The musical epiphanies, love stories and yearning expressed in memories submitted to the 35th annual Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Folk Music Festival all felt familiar to performer and longtime festivalgoer Veda Hille.
"It's this huge shared experience that we have. The epiphanies that we all have when listening to music are very real, but they are multiple and they are familiar, I think that's part of why we go back."
Earlier this year, event organizers put out a call to festivalgoers to share their recollections of past events. Hille then wove these anecdotes into seven songs for The Memory Project, which she, her band, a choir and special guests will perform on the main stage on the closing night of the festival, which runs July 13 to 15 at Jericho Beach Park.
"I'm quite pleased with the way the songs are working out, partially because it's so much fun working with a huge choir and a rock band," said the singer-songwriter and composer. "That gives it, also, the sense of community that is inherent in the writing process."
Hille first attended the festival in 1980 when she was 12 and new to the city from Langley.
"I was totally geeky and didn't have friends yet and then through some fluke these super cool kids invited me to go to the festival with them," she said. "We snuck in, we pretended we were younger than we were because if you were under 12 you got in free."
Hille not only remembers this first taste of independence from her parents and how an enduring friendship was born, but also incredible performances over the years by artists including Rory McLeod, a nascent Spirit of the West and Germany's Dagmar Krause. "She was doing songs by Bertolt Brecht," Hille said of Krause. "Those have become major touchstones in my life and she's one of the premiere interpreters who are alive today, so the fact that I got to see her when I was young was amazing."
When Hille played her budding Memory Project songs for punk accordionist Geoff Berner, he promptly contributed his own adolescent memory. "Of being a 15-yearold Socred and seeing Bill Bragg and becoming someone else entirely," she said.
Berner will join Hille in the song she's written about young teens "having their minds blown" at the festival.
Dan Mangan will sing the centrepiece song that's based on a bittersweet romantic letter about a relationship breaking down.
"He's going to make everybody cry," said Hille, who's also written a number based on a festival fan letter penned in 1992 by a then 13-year-old Chloe Raunet. Hille looked Raunet up and discovered the now 33-year-old sings in a post-punk band called Battant in London, England and tours all over Europe.
This year, of the more than 60 artists and groups from around the world who will perform at the festival, Hille is particularly keen to see the Johnny Clegg Band, the Cave Singers, Lucinda Williams, Stephen Fearing, Ani DiFranco and Royal Wood.
With projects that include A Craigslist Cantata, the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Complaints Choir and Songs of the False Creek Flats, Hille has become a master of piecing together others' desires, annoyances, history and reflections.
"My brain is predisposed towards puzzles," Hille said. "People are interested right now in using real language from real people."
This isn't the first time Hille has composed for a Folk Fest anniversary. She created the Silver song cycle in 2002 to celebrate the festival's 25th anniversary, adapting the artsy song "INSTRUCTIONS" from her 1996 album Spine to reflect festival-going etiquette, including a request for those in need of relief not to pee in the duck pond, so she felt honoured to be asked to commemorate the 35th.
"I feel very strongly attached to the festival. I feel like it was the place where I came of age as a music listener and then again where I came of age as a music performer, so it's been a really important place in my own life," Hille said. "So to get to help celebrate twice is just extra special good."
For more info, see thefestival.bc.ca.
Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi
