Yes, Edmonton, summer is winding down.

On the festival circuit this weekend, there’s DEDfest, In/stall/ed, East Meets West, and Open Sky.

DEDfest is Edmonton’s annual horror film fest. In/stall/ed is is a unique performance and visual art display, happening in the McCauley neighbourhoods in parking spaces. Yeah, public art baby! Latitude 53 is running this, and there will be 17 performances and installations on Saturday. East Meets West continues up in Little Italy and the McCauley neighbourhood, and there’s Mercury Opera performing Madame Butterfly in Giovanni Caboto Park. The Open Sky Music Festival is packing Hawrelak Park with bands and bands and musicians and more musicians.

If you’re into walking, the Highlands neighbourhood is kicking off their walking map this weekend. These maps are great ways to get to know an Edmonton neighbourhood.

I haven’t heard a whole lot about MEAET but it sounds like a cool idea. A bunch of people get together, have some food, enjoy themselves, then vote on who to give some money to for a project.

You can also Show What You Grow, at Fort Edmonton Park.

In music, there’s the earlier mentioned Open Sky Music Festival, with plenty of bands and artists down in Hawrelak Park…Wunderbar’s got Fire Next Time tonight and The Joe and Doug Hoyer triumphantly returning to Edmonton (after a national tour) on Saturday night. Also on Saturday, Hale Hale, Southroot, and Zero Something play the Starlite Room. Back to Friday night, Warped Tourers Inner City Elegance are at Expressionz Cafe. Now back to Saturday (surely I should have done this in chronological order) there’s live music at Ricky’s in Mill Woods (with Consilience and Tyson Skakun).

Oh, and if you walk by CKUA on Jasper Avenue tonight and it seems like something cool is going on it’s because they’re celebrating their amazing record library and have a live performance from 100 Mile House.

Down in the river valley, the Edmonton Capitals host the Calgary Vipers through the weekend.

And over at Clarke Stadium (beside Commonwealth) the Edmonton Huskies are home to Saskatoon Hilltops in Prairie Football.

Tonight you’ve got a Christan Hansen & The Autistics all ages show at The ARTery with Paperplanes and Dragonboats, so that’ll be good. The Blame-Its, The Afterbeat, and Wildrose Orchestra, are at New City Legion…Over at Wunderbar you can hear Teen Daze with Oh No Yoko and Sugarglider…Craig Cardiff is at the Haven Social Club with David Blair and Erica Viegas… The Open Sky Music Festival isn’t until the end of August, but Souljah Fyah and Jeff Morris are getting things going this weekend

Saturday night is no less good, with The Weber Brothers, Chris Carmichael, and Lyra Brown at the Haven Social Club…Xplosionation, The Party Martyrs, and All The King’s Men, at Brixx… The Weekend Kids, Old Wives, and Freshman Years at Wunderbar…and The Consonance, Noisy Colours, whiskey wagon, all over at New City Legion.

Sunday (yeah, we’re still going on just music) there’s the Whyte Avenue Street Sale (which means the street will be closed to traffic between 105 and 103 Streets) and SOS Fest playing music on two stages all day long…Sunday night ends the weekend with a giant kick to the face of awesome with  The Joe and Doug Hoyer kicking off their national tour at Wunderbar, with Mikey Maybe.

Whew.

We also have a bunch of festivals and the such.

Down in Hawrelak Park you can catch two of Shakespeare’s finest plays during the Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Heading into the Indy we’ve got Race Week Edmonton (which lasts longer than a week). The Edmonton International Street Performers Festival is on at Churchill Square. The Edmonton & Northern Alberta Historic Festival also begins this weekend (which can get you into some cool old buildings).

For the dogs, and dog lovers, you can head up to 118 Avenue on Sunday for Avenue Goes to the Dogs, put on by the Eastwood Community League.

If all of that great Edmonton music and festivals isn’t enough…

Cirque du Soleil’s “Dralion” is at Rexall Place. There’s a Campus Community Garden Open House, Saturday 11-2, at the U of A’s campus community garden. The Edmonton Eskimos will fight, fight, fight on at home to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats

Oh, and if you’re not doing anything at about 9pm on Sunday you can watch the last episode of our ShawTV series, the edmontonian presents, on Shaw cable channel 10. (It’ll be on YoutTube, Livestream, and iTunes shortly after.)

It's gonna be like this, times 100.

Today you can eat some BBQ and chat with local producers and farmers at Wild Earth Foods’ Open Air Market, 2-8pm. You can also get some street food at What the Truck?!, 4-8pm. I hope to see you at one, or both, of these.

