By Will McGuirk
Outdoor festivals bring their own concerns, usually the weather, but one would never imagine Kathleen Edwards and Colin Cripps becoming the soundtrack to a couple of randy alpacas in the field beside the stage. The surprise endorsement was just one of many surprises to be had at Cultivate Festival, held at Haute Goat, north of Port Hope, in the undulating hills of Northumberland. It is a beauty location for what was a beauty of a fest. And I do hope the Haute becomes the home for sometime to come It was a real joy to be present.
It was the presence of rain on Sunday which precipitated Edwards and her guitarist to move under the side stage tent, as the main stage was too exposed to the elements. But rain is no deterrent to love, ask a llama, and no deterrent to the audience of Cultivate either, who proved their folk hardy ways by weathering the afternoon precipitation.
Just as the sun and the rain traded back and forth on the day so did Edwards and Cripps on the hits heavy set “Hockey Skates, Six O’Clock News” and “Change The Sheets” among them.
The festival line-up leaned, appropriately for a farmyard setting, towards country, with Kate Boothman, Jeremie Albino, alternating with Brooks and Bowskills. The latter played two sets announcing new tracks from a forthcoming album.
Between the Main stage and the Tent stage was the art area, vendors alley, and a children’s play area. Skirting those were pens with chickens, goats, horses, and the aforementioned alpacas. Above lights and bunting strung from barn to barn to barn.
Our photog was there on Friday and her pics can be seen here, we missed Saturday and sadly the Sadies playing their first live gig since the death of Dallas Good, but Sunday, which was over by 6 p.m. more than showed what Cultivate is all about; community built on a shared love of slow living, and in the case of alpacas, slow loving.
