To those returning from Baggiecon

[gerisullivan]

Welcome back!

Who were this year's discoveries? Hot performers? What be the tales from the prairie? The heat, rain, mud, and mosquito reports?

Inquiring minds (and homesick city mice)....

P.S. If there's anyone reading this who was at the Winnipeg Folk Festival but doesn't recognize the term "Baggiecon," please comment! We'll fill you in.

Comments

no idea what baggiecon

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

means. Enlighten me, Obi geri! (thanks)

Re: no idea what baggiecon

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Baggiecon consists of folks who mostly know each other through sf fandom who spend the Winnipeg Folk Festival together. It was started by decadentdave and maruad in the late 1980s and has been going strong ever since. I attended through most of the 1990s but have made it only a couple of times this millennium. (Alas!)

Country Mice are members of Baggiecon who camp in Birds Hill Park festival camping. City Mice are those who stay at the Bhigg House or otherwise in town. I started out as a Country Mouse. After a few years of that, I discovered that visiting the campground was more fun than living in it, and that the 45-minute commute from and then back to the Bhigg House each day wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined it.

very much my idea of camping

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

the one time i went to Pennsic I threw my back out unloading our trailer so the week or so there was spent in short walking trips in agony and fortunately showers near to our campground.

I also got spoiled for portapotties, at the time they cleaned them three times a day. Next camping event after was a Lilies War where we nearly killed Jim, the portapotties were nasty at the best and fortunately there were restrooms for the campsite that could be accessed easily. That was also the Lilies war that, due to a clothes rack (metal) being in our tent, our tent now has about a 10 mm fused hole that was caused by a lightning strike.

[maruad.livejournal.com]

You missed the category for people who know what Baggiecon means but were in another province because their wife had booked their first real vacation in 5 years during the Baggiecon weekend.

Hopefully someone will pop on and comment, though many are likely still recovering from the concert and the travel. It is a 8 to 9 hour drive from MPLS, not counting any madness encountered trying to cross back over the border.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised nobody's asked about the Baggie.

[sexybass.livejournal.com]

Oh I am so aware of Baggie Con having been a particpant for many years. Sadly we missed going this year as we were GOH at ConChord in Pasadena and are now living in Toronto. We are heading out to Winnipeg next week for 2 weeks and hope to see a lot of friends there plus 2 weddings :-).

[carbonel]

I took a pass this year (had a ticket, and sold it at the last minute), partly because I have too much other travel going on (and WFF is exhausting), but mostly because the Winnipeg Folk Festival seems to be becoming the Winnipeg World Music and Rock Festival, which is not my thing. It's lots of other people's thing, obviously, since they're wildly successful in terms of attendee numbers.

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

Let's see,

1) the folk running the festival had a problem with main stage volume - for most of the weekend, one could hear everything played on Main Stage perfectly well in the Festival Campground. This meant that the front baggie was not really a very nice place to be if one wanted to listen to music. The folk running the festival countered that problem by putting remarkably unmemorable (for the most part) music/musicians on the main stage.

2) the weather was unbelievably gorgeous, so the campground experience was Really Good. mizzlaurajean has, I believe, documented the Best Moment from the campground.

3) the overall evaluation of the music was "Generally Blah" (or words to that effect). That said, Swell Season made a fan of me at a workshop where they did a wonderful cover of Drive All Night. And mizzlaurajean and I hit the jackpot on Sunday, where The Good Lovelies, The United Steelworkers of Montreal, Ukrainia, and The Wilders blew us away (over three workshops). Andrew Bird made me think about music - I don't think he was well served by being on main stage, as he sounded immensely better from the back baggie than he did from the front baggie.

4) The Dead Mouse party was both a lot of fun and a great way to recover from a week on the prairie.

[gerisullivan.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

So far, I've only seen mizzlaurajean's promise of a Robber Fly cocktail next year (not on LJ), and the general news that you're home, home again.

Between the weather, the Main Stage sound, and the Main Stage acts, it sounds like the perfect year for going straight from Cocktail Hour to the campfire.

I see that Swell Season is going to be at First Avenue on July 25th. Burlington (VT), Brooklyn, and Newport are the closest they get to me on this tour, and all during times Susan, Gavi, and I will be running around looking at colleges...none of them near those locations.

"Sleepwalkin'" and their harmonies in general leave me interested in catching The Good Lovelies. Curiously enough, the preview cuts from =Broken Trucks and Bottles= on The United Steel Workers of Montreal's link to CD Baby didn't catch me at all, while both =Kerosene & Coal!= and =Three on the Tree= sound like great fun. And how can you do anything but dance to Ukrainia? Wow! The Wilders sound like a band that might work for me in small doses, but not tonight. And I simply can't decide on Andrew Bird based on a couple of MySpace clips. I'd heard his name before this year's schedule was announced, but don't think I've heard any of his work. I find his voice very listenable, and I like how he doesn't immediately sound like anyone else I'm familiar with.

Okay..."Imitosis" might have caught me....

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the mentions/pointers!

[davidschroth.livejournal.com]

Your mention of Three On the Tree reminds me of the importance of proofreading - the Program Book had it listed as Three On Three.

Three On Three would be an inscrutable title for the United Steelworkers of Montreal, while Three On the Tree makes perfect sense (to those of us of a certain age...)