Celtic Roots Festival set to return to Goderich next month
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
In early August, the 32nd annual Goderich Celtic Roots Festival (GCRF) will be returning to Lions Harbour Park for a family-friendly weekend of music, dance, art and revelry. Although its origin can be traced back thousands of years to Northwestern Europe, there’s something about Celtic culture and music that tends to resonate with all kinds of people, worldwide.
Over the past three decades, the GCRF has attracted Celtic musicians from across the globe to perform in Goderich and teach at the festival's annual musical college. One of those musicians is drummer Cheryl Prashker, who, years later, is now the GCRF’s Artistic Director and General Manager. The musical road that brought this well-respected artist to settle in Huron County is a long and winding one, which is not uncommon in the Celtic music scene. Prashker was kind enough to sit down with The Citizen to chat about everything from how she first found her folk, to how she ended up in the prettiest town in Canada helming one of the province’s best annual summer music festivals.
A Montreal native, Prashker was a musically-minded young person from the get-go. “I always loved music, and I always wanted to play drums, but of course, that takes a little longer to get into,” she explained. “I did the whole high school band thing.” Her early passion for music brought her to McGill University, where she was classically trained. “I was studying to be in the orchestra,” she admitted, “but I really just wanted to be a rock drummer. I’m an 80s girl, so, you know, it was rock and roll.” She first started to take an interest in the folk music scene after landing a gig playing with the Yiddish Theatre Company in Montreal. “I had a chance to travel to Russia with them, and all through Europe with them. It was an amazing experience, and I got more into folk music.”
Upon her return from the old world, Prashker picked up and moved to New York City. “I just started going to open mics, and I started playing a little bit of Middle Eastern music with some people... I got very involved with the folk scene, and started to meet singer-songwriters. I write a little bit, but I’m extremely shy about it. But I went to open mics, and I realized that it’s hard for guys and girls with guitars to find a drummer that is quiet enough to listen to their music and accompany it, quietly and respectfully. So I started bringing this little Middle Eastern drum, this little Doumbek, to the open mics, and then I started just accompanying everybody in New York.”
Prashker moved from New York to Pennsylvania, where she became a member of RUNA - an award-winning Celtic band whose five members come from three different countries - the U.S., Canada and Ireland. While she was there, she also became involved with the Northeast Regional Folk Alliance (NERFA) in Philadelphia. “It would be like any other conference, basically. There’s workshops, and an exhibit hall, just like any business conference, but at night time, there’s showcases. Artistic directors can just walk around, and just listen to all the bands.” Prashker has found that the 15 years she spent helping organize the NERFA conference has really prepared her for the work she does with the GCRF.
NERFA is a branch of Folk Alliance International (FAI) - a worldwide arts not-for-profit that exists to preserve, present and promote folk music. “It’s the major conference - it takes place in a different city every year,” she explained. Next year, the 2025 FAI Conference will be happening in her hometown of Montreal. “It’s a place where musicians can go and get seen by artistic directors, like myself, and get booked. There’s also regional conferences - Ontario has one of its own, called Folk Music Ontario (FMO). That conference is happening in October in Mississauga... it’s like walking around an indoor folk festival. There’s music in all the rooms, at all the times. People just looking for gigs. It’s an amazing thing.”
Prashker’s percussive work with RUNA brought her to Huron County for the first time. “I’ve been a part of that band for 16 years, and we came to the Goderich Celtic Roots Festival in 2011 - the year of the tornado... I fell in love with Goderich. And I fell in love with the people, and I fell in love with the event.” RUNA returned to the festival the next year, but that wasn’t enough for Prashker. “Since you can’t come back every single year, I asked the organizers if I could come back and teach every year, and just be part of the Celtic College. And they said ‘sure.’ So I did that - I literally came back, every single year. And then I started to visit other times of the year. And I was in love with it, and I thought about moving here. Then they offered me the job as the Artistic Director and General Manager. That was in 2018.”
