The 2016 Winnipeg Folk Festival ended it's marathon weekend of music on Sunday night. In the aftermath, here are five fresh groups that sent me on a trip to the merchandise tent. 

 

 

 Lemon Bucket Orkestra:These guys are the worldliest orchestra you’ve ever seen. One of the most popular band’s in Toronto, The Lemon Bucket Orkestra is “Canada’s only Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super-band,” with classical music influences thrown in. The dizzying collection of styles and raw spontaneity of the group is electric, and had everyone at the Bur Oak stage on their feet and dancing. Basically, this music should appeal to anyone...if it doesn’t appeal to you, you’re probably not fun.

The Head and the Heart:
Taking one for the indie-folk team, The Head and the Heart have that nostalgic alternative sound nailed down. Their soaring melodies are at once lush and anthemic, their lyrics are poignant and intimate, and their onstage musical chemistry is electric. As Josiah Johnson sings lines like “Lord have mercy on my rough and rowdy ways”, you feel as though you’ve just arrived home from the epic journey of your life.

 

The Staves:
This fem fantastic English trio are true folk musicians, wearing their hearts in their music. They wear collared shirts and cable-knit sweaters and they sing about love and being young and traveling all over Europe. I’m always willing to buy in the currency of folksy nostalgia - an image and sound that is iconic at folk festivals everywhere.

Mikaela Davis:
The New York singer songwriter has an unconventional musical get-up - she is 24 years old with bleached white hair and she plays the harp, which she uses to create a fusion of sounds you might call psychedelic chamber pop. In “The Light is Always On” she begins with an exotic-sounding montage of classical glissandos, showing off her technical maturity, but her musical chops are fully revealed when she starts singing with an easy, angelic-like quality. As the opening psychedelia segues into an anthemic folk rock, all I could hear was The Beatles ‘Within You Without You’. This is to say that her vocals and songwriting skills are stand-alone. Combined with her classical training, Davis is a dreamy up-and-comer, she’ll be around for a while.

The Dead South:
I was definitely into the raspy twang of this Bluegrass group that I’d never heard of. Hailing from Regina, Saskatchewan, this quartet of classically southern-looking men do bluegrass just as it should be done, with a dusty banjo and heartfelt cello that make for some hard-hitting melancholy. I don’t normally listen to Bluegrass, but I lounged in the shade for the group's entire set at the Big Bluestem stage on Friday afternoon, pretending I was in Alabama.