Heron Valley to grace the Celtic Festival stage this weekend in Goderich
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Every year, the Goderich Celtic Roots Festival (GCRF) brings performers from all over the world to Huron County. While the opening ceremonies at Lions Harbour Park take place on Friday, most of the participating artists will have already been in town for several days at that point, teaching at the annual Celtic College and putting on free concerts on The Square. This year, there are over 50 musicians who have come from far and wide to teach, sing, dance, and make merry in Canada’s prettiest town. It’s a real whirlwind of a week for these international visitors, and so The Citizen sought out one of those visiting artists for a quick chat about what it’s been like to turn up, tune in, and make music as part of the 32nd annual GCRF.
This isn’t Abigail Pryde’s first time in Goderich; her band, Heron Valley, blew audiences away as part of last year’s festival. Although the band had arrived in town very recently, they’d already spent an entire day teaching at the Celtic College. “I’m still a bit jet-lagged,” she admitted, “so if rubbish comes out of my mouth - we’ll have to see.”
Heron Valley’s line-up has fluctuated a bit over the years, but the band is always made up of musicians who hail from all over Scotland. They’re currently performing as a four-piece - original members Pryde and Callum Cronin, and newcomers Ben Muir and Kenneth Macfarlane.
This year, they’ll be performing together on the Main Stage after Karan Casey on Saturday night, and on the Dailey Stage midday on Sunday.
Among the unique things about the GCRF are the workshop stages, where different visiting musicians are thrown together for a set. You’ll be able to find the members of Heron Valley in various workshop sets throughout the weekend, but there’s one Pryde is especially anticipating. “One that I’m very excited to do is myself and Archie Fisher. I’ve been a huge fan of Archie’s - I’ve learned his songs all the way through my key years and through university, but I’ve never actually met him. I do sing one of his songs - it’s called ‘The Final Trawl’, and I quite often teach it as well, so it will be lovely to get to sing with him. It will probably be one of the highlights of my life, to sing alongside Archie.”
The band has been teaching an ensemble course at the college this week. “It’s very informal. I think because of the style of music that we play, and the way we learned it at home - it’s very social. Scottish traditional music is always very social - it’s music for dancing. So when we’re teaching classes, we want it to be more of a social event, where people are coming up with ideas together, rather than us being the teachers - it relaxes people a little bit, and this music is music for fun... they are still learning things, obviously!”
Pryde is also the teacher for the Scottish Songs course and Playing for a Ceilidh. “It’s tunes specifically for Ceili dances. I think that’s my favourite class. I get everyone to get up and dance, and they’ve not signed up for a dance class. It takes people out of their comfort zone a little bit, but they get it in the end.”
The college, the free shows in The Square, and the weekend festival in Lions Harbour Park may seem like a lot to pack into one week, but that’s just the tip of the Celtic iceberg - there are also the pub sessions, which happen all Friday night at The Park House. “I loved the pub!” Pryde exclaimed. “There was so many amazing players, and it was really nice to see such enthusiasm from all levels of players. And also, there’s an aspect to it that’s very inclusive. I think a lot of places you go, it can feel a little bit like, about the ones who can play the fastest, or the ones who can make the most noise, but I think it’s really, really inclusive here. So that was a highlight for me - seeing so many people joining in.”
Beyond the festival itself, Pryde finds that there’s a lot to appreciate about Huron County. “I love, particularly, the community aspect of this town... everyone is so kind. I know people probably say that all the time, but everyone is really kind... I also very much enjoy the bacon - good bacon. My host made me this bacon this morning, and it was incredible. I’ve never had bacon like that.” The skilled fiddler from Argyll described the bacon she’d been served by her billet host as being neither the standard streaky strip nor a thick flap of peameal. “It was somewhere in-between. And this is why I said it - because I don’t really like the really thin stuff. The really thin bacon. Maybe this is terrible for your report, but it was really good bacon.”
Even though she spends a great deal of time immersed in Celtic culture, Pryde still finds time to enjoy other forms of music. “I’m not solely a traditional player, I kind of like everything! I think a lot of players, all their playlists and things are just full of everything. So I love all music... I really love Greta Van Fleet, and on the other spectrum, I love Sabrina Carpenter... I’m broad - just chuck me into any gig. I went to an Elbow gig with my friend - I’ve never been an Elbow fan, but she loves them, and it was an incredible gig.”
Broad musical tastes aside, Pryde still believes that Celtic music has something that other musical styles don’t. “Modern songs, there’s a chorus you can sing along to, but people got together back in the day to sing together and to tell stories, and I think we miss that a lot in modern society... it’s something that people don’t realize they miss until they’re doing it. To share tunes and songs and stories with each other is so special, and I think there’s not really anything else like that, so when people get into it, and get involved in traditional music, they suddenly realize how special it is.”
She may have started her week feeling a bit jet-lagged, but Pryde is never worried about having the energy required to hit the stage and perform the rest of Heron Valley. “I think we just love it so much. This sounds really cheesy, but it is totally in our blood. It just comes out so easy. And you know, you don’t play music for the money- we play it because we love it. It’s like a high when you’re finished, rather than being exhausted - straight after, it’s the biggest high you could ever get…. When you get to your bed, that’s when you realize you’re exhausted.”