Folk Festival Set for April 3rd

The Greenhouse’s 9th Annual North Country Folk Festival, an all-day music, food and craft fair, has been announced for April 3rd 2021. The festival will break from usual traditions due to Covid-19 restraints, and will be relying on student bands, instead of local North Country folk artists for the majority of their set list.

The festival hopes to add an Ithaca, NY based band, Driftwood, to their lineup as a headliner. “We would be really thrilled to have Driftwood perform, they have performed at past festivals, and they have been really great and fun,” says Raina Freedman, Greenhouse President. The Greenhouse has been working with John Robert O’Connor and the Canton Safety Committee in order to ensure a safe experience for Driftwood, St Lawrence students, and the Canton community.

In order to garner more student interest, the Greenhouse plans on accepting artists across multiple genres, in order to celebrate not just folk music, but St. Lawrence student bands in general. The North Country Folk Festival usually includes local vendors, which will be replaced by student vendors. Any student with a craft is encouraged to reach out to the Greenhouse in order to gain a spot at the vendors fair.

Mark Fitzgerald, with Rosewood Sound, will be running the stage and audio set-up. Rosewood sound, a Syracuse-based company, uses hand-made stereo equipment and speakers to create a sound set-up that is perfectly tuned to acoustic instruments. “Multiple musicians, especially bassists, have come up to me after playing at former Folkfests and expressed that the sound Rosewood produces is the best they have ever played with,” said Tim Reed, former Folk Fest organizer.

The festival has previously been held on the old java quad, but due to the addition of the flagpole, the location of the festival may have to be moved. There will be the vendors fair, which will be outside of the tent on the quad, and the music venue, which will be inside a tent, set up by the university. Both areas of the festival will likely have a capacity of 50 persons, where attendants will be socially distant and masked.

The Greenhouse is aware that a festival on this scale will be one of the first of its kind since the pandemic began. “We are doing everything we can to make this a safe experience for everyone, the success of winter carnival shows that events similar to Folkfest can be thrown in a safe and fun way,” says Folkfest representative Sam McMillan. With cases falling, and restrictions being lifted in the county and the state, The North Country Folk Festival should be a great success.

 “We are really looking forward to it, and we think it will be a fantastic time for everyone involved,” says Isabella Lucarelli, Greenhouse resident. More information on how to get involved can be found by contacting dhstua18@stlawu, joining the Greenhouse listserv, or on flyers posted around campus.