SECOND LEG: LOSE YER SHOES, FROM 2001 - 2005

Seems like yesterday that I was writing the history of the first 5 years of Lose Yer Shoes Folkadelic Festival. Now we're heading into the 10th incarnation of the festival and I gotta say, it all melts into one! Luckily I have the festival archives to rely on to wake up the memories from each year from Year 6 to Year 9. So here goes!

(Tom) YEAR 6 (2001)

After year 5 John and Pam Tomkin of Bracebridge Camping announced that the festival had gotten too big for the campground and that we would have to find another venue for the festival. Within a year they had sold the park. In late August of 2000, Tom took a drive around Muskoka looking for the perfect venue for the next year's festival. Most of the campgrounds were too small or couldn't accommodate live music. When it seemed hopeless, at the end of a long fruitless day of driving around, as it was getting dark, one of the campground owners informed Tom of a place in Kearney called Granite Ridge Wilderness Campground that had concert facilities and held music festivals regularly. Tom liked the name of the place already and got in touch with them right away. Within a day he had struck a deal with the owners of the campground, Gabby and Jim Alseimer, and plans were underway for Lose Yer Shoes 2001.

Now this was the only year that the festival got onto the front page of any newspaper but it happened in an entirely unpredictable way. Jim and Gabby informed festival organizers that local cottagers were not too keen on festivals happening up in Muskoka because of the noise so they made sure to finish the music at midnight each night, as the by-law exemption had allowed. A designated drumming area was created and patrons were informed that all late night drumming was to be done there because a ridge nearby would block the sound from the cottagers and the rest of the campground. Everything was planned so that the festival would run smoothly and peace would reign between the cottagers and the festival. No one predicted that one of the locals would come in with a drum kit and set it up in the main camping area. Cottagers armed with sound meters hid in the bushes, recording the decibels that were being produced by the obnoxious camper and the police were summoned. Tom, who had spoken with the drumming madman earlier, promised the officers that all would be quiet for the rest of the night and that the rules would be better enforced throughout the weekend. Little did the officers know that Tom was in a state rendering him totally incapable of enforcing any rules. He promised Jim and Gabby that he would be sober on Saturday night. Try as they might, the combined forces of Granite Ridge and Lose Yer Shoes could not quiet down the drummers on Saturday and the cottagers decided to take the issue to town council. Hence the headline the next day after the festival in the Huntsville Forester read: "Cottagers want town council and mayor to resign," or something like that. All because they had agreed to issue a by-law exemption allowing the live music to go on until midnight at Lose Yer Shoes. Though the atmosphere at night was quite mellow, only a few people were banging on hand drums and that made the cottagers go crazy.

Friday night's encounter with the police was not to be the last one that Tom would have with them that weekend. Tom had agreed to meet with a staff member of Tim Horton's on Saturday night to pick up the leftover donuts to give to the musicians in the morning. Tom left at about 10:45 and arrived at the parking lot at the corner of Hwy 11 and 518 at about 11:00. He picked up the donuts, thanked the staff member and within minutes was surrounded by 5 cruisers, told to get out of his car at gunpoint and ordered to hand over all the donuts. Fearing for his life, Tom immediately handed the bag of donuts to the cops, who sat and ate one each before going on their way. Tom burned everybody's ears off with the story when he got back and he did manage to catch the last part of the closing act, Pat Temple, only to have Pat give up the stage to his old friend and ours, Otto Roosen, who served up an upbeat set of old favourites to everyone's delight.

The music that weekend was fantastic, with the best Friday ever (Caution Jam could not play on Saturday for some reason so they headlined Friday) and a first time appearance of Pat Temple and his band, sousaphone and all to headline Saturday night. Pat's originals have that drunken sort of swinging klezmer sound that gets you up and moving in a sultry kind of way. Having Otto, who was largely responsible for the existence of the festival, finish the night with his usual wit and raw renditions of fun bar tunes was absolutely perfect for the occasion.

All of the other performers were amazing. Click here for a full schedule of what happened. It was also the first year that Lose Yer Shoes collaborated with the Hands of Hope for Children project, collecting used shoes to send to the people of Guatemala, thus bringing a whole new meaning to "Lose Yer Shoes". In a grand gesture of solidarity, one performer kicked his Berks off and donated them right there and then to the charity, walking around in bare feet the rest of the weekend.

