Volunteers are the heart and soul of our event. Here are some of their stories about why they volunteer with the Festival and what it means to them.
RUTH & HALEY LUFF
by Jillian Brown
When you think of Folk Festival volunteers, you imagine people in those ubiquitous t-shirts directing cars, setting up stage or hawking raffle tickets during festival weekend.
But the Winnipeg Folk Festival operates more than just four days per year: countless ancillary events keep folkies in the spirit year-round. Some volunteers, like Ruth (54) and Haley (19) Luff, put in hours in the off-season, which means they don’t have to worry about showing up for shift during the festival.
The mother-daughter team has been part of the Folk Exchange Crew for three years, and their duties include playing hostess (welcoming guests, collecting tickets, selling refreshments, etc.) at winter concerts, craft sales and other fundraising events. “It’s like hosting a Tupperware party, but there’s music,” jokes Ruth.
Ruth and Haley recall the early stages of Folk Exchange Crew: they’d work every other month at singing circles, and then have to complete the rest of their 40 hours as part of a different crew. Now, the Folk Exchange organizes such an array of events that Ruth and Haley could volunteer every week. “It gets to be a full room,” explains Ruth about the intimate Folk Exchange concert series. “You get to know everyone, and I’m always eager to see how performers in town can benefit from it.”
In 2001, Haley joined Ruth as a volunteer with the now-retired Folk Festival Used Records Sale, where they’d hang out at a warehouse sorting vinyl. At first, it was a chance to spend time with mom and meet new people, but after experiencing her first festival, Haley knew she’d keep on volunteering. “I thought it was a cool environment, and I’m such a music person,” she says.
Seeing Bob Gedolf on mainstage was a Folk Festival defining moment for Haley. “No one told him to get off the stage, and he just continued playing until 1 am,” she recalls. For Ruth “it’s not always about the band or the music.” She muses about her first Folk Festival in 1975 when she hitchhiked to the park, and then caught a ride back to the city on buddy’s motorcycle…with no helmet and an 8-month baby in her arms. “I don’t imagine ever doing that now,” she says, “but every year is a new adventure.”
KIRBY FULTS
by Jillian Brown
When asked how long he’s been part of Folk Festival, the answer seems to stun Kirby Fults. “I’ve been attending 20 years,” he says, and then takes a moment to do the math. “I’ve spent half my life with Folk Fest.”
The 41-year-old has bounced around crews over the decades, but now holds the title of Site West Supervisor. He estimates there are about 200 people under him, encompassing everyone from the tarp team and mainstage workers to headquarter volunteers. Despite heading up one of the largest crews, he coyly downplays his role. “I’m responsible for my team of volunteers…coordinate their patrol…record anything that happens.” It’s because of his charming laissez-faire attitude that volunteers request to be under his watch year after year (and add him as a friend on Facebook!)
An unspoken duty of any supervisor is to keep spirits high. “I appreciate them, and they need to see that appreciation,” Kirby says about his crews. Simple gestures like arriving to the field with coffee and donuts, giving a pat on the back, or accommodating schedules, are what he does best.
Rather than talk about responsibility, Kirby prefers to reminisce about festival highlights. He recalls in one of his early years taking an afternoon nap in the shade, and waking up just as a stilt walker in a butterfly costume floated by. It was that euphoric moment when Kirby says he fell in love with the event.
He segues into a story about a wild turkey chase—his first year of supervising he had to shoo the unwanted customers out of the Handmade Village—and then eagerly switches topics to Martin Sexton performing at the Sunday morning gospel workshop. “I was lifted,” he says. “It was such pure heaven to listen to.”
What he loves most is the “significant camaraderie” during those four days in summer. “In a time when there’s so much struggle and pain,” reflects Kirby, “it’s a very life affirming event for me.”
