Latest / Behind The Village Podcast / Inside Mariposa Folk Festival's History: 50+ Years of Music, Mayhem & Magic | Michael Hill

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Inside Mariposa Folk Festival's History: 50+ Years of Music, Mayhem & Magic | Michael Hill · Behind The Village Podcast

0:00
I went because I was a real Murray McLaughlin
0:02
fan. And Murray was just sort of starting out
0:05
at that time. And so I went to see him on the
0:08
Saturday workshop. And he gets up on the stage
0:11
and he says, I'm not going to be playing today.
0:13
And, oh, I was very let down. I thought, oh,
0:16
that's disappointing. He says, my friend Joni
0:19
Mitchell is here from Los Angeles. So Joni Mitchell
0:22
got up and sang five songs. You're listening
0:27
to the Behind the Village podcast. Our guest
0:30
today is Mariposa Folk Festival historian, Michael
0:32
Hill. So, Mike, why don't you tell us a little
0:39
bit about yourself then? Why don't we start there?
0:43
Well, I'm a former teacher. I taught for 15 years
0:49
in Scarborough, then I came to Simcoe County
0:51
and taught for 16 years here. Gee, I have two
0:58
daughters and four grandchildren and a little
1:01
white dog. And I've had a long, long history
1:03
with Mariposa and folk music. Tell me about that.
1:07
Like, how did you get started in with Mariposa?
1:11
Well, I got started with like. This kind of music
1:15
is the kind of music I've liked ever since I
1:17
was in high school. You know, I always loved
1:19
Simon and Garfunkel and Gordon Lightfoot, Cat
1:22
Stevens, James Taylor, you know, performed in
1:25
university and, you know, like in coffee houses
1:29
and things like that. Although, you know, didn't
1:32
ever make it. Not that I really tried either.
1:37
And then. I knew about the Mariposa Folk Festival.
1:41
I was actually at the historic one in 1972. And
1:46
then I was living in Orillia in 2000 when it
1:50
came back. And I thought, oh, I'll volunteer
1:53
and it's a way to get a free ticket. And I kind
1:58
of got reeled in. So the first year I was just
2:01
part of the crew. The second year they wanted
2:03
me to be the site coordinator. And then the next
2:07
year I was the, organizer for the entire festival.
2:11
And then I was asked to be on the board of directors.
2:14
And we let our previous artistic director go
2:20
in 2006. And I immediately put up my hand and
2:24
said, I'd like to take on that job. It's not
2:30
really my personality to be aggressive like that,
2:31
but this was something that really suited me,
2:34
picking the artist for Mariposa. So I did that
2:38
for 11 years. So, you know, I've still kept my
2:42
finger in the pie, so to speak. Like this year,
2:45
I'm helping with, I'm actually doing a workshop
2:47
because it's the 65th anniversary this year.
2:50
That's right. I'm doing a workshop with Owen
2:54
McBride, who... was a performer from 1964 on.
2:59
And Bowen is still around and very much still
3:06
a part of Mariposa too. I guess I'm the official
3:08
historian since I wrote the book on it. Yeah,
3:10
you're the person to go to. So what led you to
3:14
kind of take on the role of the historian of
3:17
the Mariposa Folk Festival? Well, I, you know...
3:22
History was my major in university. I taught
3:24
history for many years. And I just sort of like
3:31
knowing the history of anything I'm involved
3:33
with. I wanted to ask, you mentioned about 1972
3:37
being a year of note for the festival. What was
3:41
it about 1972? Well, nobody knew that it was
3:46
going to be so special. It had a great lineup.
3:50
It had people like Bonnie Raitt and John Prine.
3:54
And I went because I was a real Murray McLachlan
3:58
fan. And Murray was just sort of starting out
4:00
at that time. And so I went to see him on the
4:03
Saturday workshop. And he gets up on the stage
4:07
and he says, I'm not going to be playing today.
4:09
And, oh, I was very let down. I thought, oh,
4:12
that's disappointing. He says, my friend Joni
4:15
Mitchell is here from Los Angeles. So Joni Mitchell
4:18
got up and sang five songs. And I had never seen
4:24
her in concert before, and I never saw her again
4:26
either. That was my only time ever seeing Joni
4:28
Mitchell. And then she said, I have a friend
4:31
here from Los Angeles as well, Jackson Brown.
