I wasn't even out of Toronto before I got lost. At Union Station, which I haven't seen since the big reno, I got totally lost as I was making my way back to the Departures from a Tim Horton's. Then I saw a young gal with a guitar on her back and just followed her. I knew where she was going!
After a long train ride (but so glad I wasn't driving) I arrived in Montreal for the Folk Alliance Conference where 2 or 3 thousand earnest folkies gather for a love-in. How appropriate that it's taking place on the 50th anniversary of John & Yoko's Bed-In For Peace - in the same hotel, the grande old Queen Elizabeth - now totally remodelled. Due to a mix-up with my reservation I was upgraded to a suite. Nice! The elevator only stops on this floor if you swipe your room key. Exclusive!
I took in the Folk Awards show where I heard some beautiful words from Buffy Sainte-Marie (and got to tell her), a tune from Bill Bourne and Madagascar Slim (Tri-Continental minus Lester Quitzau who who was stranded by the storm - many more were also MIA. Melisande [Electrotrad] also played a tune - they've been incorporating some electronica into their Quebecois routine of step dancing and fiddles and they haven't been run out of town yet. In fact, they've become "darlings" of the trad scene.
But after the Awards I kinda crashed in my room. Woke up at 1:30am - at which point I missed the song-swap in Margo Parks' room where I was going to do a tune or two...oh well, I'll be playing in that room on Saturday night.
Anyway where else can you hear world-class music at this hour? At 2am I venture down to the music floors where I caught some blues from Mike Biggar and some grooves from Rob Lutes. Not a big audience at 2:30am on a Wednesday but I enjoyed both. Rob did a tribute to guitarist Joseph Spence with some spectacular picking. Still I wondered if I would use up my precious twenty minutes with two instrumentals and one that required a big re-tuning. And some pretty long spoken introductions. But the overall impression was very good so I shouldn't be trying to tell Rob what he's doing wrong. He's a great artist