stage.
But the show was far from over.
The suggestion came up to relocate indoors onto the little stage in the Wild Horse Saloon, which required a little rejigging but ultimately did not take much longer than half an hour, said Holt, adding bands were playing again by about 7 p.m.
“It didn’t take long,” he said. “Our sound guy’s very good.”
The side doors on the building were left open so folks with umbrellas could stand and watch from outside, he said.
“From a festival experience, we created kind of an intimate experience with three of the top groups,” he said. “The bands loved it, because they were right intimate with the audience…(and) the audience loved it because they were up close.”
The following morning during a gospel open mic show, the stage crew once again set everything back up on the outdoor stage.
“We did the rest of the show back outside for Sunday afternoon and it was great,” said Holt. “In spite of the predictions of bad weather, nothing ever happened; there was no downpour here on the grounds on Sunday.”
Holt expressed gratitude to have access to the saloon, which ended up saving the day; or at least, Saturday night’s lineup.
“It wasn’t a plan B ahead of time; it will be next year!” he said about the strategic withdrawal and regrouping into the saloon to shelter from the storm.
“We’re certainly going to consider some ways of including an event in the saloon in the future, just because people really liked it,” he said, adding the building had largely been previously used by the festival as a storage area and to house a caterer for bands and volunteers.
“The hit of the show on Friday night – which I thought they would be – was definitely Jake Vaadeland and the Sturgeon River Boys; they were great,” he said, adding that while all of the bands were thoroughly enjoyed, fans seemed to get really fired up for that performance.
“The audience went kind of nuts over those guys,” he said.
Jake Vaadeland and the Sturgeon River Boys returned to play on Saturday afternoon before packing up and hitting the road to perform at the King Eddy in Calgary, with enough fuel in their reserves to hit to Calgary Stampede’s Coca Cola Stage on Sunday, he said.
“They’re young, they got lots of energy.”
