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Harvest 2022 – It felt like a return to form
By Adam Bowie
Now that the last notes have faded, and the food trucks and acrobats and musicians have gone home, we can reflect on what was a familiar-feeling Harvest Music Festival.
Sure, there were subtle differences: No Mojo Tent. A different street experience. A new drink-buying setup in the Blues Tent. An improved, revamped Barracks stage.
But, all in all, for many local music fans, the 2022 Harvest Music Festival felt a bit like a return to form.
I’ve got a few takeaways.
First things first: Thank you to the hundreds and hundreds of community volunteers, who gave up their time to lug equipment, to serve drinks, to change garbage bags, to help people find the portapotties, the merch table, and the paper for the debit machines. They handed out schedules, and ferried musicians to and from the airport, and took care of the tents during strong winds on Thursday evening.
Most events of this kind aren’t co-ordinated by volunteers. A local pharmacist isn’t acting as the stage-manager of a large-scale, internationally recognized music venue for a few nights a year. A school principal isn’t usually leading the stage crew in days long efforts to set up these remarkable structures. It’s the kind of thing that leaves the headlining musicians shaking their heads, marvelling at how this is all possible. They leave Fredericton with a positive impression they’ll pass on to their peers, their management teams, their publicists.
Jeff Richardson, Harvest’s general manager, said it isn’t easy to carry off an event of this magnitude, and he’s grateful to those who contributed.
“We were touch and go with volunteers,” he said.
“But every time we needed something, someone showed up. We would have been lost without them, and they consistently came to save our bacon. They worked under pressure, with big crowds. They just got it done.”
After some festival patrons expressed concerns about a new bar layout in the Blues Tent on Wednesday evening, changes were made on the fly to ensure there’d be a better experience for fans attending other shows throughout the event. When others questioned the loss of a video monitor towards the back of the venue, it was returned to its previous location as well.
Brent Staeben, the festival’s music director, said Harvest organizers heard that feedback, and they took steps to address the issues that were raised.
“We’re listening. We really care about the customer experience,” he said.
“It’s part of the success factor for us, that’s for sure.”
After more than 30 years of Harvest, the main attraction is still the music. And this year’s event had many special moments – including in some of the new venues.
The Graystone Riverview Stage, located on the overpass at the end of Carleton Street, was a new hit with fans enjoying the street experience.
Local rockers The Tortoise, the Hare and the Millionaire had huge crowds in the palm of their hands there on Friday and Saturday.
A bigger, better Barracks offered up several killer shows, particularly sets by Stephen Lewis & The Big Band of Fun on Wednesday and The Hypochondriacs on Friday evening.
Over in the Blues Tent, Staeben said he was still processing the remarkable musicianship he saw over the course of the week.
“The War On Drugs was definitely a highlight. A number of musicians and bands asked me, ‘How did you get The War On Drugs? What did you do?’ It was really surprising, for a lot of people,” he said.
“It was a big get. The whole lineup was special. We had The Big Get with The War On Drugs. We had The Big Surprise with St. Paul & The Broken Bones. We had The Big Singalong with Blue Rodeo. And then we had The Big Rock and Roll Comfort Blanket with Matt Mays and The Record Company.”
Speaking of singalongs, that Blue Rodeo show is one that Fredericton music fans will be talking about for years. Yes, many of us have seen them in concert before. But it was somehow special yet again – an opportunity to slip on a favourite old jacket, and find out that it still fits you like a glove.
“I can’t tell you how beautiful you look out there. It’s a beautiful sight,” said Greg Keelor, the respected co-leader of Blue Rodeo, near the beginning of the band’s Friday-night headlining set.
“What do you say we have a party tonight?”
The band weaved through a string of hits, reminding us all of so many good times gone by, and giving us one more for the memory banks.
