Yellowknife (July 14/06) - It's 1 p.m., one week ago, in an office beside the Yellowknife Public Library. Phones ring, fax machines hum, e-mail alerts ding and people come and go in a steady stream. It's the Folk on the Rocks (FOTR) headquarters and it's crunch time.

"We're in festival mode right now," says FOTR director Tracey Bryant, taking a few minutes to talk about the 26th annual Yellowknife festival. At present, she is in charge of organizing nearly 150 performers and artisans and about 380 volunteers.

"There's always a lot of little fires to put out," she says. "Otherwise, things are going alright."

The theme of this year's festival, is "Earth, Rock and Soul," which Bryant says refers not only to the gritty, rootsy tone of the performers, but the "greening," of the festival itself - making it more environmentally sustainable.

This includes stations for renting (and washing) dishes, more recycling and a bus running out to the festival grounds 12 hours a day.

"So you can leave the gas guzzlers at home," she says with a laugh.

Bryant says this year's artists reflect an attempt to "let the dust settle" after FOTR's high profile 25th anniversary.

"We're trying to get back to our roots," she said in a previous interview.

This year, those performers include socially-conscious rapper K'Naan, "outlaw country" performer Fred Eaglesmith, rockabilly punks The Farrell Bros., African Guitar Summit and The Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, among others.

Judd Palmer from the Calgary-based "choir" says his group focuses on "old dead music from the '20s and '30s."

This includes Delta blues, bluegrass and mountain music, played with an energy that captures the "absurdly brutal lives," of the music's originators.

"The basic point is to play this old music with ferocity that it was originally intended to be played with," he says.

That, he says, puts the band "somewhere between blues and punk, with a heavy, stomping-on-the-floor, hitting-people-with-a-bottle-of-whisky feel."

As always, this year's festival is a 50/50 mix between Northern and southern performers.

Familiar musicians include Diga, Jay Gilday, Brodie Dawson, Lazy Susanz and the returning Indio Saravanja.

"It's great to be back," Saravanja says of his former hometown.

The folk performer, born in Argentina but raised in Yellowknife, now calls B.C.'s Gulf Islands home. "I'm going to be doing some stuff from my last record and some from my next record," he says.

This time around he will be performing solo, though that might include a "special guest."

A new addition to this year's festival, which routinely draws more than 4,000 people to the site near Long Lake, is a commemorative CD. The album will include highlights from the last 10 years of Folk on the Rocks.

"We called it volume one," Bryant says, leaving the door open for future copies.

Back in the office, the sound of laughter and banging reveals the FOTR crew trapped behind a malfunctioning door.

When Bryant emerges, she points out where the festival stands in 2006.

"We've got one foot in the future, and one in the old days," she says, adding while the festival has grown immeasurably, it has retained a non-profit, do-it-yourself feel. Sometimes, she says, this manifests itself in second-hand computer equipment and printers scavenged from the dump.

"It's a small-town attitude with a monumental event."

This year's 26th annual Folk on the Rocks starts tonight around 9 p.m. with Warm the Rocks, featuring Rum Runner, Serena Ryder, Razzamajazz! and Valle Son, among others, spread around the White Fox, the Black Knight and the Top Knight.

Saturday and Sunday feature two full days of music on six stages at the Folk on the Rocks site near Long Lake.

The fun begins at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and 12:15 p.m on Sunday.