Red House Records Blog Cabin

The Pines at Winnipeg

A couple weeks ago The Pines were one our acts that made their way up to the Winnipeg Folk Festival.  This was their first time at the festival and their three performances turned more heads to their distinct sound.  Below are a few of Benson Ramsey’s thoughts on their trek up north.

The Pines

It seems like a dream to me now….

For our first outing in Canada, I couldn’t drum up a better setting than the Winnipeg Folk Festival.  We arrived on the Thursday night of the festival.  After checking into the hotel and taking the shuttle over to the festival grounds, about a 45 min ride, we got there just in time for the Avett Brothers.  We listened for  awhile as we got our bearings and ran into our good friend Ruth Moody.  Then we waddled around and found a spot off to the side to watch the great Levon Helm Band.

The sky to the northwest was still glowing at a 11pm when he took the stage.  It was a memorable evening of music and festivities for sure.

We played three times in as many days.  Everyshow had it’s own thang.  The first was just us (me, David, Michael on banjo, J.T. on drums).  The set was an hour or so and we pulled songs off of both our Red House releases.  It was a clear warm summer day and it felt good to play and be apart of the whole shabang.  One thing I did notice, not just with us but over all was that you could play a quiet pretty song, at most big outdoor things like that those softer ones seem to get buried alive.  So that was nice and just goes to show how cool our friends to the north are.

Anyway- our second show was one i’ll never forget.  It was a workshop with Pieta Brown and Bo Ramsey.  Folks might think we get to play together all the time but sadly we don’t get to all that much.  But it felt like home on that stage and the way everyone played on all the songs made one big sound.  When we play together it feels like a mystery slang way of talking.  Pieta’s “Other Way Around” was right on and Bo’s version of Jesse Mae Hemphill’s “Jump Baby Jump” was off-the-hook.

The third show was another workshop with a songwriter from Boulder, CO, Gregory Alan Isakov and the legendary (drum rolllllll) Hot Tuna.  This was freaky cool.  The workshop thing in wild.  Everyone just took turns playing a song.  It was fun and strange to sit and listen to these folks and get to play songs with them.  Overall- Winnipeg feels a bit like the last stop on the train.  Sort-of the end-of -the-line before the north pole and I dig it.  And it’s gonna be tough not to compare every festival from now on to the Winnipeg Folk Fest- they got it goin’ on and I am thankful to have been there for sure.

-Benson Ramsey, July 2010