I have one word to describe this day...interesting. Read on.

On Saturday morning, Rob, Mary, and I piled into my car around noon and made the couple hour drive up to Burk's Falls. We were the first car in our "motorcade" to make it, so we headed right for the festival (after driving in and out of the town three times - Burk's Falls is very small (pop. 1000) and very easy to drive through within about one minute).

The festival was very small. Understandable since the town is in Northern Ontario and since this was the fest's first year. We took a quick look around, and then walked down the street to the center of town to find some food. During the walk, AJ, Lisa, Karen, & Vika drove by, and joined us in our search for sustenance. We found a family restaurant that had decent food (although Rob and I got lucky with what we ordered) but VERY SLOW service. We made it (barely) back to the fest by four to find Fruvous pulling in their van and getting prepped for their first workshop.

The first workshop was an a cappella workshop that grouped Fruvous with four other acts. They did songs round-robin style, and played for about an hour. The sound quality was pretty poor at this stage, so Fruvous chose to do their numbers off mic, which allowed Mike to go crazy with the audience during Spiderman. Very cool. All the groups joined forces at the end of the workshop to do a song together...I don't remember what it was.

Right after that, Dave did an accordion workshop with a guitar player and another accordion player. This stage (very small) had much better sound, and this workshop ended up being a lot of fun. Lots of improv, songs I'd never heard, etc... Dave looked like he was having a great time.

After the workshops, Vika and I headed back to the hotel to check in, and then I returned to the fest with Rob and hung around until Fruvous' set (planned for 9:30). The other acts came and went, and were decent, from what I heard, but most of the fruheads sat on blankets and socialized, waiting for Fruvous.

Fruvous came on late (no big surprise :-), around ten pm, and played for about an hour and a half. The crowd, consisting of die-hard Fruheads, and people who probably have NEVER heard of Fruvous, loved the set, and Fruvous made a lot of new friends that night.

After the set, we didn't hang out too long. Headed back to the hotel, and fell asleep around one. Vika and I headed back to Rochester (and then Boston) on Sunday, so we had to miss the Taste of the Danforth show (although, apparently, we didn't miss much).

Definitely a very fun weekend. Bit of a fruhead reunion of sorts, and saw a lot of people who I probably won't see again until FruCon II. See you all soon!

Thanks to AJ for these:
• Fruvous sings during the workshop
• All the workshop performers sing
• Dave at the accordion workshop
• Accordion workshop - crowd shot
• Jian quotes something
• Moxy takes on the crowd during Spiderman
• Close-up of Spidey himself
• Spidey is angry!
  Thanks to Christine for these:
• Mike, w/ megaphone (main stage)
• Jian (main stage)
• Murray on bass (main stage)
• Dave looks silly (main stage)
• Dave during the accordion workshop
  Thanks to hKath for these:
• Spiderman during a cappella workshop
• Blow Wind Blow during a capella workshop
  Thanks to Drea for these:
• Dave in the accordion workshop
• Mike during Blow Wind Blow
• Murray during Blow Wind Blow
• Spidey all wrapped up!

Some other tidbits from the performance include:

• Feel free to help contribute to this section!