Little stage on the prairie

The Winnipeg Folk Festival took over Birds Hill Provincial Park this weekend as it has been doing every year for the past 30-something years. In fact, it was born in the summer of '74 only a few months ahead of Yours Truly. Drawn by a desire to see my contemporary and a hill (when was the last time I got to see a hill?), I booted it up to the fest yesterday afternoon.

Let's get one thing straight. There is no hill at Birds Hill Park. It is just as flat as the rest of Manitoba. Very disappointing.

Luckily there was a lot of music. Yes, most of it earnest, politically/socially/psycho-sexually-inspired but insipid, boring music (if Bruce Cockburn falls in the forest, does anybody hear?). But the hippies liked it. And it was worth wading through the crap to hear one woman rock out on her 6-string at one of the satellite stages (yes, it was actually named Little Stage on the Prairie) in front of a hundred people.

Amy Rigby. Didn't know anything about her till yesterday, but she's been keeping it real(ly cynical) since the 80s, where she was part of New York's CBGB crowd. And she's still going strong -- only now her songs are about middle-age and divorce instead of youth and drugs. And in the lukewarm bath of folk in which I found myself, she was like a transistor radio accidentally knocked in. F'rinstance, at one point she says: "This next song... I hesitate to do it. Because it's summer, and this is a festival. But this is a song of outrage." And then she launches into "Men in Sandals." But we're not talking cutesy novelty music here, folks. We're talking bust-a-G-string ferocity (yeah, she broke it -- and the G-string jokes were flying). And her written-from-a-man's perspective Nashville-inspired tune "I Hate Every Bone in Your Body But Mine"? Gold. Pure gold.

My writer friend and returning-for-the-summer prodigal daughter of Winnipeg, Ellen, with whom I was at the festival, had the same thought I did: put Amy and her music in a movie. Now we're going to have to wrestle over who gets her.

Doesn't look like Amy has plans to hit Toronto anytime soon, but if you can get yourself to Joe's Pub in NYC on Friday, November 10 -- it's worth the trip to fall for the chick who sings "Dancing with Joey Ramone."