Well, I suppose it's time for me to jump in :)

Hi! I'm Shawna from Ottawa and a new lister. It's funny, actually...I found ammf while fixing the bouncing problem I seemed to have every once in a while on Headline Girl (Emm Gryner's list). I was already on a bunch of other smoe lists but I wasn't aware ammf existed in mailing-list form. (newsgroups don't seem to work with my computer...)

Anwyay, here I am, and although I'm a relatively new fruvous fan (only been real crazy for about 2 years :)), I'm still proud. I thought you guys might like another review of the Folk Festival...I'll paste in the parts I wrote up about fruvous, although if you really want a full detailed report, let me know :) Here it is:

“Folk music makes me hungry” –ani d.

Yummmm…Wow. What a weekend. Full of sunshine, music and, of course, Moxy.

Next up…one of the highlight bands of the weekend, MOXY FRUVOUS! God I missed those crazies. “It’s so good to be back in OSHAWA!” yelled Jian. And they played newer favourites such as Michigan Militia (heh…Americans) and Pisco Bandito, as well as pure classics like King of Spain going into Green Eggs and Ham (HEY! Don’t knock the Beatles! These are folkies here, you’ll break their hearts! Hey! Look what you did to Mike!) Disco Bargainville was hilarious, we sang the beginning THREE times “…who says we can pay one price for *TWO*” heh…It was cool to see some fru-ish people sitting right near us so we didn’t seem like we were being an annoyance, you know, being all loud and stuff. There was much fun, singing, bopping along and Jian headbanging…

Sunday stuff:

The fruvous guys were part of a workshop with UHF (from BC), Hart Rouge (french band, nice harmonies) and Ball and Chain (Michael Ball and Jody Benjamin). The focus was on harmony and the voice. We sat amongst some fruheads as we watched Moxy get mauled by fans and autograph seekers. We sat AT MOXY’S FEET. Whoa.

They sang the Gulf War song and later did Spiderman while running through the crowd, chasing Mike. “So we’re gonna do a song without mics…no, really, without Mike…” it ended up being both. It was hilarious because a girl in the audience had a superman shirt on! Superhero envy, they called it :) Hart Rouge did a singalong of an old favourite french tune of mine, A la Claire Fontaine, and Roy Forbes of UHF led everyone in a big round of You are my Sunshine. Nobody knew the other verses so they just made them up. “Ha! Try THAT witty Toronto boys!” but Moxy couldn’t think of anything! So Jian just ad libbed Britney Spears lyrics into the song :)

We ran to the next little stage to catch Moxy’s next workshop. And We caught the tail end of a much better set by Lucy Kaplansky and we finally saw Eugene Ruffolo. Wow. He is SEXY. And even sexier when he sings and plays the guitar. Mmmmm… Cute little David Francey was hosting the stage, which included Floom, Moxy and Mary Gick and Rusty. Uh Oh. Floom and Moxy on the same stage. Craziness is bound to happen.

It was a workshop focusing on the use of words in songs. Floom sang some nonsense song which consisted primarily of “heeyyy namanamanama…” This got made fun of A LOT, especially by Moxy, up next. “Hey that’s not hard!” and Moxy copied them. They did My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors (!!!), and besides Jian changing the words to “I was looking straight”, they also did “We’ll be living in hovels…heeyyyy namanamanama…” :D You had to be there :) Mary and Rusty proceeded to sing a tune by the great American folk singer Namanamana :) The stage went on…Floom ended their turn by singing this phenomonal HUGE piece composed by one of them, that involved a bunch of african words and strange rhythms. A VERY impressive feat. “TRY THAT FRUVOUS!” :) Moxy dared not. They also sang their Beatles medley again, MUCH to the amusement of Moxy. Jian and Murray were cracking up. Fruvous played on lots of other people’s tunes, to their enjoyment. Jian would often get up and start drumming. Dave would come in with the bass and Mike and Murray would sing and play shakers and stuff. Jian had a whole bag full of percussion goodies.

And then it was over :( The two best stages of the whole weekend. Lots of singalongs and fun…and Moxy. Yummmm… I had to bring my car back home for 6pm so I had to get my ass going. I missed the main stage but I had already seen a lot of the performers in workshops earlier.

Essentially, those are the fruvous related parts...I'm not sure if they still make sense, without the other parts :) Let me know if you're really interested (and really bored! it's long!) and I'll send you my full account of the weekend.

Now it's off to work for me, looking forward to being on the list!

Some other tidbits from the performance include:

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