4:34
So Jackson Brown got up and did some numbers
4:36
and knew who he was at the time. And then the
4:41
next day, Bruce Colburn had a concert at about
4:44
four o 'clock in the afternoon. And he got up
4:48
and said, I'm not going to be doing my concert
4:50
today. I'm giving it up for Neil Young. And it
4:53
was at the time that Neil Young was sort of on
4:57
his own solo, doing solo stuff like Harvest.
5:00
And it was apparently the only performance he
5:04
did in all of 1972 was that one hour at Mariposa.
5:08
And then on the Sunday, Bob Dylan showed up.
5:14
And nobody knew he was coming, but he came to
5:17
see a guy named Leon Redbone, who was kind of
5:19
an oddball, but really interesting musical performer.
5:24
And so Bob came to see him. And then Gordon Lightfoot
5:28
showed up as well, just dropped him off to round
5:31
it all up. Like everybody. Yeah. And Lightfoot
5:34
actually got on a picnic table. for a small group
5:38
of people, maybe about 30 or 40 people, and sang
5:41
a few songs with the Good Brothers sitting in
5:44
behind him. And Dylan actually asked if he could
5:48
sing something, but the organizers said no. And
5:51
the reason they said no was they were afraid
5:53
that, you know, people were like, you know, maybe
5:58
20 ,000 people there. They were afraid that everybody
6:01
would rush that one little stage where like.
6:04
Dylan was, would be playing. So they said, no,
6:07
we'd better not just for safety's sake. So Bob
6:09
Dylan never played Mariposa, but there were a
6:12
couple of times when he, he came close to being
6:14
there. Wow. Wow. Were you there? Yes. Oh, you
6:20
were there. So usually you saw this all unfolding.
6:23
I was very young. That's amazing though. Yeah.
6:28
What a lineup. Yeah, for sure. It just came out
6:30
of nowhere. It kind of piqued my, certainly piqued
6:33
my interest in Mariposa again. So, yeah. That's
6:37
super cool. And you said you didn't go again
6:40
until, you didn't start going back to Mariposa
6:42
until the 2000s when they came back to Borrelia?
6:45
I actually went one year when it was in Bracebridge.
6:48
Ontario. It was very much scaled down and they
6:52
had it in a park at Bracebridge. From 2000 on,
6:55
I haven't missed a festival, you know, either
6:57
as a, mostly as volunteers. The last few years
7:01
that I was, that I was there, my only job after
7:06
I quit being artistic director, my only job was
7:08
to escort Gordon Lightfoot around the festival,
7:10
which was pretty exclusive and kind of exciting.
7:15
That's right. Yeah. That's really cool. I guess,
7:19
what is it about the festival for you that makes
7:22
it so special that keeps you coming back to it
7:24
in all various capacities that you do? Yeah,
7:29
well, it's always the music, you know, is the
7:32
key thing. It's the type of music that I like.
7:36
Like, I like singer -songwriters and I like,
7:39
you know, acoustic, the sound of an acoustic
7:41
guitar is, you know. I'd have to rank that as
7:43
one of my favorite sounds along with a baby's
7:45
laugh. There's a park. It's right across from
7:48
where I live, as a matter of fact, across the
7:50
lake. And Tuttup Park is just a beautiful setting.
7:53
It's like surrounded by water. So wherever you're
7:56
sitting watching, you can usually see the water.
8:01
And I don't know. It's just the whole. ambiance
8:07
of uh of the festival it's like a little uh fair
8:10
that pops up for three days and then it's gone
8:13
again and uh it's just uh there's just some magic
8:17
to that i think tell me about you know i guess
8:20
the the book like tell me about the history of
8:24
uh the folk festival well it started it started
8:26
in aurelia um there was a a man who worked for
8:30
cbc His name is John Fisher, and he was actually
8:33
nicknamed Mr. Canada because he was always promoting
8:36
Canada. And he came to Orillia back in 1961,
8:40
and he was trying to tell towns how to encourage
8:49
tourism. He was using the Stratford Festival
8:53
and Stratford as his example. And in the audience,
8:57
that... night for his talk was Ruth Jones and
9:01
her husband. And Ruth, she and her husband were
9:05
both real folk fans. And folk music, you know,
9:07
especially for young people like you, folk music
9:12
was actually very, very, very popular at that
9:15
time. She thought, well, that would be nice in
9:17
Orillia. You know, Stratford has its Shakespeare
9:19
Festival. We could have a folk music festival.
9:22
She knew some of the people that were in like
9:24
the number one folk group at the time in Canada
9:27
was a group called the Travelers. And they did
9:30
the song, This Land is Your Land. It's a Woody
9:32
Guthrie song, but they changed the words to make
9:36
it Canadian. So they were the big headliners.
