Lisa Evasiuk, co-ordinator of the Reel North Film Festival, has teamed up with Thompson Public Library administrator Cheryl Davies for a second year to bring the Winnipeg-based Home Routes Concert Tour back to Thompson, after a successful inaugural season last year.
The Thompson Public Library's basement Bijou Room, of course, is also the main home of the Reel North Film Festival every November, along with Saturday night double features that generally run monthly, except for during the summer, the rest of the year.
Last season wound up April 19 with Boston-based husband-and-wife duo Matt and Shannon Heaton offering traditional - and non-traditional - Irish music on Irish wood flute, guitar, bouzouki and accordion.
Some of the other acts last season included Fort MacLeod, Alberta's John Wort Hannam, a former schoolteacher on the Kainai First Nation, who has been compared to Gordon Lightfoot, James Keelaghan and John Prine; Toronto's HOTCHA!, with Beverly Kreller on vocals, bodhran, accordion, guitar, kazoo, mouth trumpet, spoons and Howard Druckman on vocals, guitar, slide and harmonica; and Fort William, Ontario's Rodney Brown, with his banjo "Bob" and acoustic guitar.
The way the Home Routes Concert Tour works, Evasiuk said, is the admission cost all goes to the musicians and she put them up while they are in town.
"Our particular circuit is now known as 'The Borealis Trail,' Evasiuk said, "and this group of artists will start their tour in Buena Vista Sask. and then go on to Porcupine Plain Sask., Prince Albert, Carrot River Sask., The Pas, Thompson, Flin Flon, Swan River Valley Rossburn, Onanole, Carman and then end in Winnipeg."
On Oct. 3, rhythm and blues/folk performer Treasa Levasseur, born in Winnipeg, raised in North Bay, and a long-time resident of Toronto, will kick the season off.
Big Rude Jake, described as "Tom Waits meets Bertholt Brecht in a Swing Jazz back alley minstrel serenade" will be here Nov. 2. He hails from the St. Catharines and Niagara Falls area, as well as Toronto.
Hunter River, Prince Edward Island folk artist Meaghan Blanchard is in Thompson Dec. 1, followed Feb. 10 by the "soul drenched blues" of Lester Quitzau, originally from Edmonton and now from the Gulf Islands of British Columbia.
Katherine Wheatley, originally from Parry Sound, Ont., who graduated from Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. with a geology degree and spent five seasons roughing it in the bush, is here March 11. She started songwriting with a $13 guitar ordered from the Sears catalogue. She spent four seasons working north of Flin Flon before heading to Africa. She is also a member of the Toronto band, Betty and the Bobs and a guitarist in Wendell Ferguson's trio "The Smoking Section."
The season wraps up April 9 with Arthur O'Brien and Fred Jorgensen, half of the four-member Newfoundland band The Navigators, will be here to share their traditional Newfoundland and Irish music.
"I have listened to bits and pieces of each artist's music and I am crazy excited to meet them all and hear them in person," Evasiuk said Aug. 24. "I think we really lucked out on these folks! They come from each coast of Canada and places in between."
Homes Routes is a not-for-profit organization. The chairperson is Derek Black, a 25-year veteran of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, including eight years as its board president. Black plays guitar and sings as well.
Other board members include Chris White, artistic director of the Ottawa Folk Festival, who is also a songwriter; Troy Greencorn, artistic director of the Stan Rogers Folk Festival in Canso, Nova Scotia; Manitoban Steve Schellenberg, a songwriter who is the artist representative on the board; Robert Lyons of Regina, an owner of nightclubs and restaurants, who is also described as "a very decent lyricist and guitar player and an old hand at producing house concerts" and Les Siemieniuk, general manager of the Calgary Folk Festival and a long-time broadcaster including producing CBC Radio's Simply Folk.