By the time the encore rolled around, it was time for a tent-wide singalong of “Hasn’t Hit Me Yet,” the Canadiana classic. Keelor, and Jim Cuddy, who played mandolin on the track, strode to the front of the stage and launched into the song, allowing the audience to sing the first verse and chorus.
If you were there, it was magical. It’s difficult to say whether or not the finale topped it, as the band called Matt Mays, Adam Baldwin, Terra Lightfoot and others to the stage for a rousing sendoff of “Lost Together.”
The War On Drugs picked up a few new fans, as they showed off the wall of sound they can make on tracks like, “Red Eyes,” “Holding On,” and “I Don’t Live Here Anymore.”
With a massive guitar pedal setup unlike any I’ve seen, frontman Adam Granofsky, or Adam Granuciel as he’s known on stage, coaxed all sorts of killer tones from his rigs over the course of the band’s ultra-cool set.
Like an old friend, Mays gave the people what they wanted on Saturday evening, entertaining the audience with a long list of crowd favourites – everything from “City Of Lakes,” to “Terminal Romance,” to “Indio.”
Others raved about bluesman Matchstick Mike Bidlake’s Snooty Fox sets, or the Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute at Broken Record Bar and Music Room featuring local axemen Connor Fox and Jonnie Price and others.
Staeben said he was also impressed by folk/country headliner Amanda Shires, who played an early show – the kind of gig that can sometimes force an artist to compete with the sound of old friends catching up out in the audience.
“For me, the audience’s respect, and the way they were enraptured by her, was definitely a highlight,” he said.
“I thought the audience got more into it, and more attentive as the show went on. It was a beautiful Harvest experience, and a unique one. It’s not a music that we normally do. But that speaks to the festival we’re becoming, and want to be.”
Anyone who spent any time downtown also saw that local businesses got a huge bump.
Restaurants and bars were bustling through the week, with people grabbing a bite or a beverage before heading out to the shows, or for a stroll down Queen Street.
It felt a bit like the old days, at least in some ways. And nostalgia can be fun. Hopefully it’ll be enough to tide us over until next September.
Take It Like A Man? No, Take It Like Amanda Shires
By: Adam Bowie
The last time Amanda Shires visited Fredericton, she was on tour with folk music legend John Prine, and the two of them had an experience that could have been pulled from one of their songs.
Before a show at The Playhouse in May 2017, Shires, the Texas-born, Nashville-based singer-songwriter and founding member of the female supergroup, The Highwomen, was commuting from gig to gig by car with her longtime friend and mentor.
And they ran out of gas on the highway just outside of Fredericton.
“You don’t usually run out of gas. But I like to recall those memories fondly, of us just talking so much, and having such a good time and conversation that we couldn’t see any gas tanks,” she said, laughing.
Now, she says she can’t wait to return for this year’s Harvest Music Festival, where she has a 5:30 p.m. showcase in the Blues Tent on Sept. 17.
Shires will be playing songs from one of the most buzzworthy albums in music right now, her recently released Take It Like A Man – a personal, emotionally charged collection of songs that almost didn’t happen.
You see, Amanda Shires, who is married to two-time Harvest headliner and Grammy winner Jason Isbell, briefly thought she may retire from the music industry and focus on other artistic endeavours, like painting.
When asked about it, Shires said she’d had some negative experiences with various music industry professionals – she didn’t want to name anyone – that left her feeling unwelcome and unwanted in the Nashville scene.
“Some of those experiences were the kind that make you feel small, or the kind that make you feel like you don’t belong in a space you’d like to exist in,” she said during a recent phone interview.
“At some point, I just didn’t want to keep returning to a place where I was getting injured. I felt like doing that over and over was real dumb, and not good for my sanity or my mental health.”
And then when the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily shut down the music business, she fell into a bit of a funk, like many of us did. She began to focus her attention elsewhere, if only for her own wellbeing.
What changed her mind? A request to sing backup vocals on a track by Los Angeles singer-songwriter Lawrence Rothman, a longtime fan of Shires’ writing and musicianship.
