Excitement is building at the Roots & Blues office as more talented artists sign onto the 2016 slate and artistic director Peter North reveals this year’s presentation.
Just signed on, Joe Craven is not just an entertaining musician with a penchant for the mischievous, he is a teacher and student all at once and he will draw you into his performance by including you as though you’re part of the show itself. His gift of gab is unprecedented and his musical knowledge impressive.
“Joe’s openness and expression of gratitude for the gifts he’s acquired make it all the more fun for him to share them with his audience,” says North.
Creativity educator, former museum curator, visual artist, actor/storyteller, event MC and recipient of the 2009 Folk Alliance Far-West Performer of the Year, Craven has made music with many folks – notably violinist Stephane Grappelli and Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia – to multi-whirled string guy David Lindley, harmonica wizard Howard Levy and seven years recording and touring with banjo fusionist Alison Brown.
Always looking for the next expression and object to make music with, Craven is a musical madman with anything that has strings attached – violin, mandolin, tin can, bedpan, cookie tin, tenor guitar/banjo, mouth bow, canjoe, cuatro, CBG, berimbau, balalaika, boot ‘n’ lace and double-necked whatever. Craven has created music and sound effects for commercials, soundtracks, computer games and contributions to several Grammy-nominated projects.
An educator for more than 25 years, he has presented at well over 100 schools, universities, civic and community groups. He has paneled at the American String Teacher’s Association, and has been a keynote clinician and a co-director of the youth academy at Wintergrass in Seattle for more than 10 years. He is the executive director of RiverTunes in California and a coast-to-coast MC of a variety of music festivals, including Delfest and the 40th Telluride Bluegrass.
“Whether a presentation to folks in Costa Rica, corporate heads in Contra Costa, Calif., Goodwill Industries, The United Way, young men in a juvenile detention centre, families in homeless shelters, a university lecture in Washington, jamming with Gnawa musicians in Morocco, on stage at Carnegie Hall with Stephane Grappelli, or on stage with an angel food cake pan in front of thousands of school kids in Scotland… no matter who and what Craven is connected with, he’s at home and loving every minute.
“Everything Joe touches turns to music,” says mandolinist David Grisman, with whom Joe played for almost 17 years.
No one who saw Craven wring a percussion concerto from his garbage-bag raincoat during a downpour at the Strawberry Music Festival could disagree.
On another front, last year’s successful celebration of 50 Years of the Grateful Dead included a special cast of players and singers who took a packed house in the Boogie Bar’N on a heck of a rollicking ride that touched on so many of the classic songs of the Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter songbook.
“As we set sail into 2016, it seems only fitting that we put one of our spotlights on the 40th anniversary of one of the biggest roots music events in the history of contemporary music,” says North. “Strange as it might seem to some of us, it was indeed 40 years ago this coming November that the five original members of The Band gathered at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom with a crew of their favorite musical brothers and sisters and delivered an amazing concert that to this day demands repeated viewings.”
While North is still determining which artists attending Roots and Blues 2016 will be participating in the tribute to the Last Waltz, the classic Band songs sung by Levon Helm, Richard Manuel and Rick Danko, from Up On Cripple Creek to Stage Fright to It Makes No Difference to Chest Fever, will all get proper representation. The same will go for the tunes performed by Muddy Waters, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Dr. John, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and Paul Butterfield.
“Get ready to visit a spectacular set list that will include Muddy’s Mannish Boy, Joni’s Coyote, Neil Young’s take on Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds, Dr. John’s Such and Night, the Ronnie Hawkins romp of Who Do You Love, and Dylan’s I Shall Be Released.
The 2016 Roots & Blues Festival runs Aug. 19 to 21. Tickets at member earlybird prices to March 31 are available at www.rootsandblues.ca or by calling 250-833-4096.
