Four days in July, and more

Summer and music go together. I don't play music, beyond a stint playing the sousaphone in a high school cadet band, but I listen awfully well. I always plan my summer around the Folk Harbour Festival in Lunenburg. And now there is something closer to home, with the Privateer Days celebrations in Liverpool.

The music part of Privateer Days is the brainchild of Mersey House owner Michael Loveridge. Some people think it may turn out to be the biggest musical event ever held in this province. Coming as it does just after the Stan Rogers festival in Canso, there will be a lot of musicians around, and more to the point, music lovers will have their appetites whetted.

The organizers expect good crowds. Liverpool has a history of putting on great shows – think of the International Theatre Festival, the Music Nova Scotia festival last November, the recent provincial music festival – so there is good reason to expect that this will be a highlight of the summer for people across the province.

Once again, the people of the community of Liverpool will welcome musicians into their homes, just as they do with the theatre festival. It's a situation that puts everyone on the winning side, because many of these musicians are fascinating people, and sometimes friendships are established that continue throughout the years.

During the four days, it is expected that there will be over 200 concerts involving more than four hundred performers. There will be performances on the waterfront, in the Astor, in the beer tent, the Mersey House, the Golden Pond restaurant and in the Museum of Photography. Organizers hope that the line up will appeal to young people as well as to people like myself, who have already experienced their forties (or more).

I remember last year at Folk Harbour in Lunenburg in the final act of the festival, when Matt Anderson did an amazing version of Rock Me Momma, and had the entire tent full of people on their feet, singing along with each other at the tops of their lungs. There was an old lady standing to my right who got caught up in the music like everyone else, leaning over so that we could sing together. Music brings people together like that. Matt finished with Farewell to Nova Scotia, with every festival volunteer on the stage, and people walked out into the night air feeling they had been a part of something special.

What keeps bringing people back to Lunenburg is a combination of ocean breezes, an audience that likes to listen to music, and a town that becomes transformed for the duration of its festival. Liverpool also has the waterfront, a tradition of welcoming visitors, and people familiar with the performing arts. It should be a great celebration.

These four days in July runs in Liverpool from July 5-8. The Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival runs August 9-12. We'll be making both of them.

Michael Loveridge promises there will be a number of up and coming performers at Privateer Days. Some people think that if they haven't heard of a musician, they wouldn't be interested in attending a performance. But in the years that we've been going to Folk Harbour, we've seen Ashley MacIsaac as a 16 year old, Natalie MacMaster as a teen-aged fiddler – asking her mom for a scrunchie to keep her hair out of her eyes, while playing on the wharf – and the Cottars before they were known across the country. It's a treat to see people as they're starting their careers.

Ashley MacIsaac has been through a lot since then. I still think his rendition of O Canada on Citadel Hill a few years ago was the finest version of our anthem I've ever heard. It would almost be worth a trip to Glace Bay on July 14 to see him open for the Detroit band White Stripes, but sadly, that concert is sold out.

- Tom Sheppard can be reached at twsheppard@gmail.com