The Music Festival really opened the afternoon before the first evening concert with a CBC sponsored event at the Front Street Gazebo. Photo by Dan Davidson.

Welcome to the August 13, 2004 online edition of the Klondike Sun, reproducing a selection of the articles and photographs from the August 10 newsstand edition.

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Mainstage was the place for big events. Here the Blues Jam draws a crowd. Photo by Dan Davidson

Music Festival Defies Rumours of Gloom and Doom

by Dan Davidson

It was refreshing to see Dawson City come back to life as a tourist mecca on Friday afternoon and stay that way until Sunday night. Strenuous efforts by the Music Festival Society combined with two days of rain by Mother Nature to quell those nasty rumours of cancellation and incineration.

In fact, things cleared up beautifully on Friday afternoon and stayed that way all weekend. As some of the Whitehorse visitors noted, you would never have known there was a problem.

“In spite of fires and the national media, here we are on a beautiful, beautiful Sunday in Dawson City,” said DCMF producer, Dylan Griffith, about an hour before it was time to ring down the curtain for its 26th year.

The only hint of a panic occurred Friday morning when fog, of all things, kept planes from landing at the airport until the early afternoon.

“There was a delay because of fog, which I found painfully ironic,” Griffith said. “I woke up that morning and I’m like, ‘For the love of god ...’ But it cleared up and we got them to land.”

The festival group is nothing if not flexible. They simply rearranged sound checks for those musicians who had driven to town and rescheduled the others.

The town itself wasn’t really busy on Friday, but Griffith said the festival tent filled up and pretty much stayed that way through the weekend.

“We’re sold out (of day passes) and we’ve been at capacity every night, so we’re happy.”

He thought the festival came a kind of relief.

“We’ve been helped by the weather. Having a month of smoke and then having it gone - everyone just opened up. It was like spring again. There’s been a really neat positive vibe all weekend.”

Things really got under way a bit early, with the CBC sponsored outdoor concert at the Front Street Gazebo, which attracted a fair crowd. After that, it was pretty much non-stop music from 11 each morning until past the witching hour.

There were main stage concerts on Friday and Saturday until 2 AM and on Sunday until midnight.

There were Saturday and Sunday mini-concerts at St. Paul’s and St. Mary’s from 8 until 10.

Then there were Saturday and Sunday workshops, which were located on main stage, at the Palace Grand, at St. Paul’s & St. Mary’s and back at the Gazebo. In all, there were 25 of those, plus a special concert at the PG by folk legend Enoch Kent.

For producer Griffith the weekend was just a blast. Bearing in mind that this is his first year in the producer’s seat, which he inherited in March when Dominic Lloyd moved on to Manitoba, where he now runs the West End Cultural Centre in Winnipeg.

“I was so impressed by how easily it ran,” Griffith said. “There are just so many people here who do such an incredible job and know what they’re doing and they’re so professional. The tech crews are amazing. The bullgang guys (they put up the tents) are great. For hospitality, the food is incredible.

“I haven’t done anything for the whole weekend. I wrote some e-mails and now I come here and it’s great.

“People are dancing, there’s music playing, everyone’s having a great time and that’s all I got hired on to do.”

One thing that really impressed Griffith is the way the various musicians, from so many different influences, manage to find common ground when thrown together. It happens for sure in the workshops, which tend to focus on either themes or instruments, rather than styles of music. Where it really shows, however, is in the Sunday afternoon Potluck event, where line-ups are deliberately scrambled at random and the assembled groups have to come up with a song they can do.

“It was amazing,” he said, “a beautiful, beautiful show.”