9:40
And just by sheer energy and will, she... made
9:48
that festival come into being between January
9:52
and August. But it was very successful. And then
9:55
the next year, it was even bigger still. And
9:57
then the third year in Orillia, Orillia was only
10:01
a town of about 15 ,000 people at the time. Something
10:04
like 20 ,000 people showed up. They wanted to,
10:07
you know, a lot of university students from Toronto
10:10
and just people who wanted to come for a good
10:13
time. And they weren't all coming for the music,
10:17
unfortunately. And what happened was on this
10:21
Saturday night, the crowds sort of spilled out
10:26
into the downtown of Orillia, where they were
10:30
holding the festival was sort of up on a hill.
10:32
And they all went downtown to the main street.
10:36
And they used the storefronts as toilets. And
10:39
there were stories of broken beer bottles. The
10:44
police just couldn't handle it. The police force
10:45
was only, you know, a handful of men. And they,
10:49
you know, in those days, Orillia was a dry town,
10:53
but people were walking around drinking bottles
10:56
of beer, and that was considered a real no -no.
10:58
And there's kind of apocryphal stories about
11:01
there was a jail, the jail in the police station
11:07
in Orillia, it only held two people. They were
11:11
arresting people for disorderly conduct and all
11:14
that. They put them in the jail cell for a few
11:16
minutes and then they'd let them out and they'd
11:21
put the next group of people in just, I guess
11:23
they'll just say, you were in jail. And there
11:27
were stories about, you know, the police grabbing.
11:30
grabbing a case of beer from somebody and the
11:33
crowd swarming around the cop and stealing the
11:36
beer case back from him. Wow. Also stories of
11:40
they would put people into the police car on
11:43
one side and as they were trying to get through
11:46
the crowd to get around to the driver's side,
11:48
the person just went out the other door and almost
11:52
like Keystone Cops type of stuff. A lot of the
11:54
citizens of Orillia, the business people of Orillia
11:56
and the town council. They were all so disgusted
12:00
with it that they said, never again. Like, really,
12:03
we ban the Mariposa Folks Festival. So the next
12:07
year, they were going to have it out near Moonstone
12:09
or near Coldwater, Ontario. And they had a farm
12:15
that they had picked out to put on the festival.
12:18
About a day or so before the festival was to
12:20
start, the city or the township council got an
12:25
injunction to stop them from putting it on out
12:28
there. So the organizers, this really amazes
12:32
me, knowing how much goes into organizing an
12:35
event like this. They went down to Toronto and
12:40
they rented Maple Leaf Stadium, which was a baseball
12:44
stadium at the foot of Bathurst Street down by
12:46
the lake. And they rented that for the weekend
12:50
because the baseball team was playing somewhere
12:52
else. And one thing about that festival in 1964
12:54
was that someone sent me. a sound clip of Gordon
13:00
Lightfoot singing his brand new song, Early Morning
13:03
Rain. And it's him in this empty, you can hear
13:07
it's kind of echoing around the baseball stadium.
13:10
So that was very cool. The next year, 1965, they
13:14
moved out to Caledon, south of Orangeville, and
13:18
at a place called Innis Lake. They had a great
13:22
lineup in 1965. They had... Ian and Sylvia and
13:27
Gordon Lightfoot and Phil Oakes. I don't know
13:30
if you guys would know who Phil Oakes is, but
13:32
folkies from the 60s and 70s would know Phil
13:36
Oakes. He was a protest singer. And my favorite
13:40
photo in my book is a picture of Phil singing
13:45
into a megaphone. The power went off. The power
13:50
went off. And so they had no lights, no sound.
13:55
So they quickly aimed a bunch of car lights at
13:58
the stage and somebody stood beside Phil as he
14:01
was singing his set with a megaphone. And that's
14:04
how he sang to the crowd. Wow. That's pretty
14:08
amazing. Well, it kind of shows just, you know,
14:11
how astute these people were at scrambling when
14:18
things didn't go exactly right. Because it's
14:20
happened all through. Mariposa's history has
14:24
happened. It happened 2005 or 2006. There was
14:29
a big storm came through and ruined all the equipment
14:32
on main stage. And then the same thing basically
14:35
happened 2013 or 2014. So there have been occasions
14:41
like that. Then over the years, through the 1970s,
14:45
it really developed a lot of... interesting things
14:49
there was a native people's village um with a
14:52
big teepee and one year uh one craftsman from
14:55
uh i'm not i don't know where i think he was
14:58
from manitoulin island but i'm not sure he made
15:01
a giant canoe and just he worked on it the whole
15:04
weekend and people could come and watch him as
15:06
he was building this canoe and it's the canoe
15:08
that uh for years and years it may still be there
15:11
was in the royal ontario museum in toronto wow
15:15
yeah and um Sharon, Lois, and Bram, the children's
15:20
performers. I'm very familiar with them. I grew
15:24
up with them. All three of them have been very
15:27
involved with Mariposa. Well, it was Sharon and
15:30
Lois who really started the children's area.
