Barenaked Ladies Join the Mariposa Folk Festival Lineup

Barenaked Ladies Join the Mariposa Folk Festival Lineup

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BNLSliderJanuary 19th, 2017 – Mariposa Folk Festival organizers announced today that one of Canada’s most celebrated music groups, Barenaked Ladies, will perform at this summer’s festival.

Mariposa Folk Festival takes place July 7th, 8th and 9th, in beautiful Tudhope Park in Orillia, Ontario, Canada, on the shores of scenic Lake Couchiching.

Barenaked Ladies has earned their status as Canadian icons by serving up rock with a shot of wry. The band is famous for its offbeat humour, infectious enthusiasm on stage and its own unique brand of music, which sits somewhere at the intersection of indie-rock, alt-pop and what you might call improvisational rap.

According to Artistic Director, Mike Hill, “Barenaked Ladies is known world-wide as the quintessentially Canadian band. We’re bringing them back to Mariposa after a long hiatus to help us celebrate Canada 150, Ontario 150, and Orillia 150, as well as our rich musical heritage”.

The 3-day Mariposa Folk Festival features the best folk-roots music on the North American scene as well as story, dance and craft on twelve stages. All categories of ticket are now. Kids 12 & under are admitted free. Tent and RV camping is available on site.

More artistic announcements will be made in the coming weeks and months.

Iconic Lucinda Williams is Mariposa’s Saturday Evening Main Stage Headliner

Iconic Lucinda Williams is Mariposa’s Saturday Evening Main Stage Headliner

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lucindaWilliamsLucinda Williams has been maneuvering down a path all her own for more than three decades now. Hailing from Lake Charles, Louisiana – a town with a rich tradition in all of America’s indigenous music, from country to the blues – her creative verve is deeply informed by being imbued with a culturally rich, economically poor worldview. After several years of playing the hardscrabble clubs of her adopted state of Texas, Williams gained a solid enough footing to record a self-titled album that would become a touchstone for the embryonic Americana movement.

While not a huge commercial success at the time – it went out of print and stayed there for years – Lucinda Williams (aka, the Rough Trade album) retained a cult reputation, and finally got the reception it deserved upon its reissue. Jim Farber of New York’s Daily News hailed the reissue by saying “Listening again proves it to be that rarest of beasts: a perfect work. There’s not a chord, lyric, beat or inflection that doesn’t pull at the heart or make it soar.” In calling it “a masterpiece,” Blurt magazine dubbed it “a discovery worth making and music that will live in your heart and mind long after the disk stops spinning.”

For much of the next decade, Lucinda Williams moved around the country, stopping in Austin, Los Angeles, Nashville, and turning out work that won immense respect within the industry (winning a Grammy for Mary Chapin Carpenter’s version of Passionate Kisses) and gradually growing a very loyal cult audience. While her recorded output was sparse for a time, the work that emerged was invariably hailed for its indelible impressionism: like 1998’s Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which notched her first Grammy as a performer.

The past decade brought further development, both musically and personally, evidenced on albums like West (2007), which All Music Guide called “flawless…destined to become a classic” and Blessed (2011), which the Los Angeles Times dubbed “a dynamic, human, album, one that’s easy to fall in love with.” Those albums retained much of Williams’ trademark melancholy and southern Gothic starkness, but also exuded more rays of light and hope: hues that were no doubt imparted by a more soothing personal life, as well as a more settled creative space.

lucindaWilliams2Those vibes come to the fore once again on her latest release, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone (2014). While the album stays very much rooted in the here and now, Williams also conjures up the spirit of classic ‘70s country soul – think Bobbie Gentry. The resulting warmth of tone gives the album a late-night front-porch vibe.

It is said you can divide music into three categories: the kind that aims for the head, the kind that aims for the heart and the kind that aims for the hips. Forging two of those connections at once is pretty impressive, but connecting on all three? That’s a rare accomplishment. But it’s not too much to ask of the iconic Lucinda Williams.

Find out more on Mariposa’s Lucinda Williams Pinterest Board.

HYDRA (featuring AroarA, Feist, Snowblink) to Headline the Saturday Evening Main Stage

HYDRA (featuring AroarA, Feist, Snowblink) to Headline the Saturday Evening Main Stage

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HYDRA1HYDRA came together at the invitation of Feist to represent her most recent album, Metals, in a completely new live format at the Polaris Music Prize Awards. Joined by two husband and wife duos, Snowblink with their rich and textural ‘soundscapes’, and AroarA with their amplified cigar box twin guitar lines, together they conscripted both the jagged and the lush with mutating voices of not one head but three.

HYDRA2Montreal-based AroarA is a creative duo that amplifies cigar box guitars, uses a 404 sampler to trigger mellotrons and black sabbath bells, blends their voices, and plays twin guitar lines. Their album, In The Pines, is based on the work by the same title of American poet Alice
Notley. It interprets a depression era tableaux laced with quotations from the folk, blues and gospel music of that period.

HYDRA3Starting with her 2004 Juno award winning album, Feist hit the ground running fast. Her next album earned her
four Grammy nominations, six Juno wins, the Shortlist Music Prize, and the opportunity to teach Muppets to count on Sesame Street. She made her Saturday Night Live debut, toured the world, covered an album with Beck, recorded with Wilco, saw Stephen Colbert shimmy in a sequined 1234 jumpsuit, and made a documentary. Then, after resting for a while, she released her album, Metals, which inspired the three-headed collaborative project know as HYDRA.

HYDRA4One of the most compelling voices on the Canadian scene, Snowblink is a duo that describes its music as non-denominational devotional pop from California and Canada. Others have called it dreamy electro-folk. This group has opened for the likes of Feist, Jeff Tweedy, Great Lake Swimmers, and The Hidden Cameras on extended tours throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe. They have also released two albums to critical acclaim.

Check out our HYDRA (featuring AroarA, Feist, Snowblink) story board on Pinterest. While you’re there, click on Follow Board to get updates.