YEAR 7 (2002)

Someone had tipped off Tom and Eric that there were new owners at Bracebridge Camping and that they were very interested in having Lose Yer Shoes there again. The owner was Ken Perret, and he had changed the name of the park to Muskoka Ridge Camping Community. Worrying about the potential problems with cottagers at the Kearney location, Tom decided to go and try to make a deal with the new owner in Bracebridge. He struck a deal and the press release read: "Lose Yer Shoes is coming home!", as quoted by Eric Johnson. New acts were added to the program, with Caveman from New Jersey setting the place on fire (figuratively) with their intensely primal mix of jazz and world beat. Their bodies and faces were all painted and they hid in the bushes as they were being introduced. They then ran into the crowd with noisy gongs and rattles, screaming and generally freaking everybody out. Then they hopped on stage (someone said, "Let's see if they can PLAY") and ripped into a set of seamless movements of primitive jazz that left everyone dumbfounded. It was a tough act to follow, but Caution Jam did it in style, getting everyone grooving despite technical problems that were happening on stage like power outages and such. The yoga workshop was blessed to have Lo and his Exotic Flutes perform for them and Hurricane Mike Thompson came in with some authentic old blues pickin' that entertained the Sunday crowd maximally.

YEAR 8 (2003)

Tom and Ken parted company due to a disagreement regarding money so Tom decided to try a park that had interested him for some time. He had attended a wedding at a campground in Severn bridge called Four Seasons Tent and Trailer Park in 1999 and had admired the layout and beauty of the place for some time. It had a lot more trees and space than the Bracebridge location and a really nice circular clearing in which to hold the concerts. The owner, Allan Cole, a straight shooter who runs his business very professionally and yet in an informal way fitting to Muskoka, agreed to host the festival the second weekend in August. Now THE story for this year begins with Tom's attendance at Eco-Fest, an annual ecological festival held at Newmarket's Fairy Lake in mid June. He noticed a mobile solar power unit that was being advertised by Ontario Power Generation as available for free loan to non-profit organizations. He cut through numerous layers of red tape to finally land the unit for the festival. The unit was dropped off on Thursday so Tom and Eric could build the stage, powering the tools with the earth friendly electricity. As they were building the stage, Tom and Eric were told that the whole campground had lost electricity but they thought nothing of it. About an hour later they found out that the power outage had affected most of the east coast of the United States and large parts of Canada and that is was expected to last for at least a day. With no time to waste, they continued to labour on, building the stage that would be the centre of activity for the coming weekend. As time went on, it appeared that the famous blackout was turning into a national disaster but they felt reassured that with the solar powered unit, the festival would go on as planned. With the blackout shutting down events all over the continent that weekend, Lose Yer Shoes was rocking and rolling and folking and bluesing and everything in between!

Tom had come to be friends with Mark Wilson, organizer of the Come Together Music Festivals in Brantford, Ontario and Mark and his band came in to join the fray at Lose Yer Shoes. Mark also brought with him his sound system and skills as a sound engineer. His band put on a smokin' show Saturday night that had the whole crowd up and dancing. Caution Jam was down to a duo due to Mark Crissinger being out of the country, leaving Muskoka's Cabin Fever led by Eric Johnson to finish the night with a sultry, bluesy set. The Caution Jam "original duo" of Eric and Les brought back some of the old feeling from the early years when they formed the band together. The festival also added some great female talent from Muskoka with Ashlea Smith, who had appeared on the open stage a year earlier and wowed us with a fantastic set to open the night on Friday before Caveman came in and did a more fluid jazz performance than the year before with Stew MacLean sitting in on the drums. The ever sweet and talented songstress Louise Kent was back after a few years away doing wonderful solidarity work and Georgia Hamilton drew listeners to the stage with her set of emotional and thoughtful originals early Saturday. Rick Gregus, whose band Hokum Blues had broken up, brought in a band called "Shady Tree" that gave us some great acoustic sounds from jazz to bluegrass. The crowds were sparse due to the blackout problems, thus making for a wonderfully intimate festival, but the festival was back into the red. To make things worse, the campground increased the cost per camper for the following year, making it nearly impossible for the festival to break even. Other problems would come around to lower the numbers but never the spirit of the festival in the following year.

