Reflections on 25 years of Stanfest adventures
It’s not often that the memory of one man can motivate an entire town to come together and build on a dream. Stan Rogers, however, was no ordinary guy—his commanding baritone voice and limitless talent as a songwriter have been etched into the national landscape, as well as into the hearts and minds of thousands of fans, spanning at least three generations. In his all-too-brief lifetime, Stan managed to influence a diverse range of performers in North America, while contributing to the burgeoning popularity of Atlantic Canadian music.
Stan was born in Ontario to a family that had strong roots to Nova Scotia. Those family ties made him a frequent visitor to Canso and Guysborough County, and his love for the people and places grew, inspiring him to write songs like “The Jeannie C”, “Guysborough Train”, and “Fogarty’s Cove.” The lyrics and melodies earned Stan a place in the folklore of the region, especially the northeastern shore of Nova Scotia. It’s not surprising that in the past twenty-five years, some of the finest songwriters and performers in North America and Europe have gathered at this festival to celebrate Stan’s lasting contributions to folk music.
My new book, The Power of Song—25 Years of Stanfest shares the incredible story of a community, struggling with the demise of the Atlantic fishery, “rising again” to launch and grow one of Canada’s great folk festivals.
The accidental author
“Write a book,” they said. Well, “I just might,” I thought. “You can do it,” they said, “You write all the time.” And thus was the logic that set a wonderful adventure in motion. Like the festival itself, an invisible force seemed to be driving this project forward. The invisible voice seemed to be saying, “Jump on or get out of the way. The world needs to hear this story now, the full story, in all its inspiring glory.”
As the festival taught us, it’s often best to dive headfirst out of the plane and contemplate methods and means on the way down. Festival patriarch and mentor for the Stanfest team, Mitch Podolak, framed it up this way, “Tell the biggest lie you can and then make it come true.”
Allison Russell of Birds of Chicago. Photo credit Chris Smith
I have been privileged and must share
While it is romantic and fun to describe a lightning bolt hitting a tree, and an apple then falling to hit me on the head, sparking this wonderful idea, that would be a pure myth. So is the fable I sometimes tell of a flow chart appearing on the side of a spent pizza box, late at night, after a spirited jam session. It’s always uncomfortable to be called a founder. No festival of this scale can be attributed to the vision or work of one person.
From the beginning, the idea was seeded and nurtured by a group of friends who had returned to Canso at the apex of the fishery collapse, and week by week it gained steam and the team grew exponentially. But committees don’t paint pictures, and they don’t write books, not good ones. This is a story, or a cluster of stories about collective effort, that simply needs to be told, and I felt duty-bound to make that happen.
We didn’t know what we didn’t know. From the earliest days I knew this book would be at least 300 pages. Would this be too big, and too expensive to attract a publisher? “Too big, can’t be done, too expensive to print, too heavy to mail,” they said. “Just watch me,” I thought. Self-publishing it had to be. So many choices to make. Should it all be in third person voice? Would it seem vain to tell the whole story in first person? How would we organize the story into chapters? After many false starts, it became clear the best strategy was to just let the story flow, having faith the structure would come, and it did.
People power
The story of Stanfest has many dimensions, but mostly it is a human story. There are more than 800 artists that have passed through the festival, each leaving a mark on organizers and audience. Then there is the annual miracle of 600 volunteers, all pulling in one direction, moving mountains. A core mission of this book was to introduce and celebrate many of the incredible humans who are the “people power” that propels the festival forward.
The Vancouver Folk Festival has more than 1,400 volunteers drawn from a population base of nearly 2.5 million residents. Canso today has a mere 800 or so residents, and 600 volunteers answer the call each year. You simply couldn’t hire a team to do a job this large. It would render the whole affair fiscally impossible, and you wouldn’t get the same passion or sheer work ethic. Before the festival, I never imagined so many volunteers could and would be so passionate and dedicated to one project for a quarter of a century. I am still amazed and humbled each year. None of us are leaders, until we have followers.
The world needs more smiles
At the outset, we never dreamed the book would be completed and launched in the middle of a global pandemic. This project helped me through the darkest, scariest days of the past two years. It was always a happy place to immerse myself when the weight of the situation and news broadcasts seemed overwhelming. We had well over 10,000 images to choose from, and many captured happiness, pure and simple, on and off stage. Applying a “smile filter”, we selected hundreds of photos that capture the pure and simple experiences. We knew the book could help others through these heavy times, like it had helped me.
Perhaps this book is a not-so-subtle call to the faithful to rally for the 25th anniversary in 2022, after two pandemic-cancelled events. When your story is this powerful, you just need to tell it. We wanted the book to remind our festival faithful of the experiences they are missing. When we launched, there were only a few major festivals in Atlantic Canada. Many new events have sprung up over these 24 years, but still there is only one Stanfest. Poised for an epic reunion year, as demand for live music surges post-pandemic, we will “rise yet again!”