She said Prine had often urged her to listen to every piece of music that came across her desk. So she did, and as the two artists began to talk, it became clear that they should try working on a few more songs. Over time, that collaboration evolved into working on a full-length Shires album, her seventh, with Rothman in the producers’ chair.
“I was able to make a new space for [music] in my mind, where it was safe to be in the studio,” said Shires.
What emerged was a deeply personal collection of songs, which swings from the seductive (Bad Behaviour) to the defiant (Don’t Be Alarmed) to the emotionally naked resentments that exist between longtime lovers (Fault Lines).
“Fault Lines” was initially written as a way for Shires to work through her feelings, as a way to express what she couldn’t articulate verbally at the time. It wasn’t initially intended to be included on this, or any album, she said.
She recorded a demo and sent it to Isbell, who ignored it.
“During that time, it was the height of the pandemic, and I think he was in self-preservation mode, I believe,” she said.
“And so I sent my friend Lawrence a text message with my little demo on it. They were like, ‘Wow. It’s really sad, but it’s really beautiful. We should record it.’”
When Isbell first heard the song, Shires said he told her it was really good.
“I was like, ‘That’s all you’ve got to say,’” she said, laughing.
“Sometimes that’s all you need. It takes time for people, sometimes, to get out of your head and be in a place where you want to talk.”
For some artists, it’s simply too difficult to put this much of themselves out there into the ether, for everyone to poke and prod and contemplate.
For others, like Shires, it’s part of the artistic pursuit.
“I don’t think about it when I’m writing the songs. I just write the songs that I want to write, and usually the questions start happening when I start putting the [album’s] sequence together,” she said.
“That’s when I decide whether I want to extend that invitation, if I want to answer questions about personal things or not.”
Shires has to balance her desire to protect her family from scrutiny versus her desire to push herself creatively, and to put forward the best songs for the project, including “Fault Lines.”
“I did have that conversation with Jason. When I was sequencing the record, there were a few sequences where that song wasn’t on it,” she said.
“And he said, ‘I really miss that song on the record. It’s a good song.’ I told him, ‘I don’t know if I want to talk about that song or where I was in my feelings when I was writing that song.’ And he was like, ‘Well you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but the song should definitely be on there.’”
Shires said she’s excited to be heading out for her first solo-material tour since the beginning of the pandemic.
And she’s also starting to think about some new music for The Highwomen, the collective she helped found that also features artists Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris and Natalie Hemby.
“I think as long as there’s a need for the conversation, then the group will persist,” she said.
“I know we’ve been talking about writing, all that business.”
Some tickets for Shires’ upcoming Harvest show are still available at harvestmusicfest.ca.
That very special time of year is upon us, it’s time to pick up your Harvest tickets and passes! The Harvest retail store is now open, and tickets and passes are available for pick-up!
Our store is located in King’s Place Mall, at 440 King St., Fredericton NB, E3B 5H8.
Our hours are Monday-Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday 12pm-5pm. The store will stay open until 10pm the week of the festival.
Run don’t walk to pick-up your tickets, passes, and this year’s merch! We can’t wait to see you there!
We are looking to fill part-time and full-time retail assistant positions to work in the Harvest retail store. Please read below for more information.
We’ve moved!
We’re excited to have relocated to a new office space on Queen Street. Moving forward, our business and mailing address is:
Harvest Music Festival
346 Queen Street, Unit 105
Fredericton, NB E3B 1B2
Please update your records with our new address. Our email addresses and phone number remain the same. That said, as we make this transition, our phone line will not be monitored as frequently and may be temporarily disrupted. The best way to contact us is via email. For general inquiries, we can be reached at info@harvestmusicfest.ca.
Please note that ticket and pass pick-up will begin mid-August at our Harvest retail store, with details to come.
We look forward to continuing to work together from our new location!
Tickets to the Sheepdogs presented by PLATO Testing have now sold out!
