The Fringiest Events
Of course it’s the Fringe!
The 29th annual Edmonton International Fringe Festival is all the arts pages will be talking about for the next week. There’s also lots of stuff happening around Old Strathcona that doesn’t take place in a theatre or on a stage. This is the big one, Edmonton.
Morgan had a good point, don’t just try to see the 5-star shows. Ask people what’s good, what’s interesting, what they think you might like. You can always poke around Twitter, and try #yegfringe, for just such questions and inquiries.
Hawrelak Park is busy again this weekend, with the Celtic Festival. BluesFest is next weekend (in Hawrelak Park)…so get warmed up at Rusty Reed’s with Dave Babcock and the Night Keepers
EastwoodFest is Saturday, in the Eastwood neighbourhood. (118 Avenue, 85-87 Streets.)
Churchill Square, which the City has been trying to fill with more events and happenings, in between festivals, has the Latin Festival this weekend. Cha-cha-cha.
There’s Tomoto Fare too. That’s about tomatoes.
West of the city, it’s the Stony Plain Cowboy Gathering Society get-together. You can expect cowboy art, culture, poetry, and music.
Lots of new movies are out this weekend, like Eat, Pray, Love and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Gregg’s got your lowdown.
In music…N.N. plays an EP release show at the Starlite Room tonight, with Van Gohost and I.E.D. Sunday night at the Starlite Room it’s Fran Healy from Travis.
Falklands are at Wunderbar Friday night.
The Black Dog has some Hair of the Dog Saturday afternoon.
Over at Lyve on Whyte, Friday is Soul Train (with Crowded City Skyline and Hot Hand Phenomenon), Saturday it’s Rocky Mountain Rebel Music (with Brash Tax and The Party Martyrs).
Eddie Shorts has The Frolics Friday and Gaye Delorme Saturday.
Cirque du Soleil is in Edmonton, with Alegria.
In sports…The Prairie Football Conference (PFC) kicks off this weekend. 
Edmonton’s got two teams in that league. The Edmonton Wildcats are coming off a season in which they were western champs, and fell in the Canadian junior football championship. The Edmonton Huskies stunk it up last year, winning no games, and are looking for redemption in 2010. Those games are Saturday and Sunday, at Clarke Park.
From ShareEdmonton: FC Edmonton is hosting the Spokane Spiders (that means we could see Edmonton on all the Spokane affiliates! I hope Ana Cabrera talks about Edmonton.)
Whew!
Long weekend = One more day of fun
It’s the Heritage Day long weekend, Edmonton, so get out there and soak in all that summer.
Over the next four days (counting Friday night) there’s a lot to do in Edmonton.
Capital Ex continues at Northlands. A Taste of Edmonton is still at Churchill Square. (Both run until Sunday.)
And, of course, Heritage Day means Hawrelak Park becomes the Heritage Festival. It’s the 35th go-round for Heritage Fest, with more than 60 countries and ethnicities represented. There will be culture and food, all three days of the weekend, in the park. Plan your adventures with the map.
The winless Eskimos play tonight. Meh.
Friday night is a really good music night. Juliette Lewis is playing the Starlite Room, Metric (and Hot Hot Heat) are at Capital Ex, Fred Eaglesmith is in Stony Plain at the Blueberry Bluegrass and Country Music Festival, and there’s that little thing called the Big Valley Jamboree over in Camrose.
On Sunday, The Old Wives are playing at Lyve on Whyte and Audio/Rocketry is at the PawnShop.
And Capital Ex has more music at the Telus Stage Saturday and Sunday. Plus, The Be Arthurs can be found at Centre Stage.
There are dinosaurs!!
ShareEdmonton had an event that really caught my eye. (What can I say, I have a soft spot for chess.) This weekend is the Edmonton Chess Festival. Checkmate.
I also keep forgetting to mention Saturday as a great farmers’ market day. You’ve got the year-round Old Strathcona version, or summer’s City Market Downtown.
It’s the end of the month, so you can check Gregg’s July movie preview and his new look at the August releases, if you’re hitting the movie theatre.
Don’t tire yourself out this weekend, since Folk Fest starts Wednesday night, and the Fringe is on the horizon.
And, because I’m going to mention it all of the time, the edmontonian and Unknown Studio will be celebrating their first birthday(s) Monday, August 23.
We heard your SOS
(Update: I’ve added a video story, and slightly altered the wording of this post from it’s first version Monday.)
We’re glad we did hear that SOS.
SOS Fest rocked Whyte Avenue this weekend. 150+ bands and musicians…20+ venues…wow.
We were talking about it for three days at a special “on assignment” blog.
I really enjoyed Dead Ghosts, out of Vancouver. They were probably my favourite band of the festival. The Joe tried to tear Wunderbar apart with his set, as part of an Old Ugly showcase. Cadence Weapon blew the roof off the Pawn Shop. And The Sherry-Lee Wisor trio kicked things off for me, setting the bar quite high.
I also uploaded a lot of my photos to my Flickr account, and added them to the edmontonian Flickr pool.
Plus, a few of my interviews from the weekend are now playing at our YouTube channel. (The story on the festival – embedded above – is also at our YouTube now.)
There are more photos, videos, links, reviews, and thoughts at our SOS Fest blog.
We’ll always take your own stories, experiences, photos and videos.
Check Twitter for more comments and updates from people who went to the shows, and played, this weekend.
That's Gregg Beever buying a CD from SOS performer Carrie Hryniw. At Funky Pickle, of all places.
LYVE on Whyte
In case you missed out the first floppity jillion times we brought it up, this weekend is Edmonton’s first ever SOS Fest (we are very excited)!
But! that is not the only exciting news in Old Strathcona. This is also the inaugural weekend for a spanking new music venue on Whyte Avenue. (Did you see what I did there, with the linking and the segues and the seamlessness?)
Yup, LYVE on Whyte is the latest bar to launch in the Whyte Avenue area (8111 105 Street NW). Their grand opening was this past Wednesday, and according to LYVE on Whyte’s Rob Ferguson, the launch event, featuring Jay Sparrow and the Wheat Pool, “was awesome. It couldn’t have been any better.”
He adds that folks were lined up outside for good chunk of the night, which bodes well for business.
You guys may remember some of the former bars that graced this same spot, like the Urban Lounge, or more recently, Dirty Pretty (Let’s just add those to the list of now-defunct bars I can reference to make me sound old. Remember when Lucky 13 was Rebar? Remember when the Starlite Room was the Bronx? ).
I ask Ferguson why the location is being changed from a nightclub to a live music venue.
“The way that nightclubs go, they’re hot when they’re new, and then they cool down,” he says. “We actually wanted to be a venue right from the get-go.”
You might remember the Urban Lounge’s roof collapse back in 2007. After that, the bar moved to its new, but sadly short-lived location down to 105 St and Whyte.
Ferguson explains it seemed like the wrong time to launch another live music venue.
“We didn’t really think it was right,” he says.
But things have changed! LYVE on Whyte is now open for business, and patrons can expect to find live original music on Wednesday and Thursday nights, and cover bands on Fridays and Saturdays. You can also expect to see an original traveling act about once a month.
You can catch popular local cover band Mustard Smile playing this Friday and Saturday as part of SOS Fest.