15:32
And the children's area is still really popular.
15:36
If you have little kids, there's lots for them
15:40
to do. Don't feel this is just an adult festival
15:43
at Mariposa. It's meant for everybody. And it's
15:48
still going strong that way. So we really are
15:50
grateful to them. I say we, I still think of
15:53
myself as being involved with the festival. I
15:56
feel like you're just an honorary member now
15:58
forever. And finally in 2000, the Mariposa board
16:03
decided, okay, yeah, let's try coming back to
16:06
Orillia. And it was an absolute success. Steve
16:10
Earle came, I think it was 2003. And Steve Earle
16:15
had spent a year in jail for drug offenses. And
16:20
while he was in jail, he made friends with the
16:23
Hells Angels. On the Sunday night that Steve
16:28
was playing, all of a sudden. In the crowd. I
16:33
was there. I didn't know what happened. They
16:35
must have had other clothes on. It must have
16:38
been like Superman taking off their clothes.
16:41
Because all of a sudden, there's all these Hells
16:43
Angels in the park. And we usually had only like
16:47
two or three police around as security. All of
16:52
a sudden, there had to be 100 cops showed up
16:54
instantly. But there was no trouble at all. There
16:57
was no trouble. The Hells Angels just, they...
17:00
Wherever Steve plays, they come and support him.
17:03
And they didn't cause any problem, but it gave
17:07
some people a bad, you know, some people were
17:10
rather nervous when they saw all these. I mean,
17:13
with reputations, yeah. What about the history
17:18
of Mariposa, I guess, inspired you to create
17:23
or write your book? Was it just your knowledge,
17:27
your vast, vast knowledge? Really, it's just
17:30
there are so many important performers have played
17:34
at Mariposa. That's one of the big things that
17:36
really, that really. makes me think that it's
17:39
very much an important cultural institution in
17:43
Canada. A lot of people, you know, credit, like
17:47
Gordon Lifewood himself says, you know, Mariposa
17:49
helped his career. It certainly, it wasn't the
17:53
starting point for, or it wasn't necessarily
17:56
the, you know, the catalyst for a lot of people's
17:59
careers, but it certainly helped them along.
18:01
But a lot of people. like Bruce Coburn, Murray
18:05
McLaughlin. And in the more recent times, like
18:10
Serena Ryder, she started off as just a, you
18:13
know, she got in as a, I think she got in as
18:16
a showcase, which is, you have to audition to
18:19
get in. I think that's how she got in. I could
18:22
be wrong about that one. I don't know if you
18:24
know the group Dalla and the Good Lovelies. They
18:28
were just, they really got their starts at Mariposa.
18:34
So that's kind of an important thing. And the
18:37
people that have played it over the years are,
18:39
you know, some of the biggest names in certainly
18:42
in folk music. But even I hired Randy Bachman
18:46
one year based on his well, based on his his
18:50
songwriting. And I thought I was going to get
18:54
a different show than what I got. He said he
18:56
was a group called the Sadies. Now, the Sadies
18:59
are. you know they're not really a heavy rock
19:03
group or anything they were um they're they were
19:07
all related to uh the good brothers and this
19:09
is kind of a country uh folky uh vibe to them
19:14
but when they came with randy they played as
19:17
if they were bto so so we got a rock show that
19:20
year and amazing Yeah, yeah. And Peter Yarrow,
19:25
you know, from Peter, Paul and Mary, he came
19:27
and he was just the sweetest guy. I was told,
19:29
oh, don't hire Peter Yarrow. He's really an arrogant
19:31
man. He was just the exact opposite of that.
19:34
He couldn't have been, couldn't have been nicer.
19:37
Don McLean, like for me, that's one of the highlights
19:41
of being an artistic director was having him
19:45
come. He played all his big hits and then he
19:48
had everybody up. singing American Pie. Everybody
19:53
in the crowd standing on their feet singing American
19:55
Pie along with him. It was just really touching.
