TAIT: Edmonton Folk Fest Ready To Sail With Terry Wickham At The Helm

Columnists

Published Aug 09, 2023 • Last updated 8 hours ago • 2 minute read

Edmonton Folk Music Festival producer Terry Wickham poses for a photo at the top of Gallagher Park hill, a favourite hangout spot during the festival for thousands of folk music fans, in Edmonton, on Wednesday, April 14, 2021. The 2021 festival has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photo by Ian Kucerak Postmedia file

Terry Wickham is a busy man these days, as executive producer of the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, which takes its first notes Thursday night featuring Feist as the main stage headliner.

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Asking for Wickham’s media availability could be a crap shoot — if not impossible.

Fourteen hours following an email request, Wickham responded. A cell number, too, and an open invitation to call.

That action cements how Wickham, originally from Ireland and making a stop in Calgary before settling in Edmonton in the late ’80s, sees the festival’s work, and the need to promote it.

Sure, there are countless details to be ironed out for the three-day Gallagher Park gathering.

Volunteers working very hard. Check.

Acts starting to arrive in Edmonton. Check.

Good weather forecast. Check, we hope.

“We are in good shape,” he said.

But there are a few things that Wickham doesn’t have any control over, despite his 35 years on the hill.

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The weather is a constant concern. So, now, is smoke, and climate change, which can take a clutch on an outdoor event.

Still — and the band plays on — the festival is in good financial shape, far from the 1980s when it was “pretty broke,” said Wickham.

The festival’s staff is larger in number and more experienced. Technology may be wonderful — when it works, right? — but there are still some things that are challenging.

Yet, the music, and its creators, continues to thrive, giving the festival a comfortable, renowned place on the world’s stage.

We need music gatherings these days.

“I wish the world and the rest of the year had the same utopian feel as the Folk Festival,” said Wickham. “It is easy to play on people’s fears and differences. It is easier to destroy than to build.

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“Folk music is a very positive influence but it cannot combat all the negativity around us. I like that at our festival, greed is not rewarded, where we don’t have any VIP sales.”

He also said there is more grassroots, pure, songwriting and fewer lyrics penned with political views.

One of Wickham’s highlights was the 1994 opening night with a 12-song set from Joni Mitchell in front of 7,000 fans.

Quite the backstory: Mitchell calling Wickham and telling him she wanted to play the folk festival, and suggesting a fee, a figure he said he would pay three of times more.

It set the stage for Wickham to chase his bucket-list act, Van Morrison: a 17-song set in 2010 — a special Wednesday show to raise funds for an endowment project.

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Yet another Wickham memory was John Prine in 2005.

Wickham doesn’t see retirement near on the horizon.

“And I don’t know the answer, except, I think I will know when it is time, hopefully before anyone else does,” he said.

The festival follows the sun Sunday evening as it winds down with Ben Harper being the closing act.

Wickham said he doesn’t feel sadness any more when the annual festival weekend wraps up.

“I used to but that (letdown) feeling left town a long time ago. I look forward to a holiday. Now I am relieved if it all went well, as I feel a major responsibility to our society, to our patrons, to our artists and to our staff.”

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