CANMORE – Set to take stage at this year’s Canmore Folk Music Festival are renowned blues artists Dione Taylor and the Backsliderz, as well as the collaborative musical duo of Harry Manx and Steve Marriner.
For Taylor and her band the Backsliders, the annual musical event will be the first time her incredibly rhythmic and powerful vocals echo throughout the Bow Valley's peaks.
“It’s actually our first time coming out there and bringing my music, so I’m really excited to meet the people, to perform and also to check out some other artists,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s style of music is uniquely hers. Growing up the daughter of a pastor, Taylor takes a lot of musical influence from her gospel background. Taylor knew that when she was writing her music, she wanted it to reflect the music from her childhood.
With a blend various genres such as blues, a little bit of folk and with influences from her prairie upbringing, comes what Taylor calls the prairie blues.
“The prairie blues, which is what I came up with, is just kind of like, you got the guitar, you’ve got the bass and the drums and you got the tambourine, which is a really cool part about it too. When you blend all of those things together and then you put it together, you got the prairie blues," Taylor said.
Taylor’s vocal talents have received recognition with a 2005 Juno nomination of her first album, Open Your Eyes for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year to this year’s Gemini nomination for her cover of Hymn to Freedom by Oscar Peterson.
“But the most important thing that I want people to take away from this and from me is that my message is all about unconditional love and it’s all about inclusion and those things are so important especially in music and if I can help people feel good for an hour or two or for a week or a year or whatever, through my music, than I’m doing a good job as a human being. I want people to come and experience the prairie blues in Canmore,” Taylor said.
While the Canmore Folk Music Festival welcomes Dione Taylor and the Backsliderz for the first time, Canadian blues artists Harry Manx and Steve Marriner are familiar faces on the Stan Rogers Memorial Stage and this year bring a new album in their repertoire to perform.
Earlier this year, the pair collaborated on the album Hell Bound for Heaven, which Marriner said was a longtime coming.
“We’ve been big fans of each other and great dear friends for so long," he said. "To finally have an opportunity to really collaborate, like I’ve played on his records before, mostly as a supporting musician … But this was an actual duet, like an equal collaboration, so it was really, really fun for me to get to play that role with Harry alongside him."
Marriner and Manx have a long music history with one another. They first met at the North American Folk Alliance back in 2001 where their mutual love for the music of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf connected them instantly. From there, Manx would invite Marriner to play tours with him and while they now have their own individual acts, they continue to play together.
“We have almost like a telepathy where we really understand each other in a way that we can’t really describe," Marriner said. "There’s a certain connection we have musically that can’t really be taught or studied, we just understand each other."
Returning to the Canmore Folk Music Festival is a bit nostalgic for Marriner, as the festival was part of the duo's first tour together.
“The first time I ever played the festival was with Harry, but it was when I first was on the road with him in like 2005 and I haven’t been back since for the festival," he said. "I’ve been looking forward to it for a long time. It’s one of my favourite festivals and I know we’re going to have a lot of fun.”
The folk festival is also known for its workshops, which pair musicians together throughout the day to collaboarte on stage. Dione Taylor and Backsliders will perform with Harry Manx and Steve Marriner at the Grizzly Paw Stage 2 for the Feelin’ Blue workshop on Aug. 4.
Dione Taylor and the Backsliderz will be playing again on Aug. 3 on the main stage at 6:40 p.m. where she will be playing songs from her album Born Free. On the final day of the festival, Harry Manx and Steve Marriner will perform on the main stage at 7:50 p.m.