19:59
And then the most special moment, probably the
20:02
most special moment, I would say, was Gordon
20:05
Lightfoot had an aneurysm in 19, sorry, in 2002.
20:10
And he almost died. He had to have several operations.
20:13
It really altered his singing and his voice.
20:16
And it seemed like he was never going to perform
20:18
again. which was a tragedy for any Canadian folk
20:22
music fan. But then in 2004, he just all of a
20:25
sudden showed up in his limousine. They pulled
20:28
in backstage and he asked if he could sing one
20:31
song. And he got up and sang one song. And nobody
20:34
expected it. Nobody knew it was going to happen.
20:36
So the audience, you could have heard a pin drop.
20:39
And then when he was done, the cheering was just
20:44
so loud. I'm sure they could hear it in Barrie.
20:46
Yeah. It was really a touching moment. Incredible.
20:50
Yeah. It just sounds like so many moments, so
20:54
many of these moments over the history and the
20:58
lifetime so far of Mariposa Folk Festival. And
21:00
what I like is, you know, it started in Aurelia
21:03
and, you know, it went touch and go. It went
21:05
to Toronto. It went all over the place. And it
21:08
kind of made a successful comeback in Aurelia.
21:12
Like Aurelia, it sounds like Aurelia ended up
21:14
really embracing. the the festival right after
21:18
all and it's become like a mainstay like you
21:20
said like it's a very big everybody knows mariposa
21:22
folk festival you know um that happens up here
21:26
exactly why don't you tell me about you know
21:29
what it was like to write the book right like
21:33
how how long did it take the how did you i guess
21:36
did all the research or how did you end up writing
21:38
the book tell me about the process um there was
21:41
a book written in the 70s uh But it was kind
21:46
of a strange collage almost of stories. And there
21:52
was a little bit of a history in it. And I found
21:54
out afterwards that some of that history was
21:57
inaccurate. So it had sort of been done. It's
22:02
called For What Time I'm in This World. It's
22:04
out of print, but I managed to find a deleted
22:07
copy at North York Library one time. So I had
22:11
that to go on. So I had an initial, you know,
22:14
would have been written up until about 1974 or
22:16
something. Then every once in a while, we would
22:21
have a cause to give some of the history. for
22:26
people interviewing us and people sort of wanted
22:29
to know about what it was like coming back to
22:31
Aurelia and why wasn't it in Toronto anymore.
22:33
So I kind of took on that job as the unofficial
22:37
historian. One of our guys who had been on the
22:40
board of directors, he met up with a publisher
22:43
from Dundurn Press one night at a... government
22:47
to do down in Toronto. And she mentioned that
22:51
he had mentioned that he was with Mariposa and
22:53
she said, well, I'll bet you there's an interesting
22:56
history or story to be written there. So he said
23:00
that I was kind of the unofficial historian and
23:02
he thought I was a good writer because I had
23:04
written up, you know, biographies of the artists
23:08
and things like that. So we went down, we met
23:10
with Dundurn Press and they said, yeah, let's
23:12
go ahead and let's try a book. I started writing
23:17
it and I was able to draw on my wife. She had
23:23
kept scrapbooks of everything that was either
23:27
in the Toronto Star or the Aurelia Packet and
23:29
Times or Aurelia Today. She kept like actual
23:34
physical and kept like in chronological order.
23:38
So I was able to just go through that right up
23:41
till 2017. The time between 2000 and 2017, we
23:46
had all these newspaper files. So I was able
23:49
to kind of draw on that, plus my own experience
23:52
of being, you know, in the back rooms and doing
23:55
the organizing. My previous dog, he had to have
23:58
a big, serious operation. So I... sat him down
24:03
right beside, we didn't want him to move around
24:05
too much. So I sat him right beside me, had my
24:08
books all around me and my computer in my lap.
24:11
And I typed the book while my dog lay there and
24:15
recovered. And I was able to get through it in
24:17
a space of about three months, three or four
24:20
months, maybe I wrote the entire book. And then
24:24
went through all the, you know, the editing process
24:26
and all that. And it was published in 2017. So,
24:30
you know, there've been things that have happened
24:32
since, but it's still a pretty, I like to think
24:36
that it's pretty accurate. I got great reviews
24:39
for it. If I do have to say so myself. Where
24:43
can people pick up a copy of it? At the festival.
24:46
So I've got, I'll have copies at my workshop.