I am going to eat so much today…

Sticking with food…Saturday is market day! There’s the City Market (downtown), Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market (Whyte Avenue area), and St. Albert Farmers’ Market. On Sunday it’s the Callingwood Farmers’ Market (southwest Edmonton).

More food!!

To the festivals! Opera Nuova’s Vocal Arts Festival wraps up this weekend. Alberta Dance Alliance’s feats Festival of Dance has begun! The Works is on, in Churchill Square and around downtown Edmonton. The Edmonton International Jazz Festival is also on now. Improvaganza is still making with the funny. June isn’t done yet, so Bike Month continues too.

Holy cow we have a lot of festivals!

Fans of the TV show Firefly (and the movie Serenity, I presume) are fundraising at Can’t Stop the Serenity.

Perhaps a movie is in order this weekend? I hear there are plenty of great sci-fi options.

For the family…the John Janzen Nature Centre is open again. I guess this could also be for nature-lovers. Saturday, you can head on down to Rundle Park for Paddlefest.

It’s a great music weekend in Edmonton. The Works is packing Churchill Square with fantastic acts like Doug Hoyer, The Fight, and The Joe. The Edmonton Jazz Festival is, of course, all about music, from homegrown talent like Krystle Dos Santos to International artists like Trombone Shorty (Troy Andrews). The Apresnos are at Haven Social Club tonight…

(Totally forgot to try and embed an Apresnos song, so check them out completely here.)

Saturday’s Hair of the Dog (at The Black Dog) features Jessica Jalbert. Get on board with Jessica Jalbert now, Edmonton. Edmonton music blogger New Music Michael is having a birthday party with with One Way State, kickupafuss, and Honheehonhee, at New City.

Sunday, The Sadies and The Sheepdogs play the Pawn Shop.

It’s a good sports weekend in Edmonton too. The Edmonton Eskimos are home to the Calgary Stampeders in pre-season action. FC Edmonton hosts the Montreal Impact. The Edmonton Capitals are home to the Yuma Scoropians. And the Edmonton Energy have the Albany Legends in town. That’s a lot of guys giving 110% and leaving it all out on the floor/field/diamond.

If you only see one Edmonton hip-hop or rap show this month, make it tonight at Wunderbar.

The Old Ugly Recording Co.’s The Joe, Mikey Maybe, Mitchmatic, and Teddy Holtby are going to play the same bill. All of them! I predict a busier than usual Wednesday night at Edmonton’s premiere beer location.

Old Ugly rap has been one of my gateways to the hip-hop world. I wasn’t a fan of the genre a couple of years ago (mostly through a lack of listening), but through this website I’ve been exposed to a lot (A LOT) of new music and Old Ugly rappers like The Joe have been blowing my mind grapes since.

I’m not kidding. Get there. Be there.

Are you there yet?

And this is just to raise money on her way to running a half marathon in May. Talk about dedication to eradicating blood cancers!

“The cause is close to my heart for several reasons,” Erin writes in an e-mail.

“I’ve lost two family members, and very close friends of mine lost their daughter at the tiny age of 6. Finding a cure is important to me, and I’ll do what I can to help!”

So, Erin gathered her team from the #yegmusicclub (a local collection of music lovers) and they got to planning. In order for her to participate in the run, she needs to raise $3250 in donations for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada.

For a mere $15 here’s what you could be listening to on Saturday.

At 2pm:

• Craig Schram (of The Provincial Archive…he’ll then be heading to the Starlite Room for a show with the Rural Alberta Advantage that night)
• Erin Craig
• Sister Gray (February’s Sonic Band of the Month)

At 6pm:

• The Joe
• Jordan Norman
• Larry Coule
• Christian Hansen (of Christian Hansen & The Autistics)

Erin says she e-mailed Hansen first.

“After that, I thought well, there are a lot of local acts that I’ve never seen and I’d like to… so I’m going to start sending emails and see what happens. I didn’t even expect to get a response, let alone having people jump on board. Every artist that I contacted said yes. We’ve lost a few due to previous commitments, etc…, but it’s amazing what this city’s community is willing to do for a no-name girl like me. We got so many “yes” replies that we were able to put on two shows!

All of the artists are playing for free. The venue has been donated (Original Joe’s Varsity’s Trevor Belser is a big supporter of the Twitter community) YEG Live sponsored the event and is providing e-ticketing. Erin’s also got silent auction items for sale. 100% of everything goes toward her fundraising for Leukemia and Lymphoma research.

“This city is inspiring!”

Head over on Saturday and prove her even more right, Edmonton.

(You can also donate online.)