Sarah Rowland My Style George Murray The Dead Weather Hooley Dooley Charlotte Morgan August 7th - August 20th Volume 13, Issue 19 Issue 13, Volume 20th August - 7th August Serena Ryder Headlines With See page 8 annual The Folk Arts Society is proud to present the 33rd Annual Newfoundland & Labrador Folk Some Fine Folk Festival being held August 7, 8 and 9, 2009 at Bannerman Park in downtown St. John’s. The lineup features major performers from the province as well as from Quebec, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Australia, England, and Ireland. Our Morning Sessions start at 10 am and include traditional singers, storytellers, dancers and a myriad of instrumentalists in themed presentations. The Homemade Jam tent features performers who will encourage you to sing, dance and play along all day Saturday and Full Program Sunday. There will be Dance Workshops in the mornings and the Neil Murray Stage will again feature the province’s most promising young folk artists--on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. With T-shirts, jewellery and other merchandise, crafts, foods of all kinds, games and activities for children, the 33rd Annual Folk Festival is the place to take your friends and family for the weekend. Anita Best President, Folk Arts Society g y n i a n e for the d v saturday i e afternoon r f The Petty Rogues The Art Stoyles Band Crow’s Nest Song Circle The Rosalines Enoch Kent Shamrock The Folk of Labrador Opening Ceremonies at 6:15 s e v starting with the Ode to Newfoundland a e 33rd Annual Liz Solo The Anchormen n t i Gulliver’s Spree Conal O'Grada n Matthew & Allan Byrne The Benoit Family u g The Forgotten Bouzouki Don Ross & Brooke Miller Garnet Rogers r d Ron Hynes Middle Tickle Andy M. Stewart & Gerry O’Bierne a Bon Debarras The Idlers y Lifetime Achievement Award Folk Festival The 8 - Track Favourites Songwriters Circle: Andy M. Stewart y Sherry Ryan Sherman Downey sunday Erin Best Liz Solo afternoon a d g The Dardanelles Jenny Gear, Erin Best, Mountains & the Trees n Allan Ricketts & i n Allison Walsh and Sandy Morris Sean n Glen Collins Jean Hewson & Christina Smith e u Keane & Pat Coyne Masterless Men v e Inside! Danny Spooner Joe Belly and the s Rawlin's Cross Serena Ryder Sin City Ramblers Jim MacFarland The Ray Walsh Family Band The Folk of Branch this issue 7-9 The Ugly Truth brought to you by Where Sex Starts Do it the Bohemian Way • SHOWER SHOWS NON STOP STAGE ENTERTAINMENT PRIVATE VIPXXX-TREME DANCE AREA ADULT– www.thecottonclub.ca• STAG ENTERTAINMENT & GROUP FUNCTIONS 16 Queen Street August 7th - August 20th, 2009 CURRENT | Page 2 August 7th - August 20th, 2009 current teaM A note froM THE EDItor Editor Contributors A Fresh Face Forward Current has a long and deep tie with the arts and Joshua Jamieson Stephanie Abbott entertainment community of the St. John’s metro [email protected] Peter Barbour After working with an amazing team of creative region. With over 10 years behind us, I look [email protected] Richard Burnett people for the last three years with Current as forward to trying to fill the big shoes of those that Tim Conway a columnist, it’s thrilling to take the step forward have been in the Editor’s seat before me. Advertising Sales Gina Gill and become the paper’s next Editor. Even more LeighAnn Daniels Jonny Hodder exciting is that I have the honoured opportunity With that in mind, please send us your feedback [email protected] Tara Lehman to take that step forward with a new aesthetic, and let us know what you like, what you don’t and Sarah Macaulay developed in partnership with the local media / what you’re up to. Production & Design Joshua Jamieson communications firm, DRAY Media. Stephen Wheeler Kirsten Joy - Joshua Jamieson Charissa Reeves Distribution Laurie Soper Barry Ross Josey Vogels Kevin Woolridge Current Photographer Sandra Elford Publisher Marketing Services Ltd. P.O. Box 693 Pouch Cove, NL A0A 3L0 www.currentmag.ca On the Cover Serena Ryder (submitted Photo) CURRENT | Page 3 August 7th - August 20th, 2009 Word UP GEORGE MURRAY More THan You’LL EVer Know. BY GINA GILL The best thing about So I don’t really know where I fit in. I know I live Murray didn’t always focus on poetry though, exchanging e-mails in Newfoundland, which is in Canada. But it in fact he started writing fiction, admitting that with George Murray is doesn’t really change how I see myself in terms “before the mid 90s, I’d never really written a not so much the fact of the planet’s art and poetry.” poem. I had