Feature photo by Madison Edwards
By Kristi Alexandra
@kristialexandra
This past Saturday (August 10), the Burnaby Blues + Roots Festival celebrated 20 years of the family-friendly blues-centric music festival. It looks like, after all these years, the festival is a beloved mainstay in the suburban city–dare we say it’s put down its roots.
As with the previous 19 years, the day-long event was hosted on the sprawling field of Deer Lake Park festival grounds, with the main stage set against the lake. Food trucks, drink tents, and family zones abounded this year, with a Blues Workshop tent set up near the main entrance to greet 2019’s Blues + Roots goers– delighting new and veteran fans of genre.
The workshops, which boasted geographic blues styles such as Chicago, New Orleans and Memphis, were hosted by Vancouver blues veteran and bass player Jack Lavin, who was a member of the Powder Blues as well as the host at the Yale Hotel Blues Jam for many years.
Hosted by CBC’s Lisa Christiansen at the Main Stage, this year’s festival focused less on the quantity of new musicians and bands to discover, but rather brought in major mainstream headliners such as local indie musician Dan Mangan, Michigan rock group Lord Huron, and iconic Canadian singer-songwriter Feist.
Earlier in the day, however, the crowd was treated to an acoustic set by Winnipeg-based folkster William Prince, who hails from the Peguis First Nation. The musician won the Juno Award for Contemporary Roots Album of the Year in 2017 for his debut album Earthly Days.
Breaking the blues-only anticipation straight out of the gate was Yukon-rocker trio Speed Control, with super tight, riff heavy, harmony rock. Calling home the genre, however, was Southern Avenue, a fiery young Memphis quintet that embodies its home city’s soul, blues and gospel traditions, while adding a youthful spirit and dynamic energy all their own.
They were followed shortly by The War and Treaty, a band led by couple Michael and Tanya Trotter, hot on the heels of their new full-length album, Healing Tide. Funky bass lines, keys, lap steel, acoustic strings, and stripped-down percussion create a swampy Southern soul bed for the couple’s transcendent vocals that made us want to love like there’s no tomorrow.
While this year’s lineup brought fans in droves, we hope Burnaby Blues + Roots festival steps into its next decade with more stages and more blues acts to discover as it did in previous years.
Kristi Alexandra is an unabashed wino and wannabe musician. Her talents include drinking an entire bottle of cabernet sauvignon, singing in the bathtub, and falling asleep.