24:49
And there will also be copies in the, it's called
24:53
the Emporium, where you can buy performer CDs
24:55
and, you know, clothing and paraphernalia for
24:59
the festival. That's awesome. That's really cool.
25:03
The Aurelian Museum also has some copies, too.
25:07
Oh, great. That's good to know, too. Yeah, absolutely.
25:11
And what's the, sorry, what's the name of it?
25:14
Just for people that are listening and not actually
25:16
watching. It's called the Mariposa Folk Festival
25:19
History. Is there anything, anything in particular
25:24
we haven't touched on that you feel you want
25:26
to? Well, I think if people are, if they've never
25:30
been to the festival, I say there's like something
25:33
for everyone. There's a type of music for everyone.
25:35
There's usually all kinds of like. For instance,
25:40
this year, the Sheepdogs are probably Canada's
25:44
top rock group right now. They're performing.
25:47
So it's not necessarily the kumbaya, we shall
25:53
overcome type of folk music that people maybe
25:57
think about folk music being. It's very much
26:01
a real eclectic mix of styles. Let me ask you
26:08
this, because I think in the podcast that we
26:11
did with Pam and Spencer, I asked the same thing,
26:14
but how would you describe folk music then? Because
26:18
like you said, like it may get confusing or people
26:21
may think it's like a kumbaya, like, you know,
26:25
but what is folk music to you or how would you
26:28
describe it for people? Oh, I wrote pages about
26:31
that in my book, coming to the conclusion that.
26:35
It's really difficult to define. Yeah, like,
26:40
I mean, folk music used to mean, it used to mean
26:43
music of the people and you sang along. And I
26:48
think Pete Seeger was probably the, you know,
26:52
the best example of that. Like every Pete Seeger
26:55
concert, you ended up singing as much as the
26:59
performer did. And I think it's moved away from
27:03
that. A lot of it is singer -songwriter type
27:09
of stuff. I think songwriting really has become
27:12
what defines folk music. And I also tend to think
27:17
of it as being acoustic music. But then you get
27:20
a performer like Danny Michelle who plays an
27:22
electric guitar. And it's just him and he sings
27:26
just great songs that he's written himself. I'm
27:31
sorry, I can't really give you a really good
27:33
definition of it. Americana is how it gets described
27:39
in the United States, but it's everything from
27:41
country music to blues. That's all part of folk,
27:48
right? They all folk rock, like Blue Rodeo. Those
27:53
guys, what do they do? I would call that folk
27:55
music almost. And I've heard that. I've heard
27:58
Bruce Springsteen being described as a folk singer
28:02
or Johnny Cash as a folk singer. Yeah. It just
28:06
sort of depends. I think it depends on the kind
28:09
of music that you like. That's interesting. I
28:13
don't know if that makes sense or not. No, it
28:15
does. And I think, you know, as you were talking,
28:18
I was just kind of thinking, I was like, I wonder
28:20
if folk, almost like it becomes like the main,
28:24
where all these other different genres kind of.
28:28
ended up moving into like you said there's a
28:31
little bit of country there's a little bit of
28:32
rock there's a little bit of all these kind of
28:34
different things that get enmeshed that could
28:36
be folk music right i was like maybe folk is
28:39
kind of like a it's a commonality it's a commonality
28:42
right where that is very very attuned to like
28:46
you said songwriting and uh could be acoustics
28:49
i guess but right yeah and i think um you know
28:52
a lot of genres like um Well, like rock music,
28:57
for example, in the 60s, you know, like there
28:59
were groups like the birds who they took traditional
29:03
folk songs and electrified them and put a drum.
29:05
And and that was that was really the kind of
29:10
music that I grew up with. Well, I think that
29:13
answers all of our questions. Thank you very
29:15
much, Mike, for it was very interesting. Right.
29:18
And what you just told us is probably just like
29:22
a small part of all the little stories and. things
29:25
that are in the book. So it's really interesting
29:27
to be able to - That only touches on what's in
29:30
here. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, I'm
29:35
excited. I'm going to grab a copy. Yeah, I think
29:37
it'll be interesting to actually read it and
29:39
see all the different little stories, right,
29:42
that come up with, because it's quite interesting,
29:44
right? How it became what it is today, right?
29:48
All the hardships, all the good things, all the
29:50
impromptu musicians and all that kind of stuff.
29:53
Good, okay. Awesome. Well, thank you very much,
29:56
Mike, for being here with us. Enjoyed it. Thanks.
30:03
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30:05
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30:07
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