to take a poetry course in university that he’s a well known to get my degree. After writing my first poems, it Canadian poet or Murray added humbly that, “a number of was like a dam burst. I just kept writing more and even that he’s known successful and talented writers come from here more. They were all awful, I see now. Terrible, in as a book ninja (which telling stories using a dialect most of the rest fact. But I was on to something that touched me is pretty awesome). of Canada has no access to. So they’re very deeper than prose had, at the time.” It’s that Murray seems interested and I find myself also interested. He’s now returning to where he started and was to have a seemingly But I think it will be a long while yet (if I’m ever in Belfast during the interview doing research for endless witty even told) before I earn the right to be called a the new project. Murray admits he’s still getting repertoire and is quick to respond to cluttered Newfoundland writer.” his feet wet with the new style, having “come to questions and misunderstandings. the point with poetry where I can see a nascent Something many poets may not have in today’s piece and tell whether it’s worth seeing through, Despite having called him Greg at first, Murray digital world is their very own entry in the online worth spending time on to craft and shape. With offered a polite correction and it’s now become encyclopaedia, Wikipedia. Murray’s achieved fiction, I’m just sort of flailing around, learning as a familiar joke upon which a somewhat ‘tight’ that level of fame, though he has no idea how the I go.” relationship has formed. Whether conducting a entry got there, but he’s grateful. “I don’t know professional interview or chatting as just friends. what it means to an artist who find themselves Murray’s not entirely a fish out of water though on Wikipedia, but to me it means there’s at least with a number of published pieces of short fiction More then just a writer, Murray is also blogger, one soul out there who cares enough about inspired by “the circumstances of [his] life” that journalist, arts administrator, editor, and teacher. contemporary Canadian poetry to pour some includes everything from kids to his blog (http:// His bibliography includes six delicious pieces of time into making a page. It’s almost enough to www.bookninja.com). That being said, Murray writing, plus he’s returned to St. John’s and is make you shed a tear.” will never abandon his true love for poetry and he reading all over the place. Murray most recently offers some advice to those who might be hung finished reading a book by Irish author Roddy up on the fact that it’s impossible to get through. Doyle and his favourite poets include Geoffrey Hill, Richard Outram, Ted Hughes, AF Moritz, PK “I have no time for people who have no time for Page. me. Kidding! But really, just as some are going to prefer a boxed wine or plonk whiskey while Murray doesn’t seek to be defined as a others are keen to appreciate a more complex Newfoundland, or even a Canadian, author flavour - certain styles of poetry and prose are specifically. “I see the theoretical benefit of going demand different levels of attention, trust creating these groupings, but find there are and labour from their readers. Some things I writers who slip through the generalizations they write are more accessible than others, and each create,” he shares. piece will find its own voice and its own audience. I don’t expect everyone to appreciate it all. But Adding further uncertainty to classification, on the other hand, I don’t care to apologize for Murray lived in New York for several years, so what’s inaccessible or to hand-hold anyone “earlier work reads much more Canadian while through the experience of reading it.” later work reads American. My most recent work is leaning toward what some might call “British”. CURRENT | Page 4 August 7th - August 20th, 2009 BusIness STARTING A BUSINEss? do IT THE BOHEMIan waY BY LAURIE SOPER So here’s the way your small business is supposed to evolve. First you incorporate, then you lease office space, then you print some stationery and business cards and a nice shiny brochure, then you open a bank account and hire an accountant, then you put ads in the yellow pages, and then you start calling. Eventually, clients start calling you up and giving you contracts. Big ones. You soon find you have more work than you know what to do with, so you hire some employees who make you look great and stay loyal to you for decades.