Group heads south
Michele LeTourneau
Northern News Services
Yellowknife (Feb 16/01) - Yellowknife's Celideh Friends tuned into a world celideh today in Vancouver.
Moira Cameron, Steve Goff, and Dawn and Steve Lacey have joined over 2,000 fellow folk, world and roots musicians and industry workers for the Folk Alliance's 2001 conference, which will last through the weekend.
"The Folk Alliance is a North American organization that is dedicated to promoting folk music and dance," said Cameron, with a husky voice, prior to her departure. The singer was nursing a case of laryngitis, which she hoped would vamoose by conference time.
This is not the first time the folk quartet has travelled to join fellow folkies. The annual conferences are held all over North America and in 1995 Celideh Friends travelled to Toronto.
"When we made the decision to go down to the Toronto conference a few years ago, it was a big decision. It's a big expense. It's just like a trade show or some other kind of business conference. We're going down and we're showing our stuff and what we can do.
"We're also competing with hundreds of other performers from all across North America."
Musicians will travel from as far away as Iran, Russia and Cuba. The Yukon, for example, has sent eight individual musicians and bands.
"The Yukon is really on the ball. They're so supportive of the arts. We're the only ones from the NWT going."
Cameron says making the decision to go to Vancouver was easy after the Toronto experience.
"The benefits were so surprising that it really wasn't difficult to make the decision to go again.
We had gone out with only one CD. But that one CD, Yellowknife Evening... hundreds of copies went to folk radio deejays.
There's hundreds of them attending the conference.
"All of a sudden the airplay started coming in. Because these people met us, they played the album. A few months after that conference, we started getting all this airplay."
This time around, Celideh Friends has two group CDs to bring along as well as two solo CDs: Steve Lacey's and Cameron's.
"We've got a lot more to show off."
The City of Yellowknife and Atco Frontec Services helped defray some of the group's travelling expenses.
Catch Celideh Friends fresh from the conference at Mary and Friend's Tearoom on Feb. 25.
