New Brunswick’s festival scene is shifting. In the land of a thousand festivals there is strong competition to be the biggest and the wildest, to build the most over-the-top stages or book the craziest headliners. The largest festivals vie to dominate, or at least differentiate, as they either capture or cater to audiences while competing with new festivals that seem to be popping up all the time. If every weekend was another Evolve, Future Forest, or Folly Fest we’d all be dead. Certainly, I’d be dead at the very least. So thank God there are still places like Tay Creek Folk Festival.
Full disclosure: the organizers of Tay Creek Folk Festival tried to buy their way into our good graces with cake. Naturally, it worked. But not just any festival can pull off that sort of behaviour. From most festivals it would come across, at best, as a heavy-handed gesture, or worse, leave you questioning the contents of the cake. But at Tay Creek Folk Festival cake seems as natural as tea at Buckingham Palace. Which, if you’ll hear me out, seems an appropriate comparison for this festival.
Forty minutes north of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Tay Creek Folk Festival is held in the barn of a beautiful (and defunct) 600-acre dairy farm, and as far as barn festivals go, Tay Creek is a real soft-seater. With soft lighting, the entire length of the barn open on one side to allow for a nice breeze and a proper dance floor rigged up in front of the stage, it’s about as cozy as you can get. It feels like they’ve specially imported dirt for the barn floor—the real good stuff that probably comes from Europe.
There is no mistaking Tay Creek for anything other than a quiet festival, however. It’s obviously a passion project of a close community, and the love they’ve invested in it practically gleams. For eleven years they have collectively toiled away at it.
While they have recently benefitted from both curation and promotion by Eddie Young of Roots & Soul Music Promotions and Living Roots Music Festival, which has been reflected in the festival’s attendance numbers, there’s still a strong sense of having stumbled into someone’s long-standing kitchen party. There is nothing frantic or rushed about it, you’re just handed a metaphorical plate and invited to grab a seat.
Where most musical festivals will leave you exhausted at the end of a the weekend, the relaxed and intimate atmosphere of Tay Creek Folk Festival is a boon to attendees and musicians alike, with the latter often choosing to camp out on the grounds long after the festival is over. That level of interaction has a tendency to transform what would otherwise be indifferent crowds into friends and fervent fans.
That isn’t to say the bands themselves wouldn’t have acquired that level of admiration from you outside of the festival, but it helps. Of course, the festival was attended by local favourites The Falling Leaves and The Barrowdowns, along with festival adoptees Outside I’m a Giant and The Marwills, the living, breathing, writhing modern embodiments of Footloose. We were also introduced to Newfoundland band Ouroboros, who wowed the crowd with their four saxophones and a drum kit; Toronto musician Mattie Leon, who delivered a soulful organ-centric punch; and the soft and heartfelt music of Brooklyn Doran, who eased the crowd into the evening.
Some music is best consumed en masse, as part of a pulsating throng, but Tay Creek Folk Festival, as per its name, leans towards the folkier side and that calls for something more genteel. The bellowing pipes of Rory Taillon certainly don’t suffer as they’re absorbed from a lawn chair fifty feet away with a shandy in hand.
And that’s the strength of Tay Creek Folk Festival. It’s practically a night at the opera, for people who don’t necessarily enjoy opera or opera houses. It’s also far more adorable. It’s the type of music festival you’d bring your parents to, or your kids, or maybe even your pets. We certainly expect to.
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