Prashker organized 2019’s outdoor event in the park, only to find the festival would need to make a quick pivot into the virtual world to survive during the two most-restrictive years of the pandemic. Luckily, there was a new media upstart nearby that was looking for something to do. “We partnered up with Faux Pop, and they were figuring out what they wanted to do during COVID. They had this beautiful train station, so they turned it into a T.V. studio. Myself and a co-host literally did a live show, and all the musicians sent in video recorded versions of their 20-minute showcases. We presented the video portion, then Zoomed with the bands for a chat. It was like a late night interview show - it was amazing. We didn’t change anything, we just asked for donations, and we had enough money to pay all the musicians.”
Planning this annual celebration involves a lot more than just picking a weekend’s worth of cool bands to play songs in a beautiful setting. GCRF also involves a weeklong Celtic College, which has been successfully sowing the seeds of musical passion for three decades. “Two years after the original festival started, Warren and Eleanor Robinson, the founders, realized that people like to learn,” Prashker explained. “So they developed the Celtic College and the Kid’s Camp.” A week before the festival begins, all the musicians arrive in town. “We take over the local high school, and there are lessons in everything - from learning how to play bagpipes or how to play banjo or piano. There’s dancing, the Irish drum, singing, arts and crafts, and the classes go all day long. Every musician that comes in teaches whatever they’re good at, so every year it’s different courses. We’ve had people coming to this college for 30 years.”
This unique musical education opportunity isn’t just a fun festival bonus - it’s the true lifeblood of the GCRF. It’s Prashker’s job to organize the college first, and the weekend's musical programming second. “People are always saying ‘hey, you should have this band, or you should have that band - it would be so awesome!’. But, interestingly enough, I have to do it backwards. I have to book the bands based on what they teach. I can’t have too many fiddlers, and not enough flute players. I have to balance the college first, and hope it makes for a good festival... all the slots at the festival are taken by the teachers and their bands.”
While the Celtic College is only for interested artists 13 years old and up for children aged four to 12, there’s the Kid’s Camp, of which Prashker is a huge fan. “We take over four or five classrooms in the corner of the school, and we offer a complete, full-day program for the kids. They learn everything - singing, dancing, arts and crafts, foam swords. I actually want to take the foam sword class - Dave Armour teaches that class.” Armour runs The Livery Theatre, and used to teach high school drama, so he knows a few things about pretend swordsmanship. His wife, Catherine Armour, is also helping to run the Kid’s Camp this year.
Monday through Thursday at the College is devoted to learning new skills, but Friday is dedicated to showcasing those new skills, all over town. “All the classes that want to, come over to the festival site and play what they learned on the stage for about 10 minutes, and that’s how we open the festival. And the kids do the same thing on the Kid’s Stage, and all their parents and grandparents can come see them perform. Some of the adults are never on stage their whole lives, except for those 10 minutes, which I think is so cool.”
Prashker’s enthusiasm for the festival’s gauntlet of Friday activities is equal parts obvious and infectious. “So that’s how the day goes. But the day’s not over there. Wait! Wait for it - after the classes are done, we go over to The Livery Theatre for an open mic, for an hour. Anybody can get up and sing a song. After dinner, we go to the little gazebo in the town square, which is called ‘The Square’, and we put on what we call ‘The Teacher Concerts’... it’s a chance to show the town a little bit of what is going to happen at the festival. After that, there’s a céilí dance in The Square. It used to only be for the college students at The Livery, but we’ve busted out of there, size-wise. Anybody, no matter their age, or whether they’ve ever danced before, they can get up and learn a few Irish dance moves.” This Friday night mini-festival is free for all who wish to attend.
For the teachers and students, however, the night is still far from over. “Then, we go over to The Park House Restaurant, and there are sessions there all night. Singing sessions are upstairs, and playing sessions are throughout the entire restaurant. That ends at about two or three in the morning, and that’s the day. And then you gotta get up, and do it all over again.” Prashker believes that one of the big draws of their college is this unprecedented access the students have to world-class teachers and talent. “Our sessions are for the college students and the pros. Sometimes, if you go to another festival, they say there will be sessions at night, but they’re strictly for the pros - nobody else is allowed to play. And I just don’t think that’s right. Here, everybody’s welcome... It is a true folk festival, and a true session in the pub.”