YEAR 9 (2004)

The festival got organized early for the next year, opting to stay the course even though the costs of holding the festival at the current venue were becoming increasingly prohibitive. Continuity was the key and everybody who attended the festival in 2003 absolutely LOVED the site. The date of the festival was moved back a week to the first weekend of August because Eric's brother was getting married on the usual weekend of the festival. Little did we know that everyone else associated with the festival was holding events that weekend. It all started when the Dead (new incarnation of the Grateful Dead) announced in June that they were doing a show in Buffalo on the Friday of Lose Yer Shoes. Tom tried contacting the band about their lousy choice but always got an answering machine. Plans were fully underway and since the campground would not let the festival have the August long weekend, they had no choice but to stay with the plans. After all, the people at the Dead show would surely head up to Lose Yer Shoes on Saturday, full of beautiful energy bestowed upon them by the GOGD. The weekend came and went, intimately again, and we got story after story of individuals who PLANNED to come up to Lose Yer Shoes after the Dead concert but were either a) too tired, b) too broke, c) all of the above after the concert Friday to come all the way up to Severn Bridge from Buffalo on Saturday. We also found out that Bob's Shakedown Bash had happened that weekend in Barrie, attracting legions of hippies away from the smaller, humble Lose Yer Shoes festival. Another year, another loss, another great time! Mark Wilson returned to do sound and it was a near perfect flow as he had gotten the kinks out of the job and performed wonderfully headlining the Friday show. Solstice and Diesel Dog put some high level playing into the afternoon set on Saturday, while the reformation of perennial jam bands The Cosmic Boogie Band and the The Fat Cats pleased the souls of all in attendance. The continued presence of Suzy's yoga workshop, Ed's tie dye workshop, Rick Gregus' Shady Tree and Hurricane Mike Thompson's jokes and great blues pickin' made for the best festival yet. Only something HAD to be done to get more people out next year, the 10th anniversary of the festival.

YEAR 10 (2005)

Sick of being charged through the nose for the use of camping facilities, Tom decided to give a call to the Granite Ridge people (Gabby and Jim) to see how things were going with the cottagers up there and whether they were having music festivals. As it turned out, they had won a court case around the holding of festivals and so it was now "no problem" to have the festival there. Knowing that they would work well together, Tom and Eric decided to move the festival back to Kearney. Now Eric had met and fallen in love with a beautiful lady in Huntsville. Although we had joked about telling his brother to never get married on Lose Yer Shoes weekend again, Eric decided to do just that - get married AT the festival. Wedding plans were made, and when it became apparent that Eric and Andrea's grandparents and aunts and uncles would not all dig the camping thing, they decided to get married elsewhere and have the reception at Lose Yer Shoes. So this year, Caution Jam will close the night as the wedding band for Eric and Andrea, a fitting way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the festival. Tom also went out of his way to book exciting bands blending bluegrass, psychedelic and new age grooves to the menu. Jam band favourites the Burt Neilson Band, long lusted after by the festival, were added to the lineup in mid July and the bluegrass contingent was beefed up to accommodate locals yearning to hear the lonesome sound. New age guru Michael Moon was booked by Tom as he attended Hillside Festival in Guelph, Jazzadelic band High Plains Drifter was booked at the May 24 Come Together Festival and Girl and the Machine as well as Two Stone Throw, who insisted on performing at Lose Yer Shoes, were booked at the Bradstock festival in June. Tom tried to book the String Cheese Incident while attending the Big Summer Classic, but, well, was .. just having too good a time to do business. Ditto for Gordon Lightfoot at the Mariposa Folk Festival. Flyers were doled out at all of the above events and promoter Jay Cleary of High Plains Drifter was recruited to assist in promotions. The return of Steve Porter, "Smiley" Mark Weinstock and River Rock (formerly Akino Kaze) bring the festival full circle as it celebrates its 10th anniversary. Now - will the festival finally break even?

Stay tuned.

Volunteers over the past few years were:

James Robers, Patricia Coelho, Kozuno, Kimmer Cuzzilla, Darlene Legault, Ed Mendonca, Blair Peterman, Drea and her Peterborough clan, Art Blomme, Fred Orchard, and let me know if you've been forgotten! Thanks to one and all! Thanks also to the Muskoka Cottage Brewery for their donations and to all Muskoka businesses who generously and cheerfully allow us to put up posters. Thanks to the District of Muskoka for their incredible recycling facilities.

Here's to another 10 years in Muskoka!