Take a chance, have a bite

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/04/2025 (518 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Every music festival poster follows a hierarchy defined by the slippery concepts of popularity and potential sales draw: the “big” names tend to be rendered as such, splashed boldly on the upper rows, while the remainder of the artists occupy the lower sections in ever-decreasing font size.

But to read only the top line is to fail when faced with the music world’s Snellen Chart. There are rewards waiting further along for those patient enough to listen and to read on.

Last month, when the Winnipeg Folk Festival announced the lineup for its 50th gathering at Birds Hill Provincial Park, an all-too-common complaint was of general underwhelm. “Where are the headliners?” some online detractors wondered. (Since that announcement, the festival has added seven acts to the bill, including Nashville’s the Lone Bellow, Vancouver’s Peach Pit, Cambodia’s Dengue Fever and Danish-Norwegian act Viik.)

But on every single line of a festival of this calibre and scope, experienced folkies will tell you, there is at least one artist you’ve never heard of who will blow you away.

Joel Klaverkamp knows this. The brains behind the experimental indie dance project Cookie Delicious has been a prolific fixture of Winnipeg’s music scene since 1989, playing with acts such as Skingerbreadman, Greg MacPherson, the Ragamaroons, the Royal Art Lodge project Alien Hybrid, the Hummers, Drums and Wires, Mood Ruff, A La Mode, Merin, Beefdonut, Pip Skid, Chuck Copenace and Robojom.

“Sam (Thompson) from (local podcast) Witchpolice Radio and I have a running joke about how he’s always finding my name on local records,” says Klaverkamp, whose most recent full-length release as Cookie Delicious was October’s Punch Dance in a Wooded Glen, an open invitation for private dance parties grounded in self-acceptance.

A software developer and music fanatic, Klaverkamp — who in the 1990s quit a job at a beer vendor because the boss booked him during his volunteer shifts at folk fest — can list dozens of artists he’d never heard of whose performances at Birds Hill stayed with him.

He immediately jumps back to 2001, when he was in the crowd for an unforgettable a set by Njava, a group from Madagascar that performed energetic renditions of traditional Malagasy ceremonial music.

In 2024, as Cookie Delicious, Klaverkamp did an evening tweener set at the Real Love Summer Fest, playing selections from his recent run of three LPs produced in a two-year span: 2023’s Fox in Golden Armour and 2024’s Collaborations and Punch Dance. He wasn’t a headliner, but Klaverkamp kept the crowd dancing near the mainstage.

He will bring that same energy to the Handsome Daughter Friday when he performs with Limited Hangout from Edmonton and Courtney Fox opening.

As a musician who has played the folk festival with Grand Analog (the hip-hop group fronted by CBC Radio host Odario Williams) as well as the Hummers (once as a hired artist and once in the late ’90s with a “guerilla gig” on Pope’s Hill), Klaverkamp understands the possibilities — inspiration, potential collaboration and expanded worldview — that come with being included in a major lineup as a “smaller” name.

A board member of the Rainbow Trout Music Festival since 2024, Klaverkamp has adopted the habit of putting himself into an organizer’s shoes. As an interviewer with Stylus magazine, a frequent question he would ask Winnipeg artists was whom they would pick to play with on a dream local bill.

For his imagined entertainment, Klaverkamp keeps a running document of his own fantasy music festival, organized in an unordered list of around 20 acts, eschewing the concept of bigger or smaller names. A few rules: the artists must be active and the festival bill is allowed to include a maximum of two reunions, but if any original members are dead, those bands won’t make the cut. (“Grim,” he admits.) Budget, touring schedules, performer health and the relative strength of the Canadian dollar don’t figure into this pie-in-the-sky lineup.

Among his fantasy headliners are British art-rockers Snapped Ankles, underground Scottish dance act Golden Teacher, Glasgow reggae band Mungo’s HiFi and Canadian electronica group Holy F*ck. Filling out the rest of the lineup are such acts as anonymous Swedish experimental act Goat, Montreal punk group Duchess Says, Polaris Prize winner Caribou, New York electronic rock band LCD Soundsystem, prolific Australian genre-switchers King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Swedish punk sextet Viagra Boy and Ozzie pub rockers Amyl and the Sniffers.

You might not have heard of any of those artists — or the artists on a real festival bill — but each name is a potential gateway to avenues of musical experience.

Read past the opening line and find your own personal Cookie Delicious.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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