Once the first day of the festival fully begins, there is a lot going on in a very small space. There are five stages, a large arts and crafts vendor market, an international food court, a craft beer tent, kid’s activities, various workshops, and a giant merch table. This year, the merch table will feature a new live album by Loreena McKennitt, much of which was recorded at her phenomenal performance at last year’s festival.
“Every band gets one Main Stage performance at night, and one Dailey Stage performance during the day.” The Dailey Stage is tented to offer shade to both acts and audience during daytime performances. “On top of that,” she continued, “we have our workshop stage. We take one musician from this band, one musician from that band, one from this band, one from that band, throw them together, give them a title or a theme, and say ‘go for an hour.’ I think bagpipes and banjos sound like a good workshop, right?”
The other workshop stage is reserved for kid’s activities and dancing. “It’s an interactive dance opportunity. If people want to get up and learn social Irish dance, or clog, or whatever, those are happening all day on Saturday and Sunday... we’ve got something for everybody.
This year, Prashker is personally excited for the return of Windborne, a group of singers from New England that have toured the world as performers and teachers. “It’s two husbands and wives, which is so cool. They have some of the most beautiful voices - like, my mouth just dropped when I heard them sing in person. They are stellar musicians.”
She also knows that Goderich folk fans will be extremely happy to welcome Archie Fisher back to the festival. “He’s a fan favourite, and he’s Scotland’s premiere singer-songwriter. A lot of songs that people have heard over the years that they think were written 300 years ago - he wrote.” Fisher, who turns 85 in October, recently retired from overseas touring, but he’s agreed to cross the pond one last time to perform at the GCRF. “It’s kind of huge for us.”
Prashker hopes that this year’s line-up introduces more Canadians to Irish singing-sensation Karan Casey. “Most people here don’t know her - she was the lead singer of a band called Solas that was half based in Ireland and half in the States. She has one of the most exquisite voices to have ever come out of Ireland, and she’s never been here before, so I’m super excited. She’ll be on Saturday night, and I think she’ll probably be one of people's favourites.”
Bringing in artists like Fisher and Casey, who hail from the birthplace of Celtic culture, is an essential part of the festival. “Huron County has a large Celtic population - people that are of Irish and Scottish descent. This is an event for them to celebrate their heritage, and a way for them to honour their past and their history.” Local acts and artists from other parts of Ontario and Canada are also a programming must. “But also, for this area and this town, it’s a bit of an education. And it’s something a little different. With really good music.”
The GCRF also strives to include musicians from all over the world, which serves to underscore the truly universal appeal of Celtic culture and folk music. The Japanese band O’jizo, which made its Canadian debut in Goderich, will be returning this year. The band that discovered western folk music in high school through the films Braveheart and Back to the Future: Part 3 came to Goderich as the co-winners of the 2021 Robinson Emerging Artist Showcase. “They’re phenomenal...they were a little tentative about playing, but that was two years ago. I went to a conference in Ireland in January, and I saw them again, and they blew everybody away. Beyond a doubt, they were the best band of the entire weekend.”
Putting together this huge little festival certainly isn't a one-person job. “We have an incredible board of directors, which consists of eight people. They are always hands-on, supportive, and willing to help. But the great thing about this festival are the volunteers. The biggest reason this thing has gone on as long as it has is the volunteers. We put all the musicians up in people’s homes - those hosts deserve a medal, as far as I’m concerned.” Prashker has a student assisting her during the early stages of festival planning each year, and the other volunteer-led teams begin coming together as the big event draws nearer. This year, accessible shuttle buses from Goderich District Collegiate Institute to Lions Harbour Park are being arranged to make festival parking easier. Altogether, about 250 volunteers make the GCRF happen each year.
With the college and festival just a few days away, there’s still a lot of work to do, but Prashker wouldn’t have it any other way. “This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I love it. It’s like putting a puzzle together. It’s like a dream job. And you can quote me on that.”