Dawson City was Awesome Submitted by Andrew Hoshkiw

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I don't know though whether to declare it the best festival of the summer.

Dawson had better music, but Atlin was more festive.
And Haines Junction had both great music and partying.
Maybe a tie between the three?

Which ever was best, it doesn't matter. They all had their highlights. It was a great experience getting to go to all of them. I feel blessed to have had this opportunity.

I've always envisioned arts journalism to be a lot of fun, and it has been. In less than three months, I've met over a hundred bands, and very few of them have disappointed me.

Most were names I had never heard of. Now, I think that if I ever come across a concert by any of these artists, I won't pass it up:
Gob, Amoral Minority, Wayne Lavallee, Nemesis, Fuller's Earth, The Whiskeydicks, The James King Band, Down to the Wood, Canadian Whitewater Bluegrass, Scott MacLeod, Dec and the As, Say No More, Ivonne Hernandez, Chester Knight and the Wind, Soir de Semaine, DobaCaracol, Greg MacPherson, Joel Plaskett, Eivor Palsdottir and Bill Bourne

I handled the Dawson festival completely differently from the previous five. Rather than following it up with a long, tiresome article full of praise for the organizers with short snippets of interviews with as many musicians as possible, this time I hardly talked to anyone besides the artists, and conducted a few interviews.

I ended up writing two stories, focusing on a total of four musicians with longer, more in-depth interviews.

My initial reasoning for doing it this way was because I was pissy about the organizers. They wouldn't let me in the hospitality tent, meaning I had limited access to the musicians and no access to the free food, and they were temperamental whenever I was in the backstage area.

But I couldn't write something bad, not after hearing such great music.

Oh, and did I mention I gave a ride up to the festival a reporter from the other paper? It's true. He couldn't find a way of getting there, and I had space.

His plan was to find a ride back Sunday, or hitch if necessary. I had booked Monday off so that I could enjoy the Sunday night performances and parties.

But, when I found him Sunday evening out of luck, stuck and afraid of losing his job, I said we could just leave at midnight, after the show ended, and get back around 5:00 a.m.

Which is what we did. It was okay though. I saw all the music I wanted to see, and really had had enough partying and camping.

Anyhow, about 50 km north of Whitehorse, the low fuel light went on, and we began to get worried. But we made it. I filled the tank at the first open gas station. By my estimate, there was less than half a litre of fuel left.

So there are no more music festivals now. All I have to look forward to now are art openings, theatre performances and the occasional concert. They'll have to do, I guess.

This weekend there's some sort of native celebration a little west of here. I think I'll go to that. Wayne Lavallee will be playing,

And then the next long weekend is mid-August, and not at the start of the month like most Canadians have. Maybe I'll go for a drive, check out Anchorage...