WAYNE BERGSON
by Jillian Brown
Wayne Bergson sums up volunteering at the folk festival with one word. Cathartic. Throughout the year, the 41-year-old self-describe technoid is absorbed in electronic mumbo-jumbo as part of his job as technical support staff at New Flyer Industries. But for four days in July, Wayne dusts off his special hat and transforms into the ultimate folkie. “It’s my chance to go out and get organic,” he says. “I take my shoes off and let it hang out.”
2008 marks Wayne’s sixteenth year volunteering as coordinator of the technical services crew. He, along with his small crew of 5 or 6 others, “provides logistical support for the daytime stage crews. We do whatever we have to do to the make every concert successful,” he explains. This means everything from delivering an instrument to a stage to tracking down a stapler for a performer. (One year he went beyond the call of duty and carved a new bridge for Irish musician Sharon Shannon’s electric stand-up double bass.) Wayne says not a lot of technical knowledge is needed for his crew, but “just the ability to keep your head screwed on tight. You have to juggle many balls at the same time.”
As any volunteer, Wayne’s list of most memorable musical performances at the festival has no end. During his first year volunteering he remembers Loreena McKennitt. “That was the first time I got to hear music like that,” he admits. John McCutcheon singing Christmas in the Trenches was another mind-blowing performance. He also recalls sitting on bleachers behind main stage and sharing his blanket with a shivering female artist sitting beside him. Moments later, she took to the stage and, in Ani DiFranco-style, “twittered like a 12-year-old, and then stepped back and hammered on the guitar.” Then there are the small performances, like Andy Stochansky at Little Stage on the Prairie, that Wayne says “recharge [his] battery.”
Wayne remembers the early years when the festival ran on a shoestring budget and a desperate “get ‘er done” attitude. Now, he’s amazed at how much more professional and smoothly running the weekend is. In the years ahead, he hopes folk fest maintains its level of artistic integrity, “I hope the vision continues to be about the ‘people & music’. Put those two together and there’s magic that goes on.”
KAREN DANA
by Jillian Brown
All folk festival volunteers have one. That utterly euphoric musical moment when they know there’s no where on earth they’d rather be. For Karen Dana, a festival volunteer for 31 years, it’s an afternoon main stage performance by Pete Seeger. “In the middle of his set the rain just started coming down, but not one person got up to leave,” she says. It’s also discovering young musicians over the years—Ani DiFranco, Tegan & Sara, and her daughter, Jesse Havey (formerly of The Duhks)—that keep the festival magical for her.
Dana started her volunteer career on the La Cuisine crew after festival founder and friend Mitch Podolak begged her to join. She admits that she was reluctant, certain that her lack of culinary skills wouldn’t impress, but after the first year she was converted. “In the kitchen, you’re responsible for keeping performers happy through their stomachs. It’s an amazing crew to be a part of,” she says, recalling special moments like when Odetta personally thanked all the kitchen volunteers. Dana credits the 17 years she spent in La Cuisine (7 as crew chief then another 10 as crew coordinator) for turning her into a wonderful cook, one of many skills she claims to have developed because of volunteering at the festival.
Thirteen years ago, Dana traded in her spatula for a clipboard to co-facilitate the Apprentice Crew, a group she describes as keen “festival brats who are really getting bit by the volunteer bug.” The crew started with 25 teenagers planted around festival grounds to help out, but it has since has quintupled in size. “This crew is the festival’s future volunteer generation,” she proudly explains.
Apart from musical inspiration, Dana cherishes the familial bonds that develop between volunteers. She says the festival was the first place she allowed her daughter to wander alone because of the safe environment. She jokes how she and her fellow volunteers, many of whom have become close friends, can carry on a sentence from where they left off the year previous.
It’s this sense of community that Dana says has to be carried forward for the success of future festivals. “This is what’s special about the Winnipeg Folk Festival, performers and volunteers are all treated with the same respect,” she says.
Below: Karen Dana posing with her Apprentice Crew at the 2007 Festival. Photo Denis Buchan.
