"We've played lots and lots of festivals and I must say that the degree of care and human thoughtfulness that has gone into this festival is really quite unique. We are all very, very fortunate."
Dan Mangan certainly channelled the hearts and minds of nearly 40,000 travellers who had descended upon the little town of Simcoe this past weekend to celebrate together during The Simcoe Stopover. Mumford and Sons travelling roadshow was from the onset bound to be something like my hometown had never seen. A struggling hamlet in the tobacco belt, Simcoe has been for most of my life a place most of us tried to get away from. Fierce pride had slowly eroded over the decades of industrial decline and untapped tourism potential. For alot of us, Simcoe ceased to be a place to be and instead a great place to be from.
As luck would have it, one of the worlds most successful touring bands saw something that we always knew we had. The way they saw it, the land that cultivated The Band's Rick Danko must be fruitful indeed. And from that random seed, the world's most unlikely music festival came to life before our very eyes.
For one weekend, all of us who left, would shine up our prodigal son shoes and along with 40,000 new friends light up a revival the likes this town has never known.
Pulled Into Nazareth, Was Feeling About a Half Passed Dead
I came back to town Thursday night, 24 hours before the festival began. There was a financial boon to be had. Estimates have suggested that The Simcoe Stopover would bring $10 million to the local economy, and nobody was going to miss a beat. Every sign on every business was welcoming the Gentlemen of The Road. For those who stayed behind to keep that Norfolk lighthouse shining, this was the kind of irrigation to mitigate that seemingly endless of droughts.
My parents had already put themselves a dinner together, which afforded me the chance to check out a new restaurant in town that I had stumbled upon oddly enough through facebook back in Toronto. Its a Shakespearean tragedy, that sitting upon the worlds largest freshwater fishing fleet on Lake Erie, and being an agricultural hub in the province of Ontario, Norfolk County has always kind of lacked on the culinary side. Worst of all, the County Seat of Simcoe was a veritable Siberia for good eats. You could drive North to Devlin's Country Bistro, pioneered in the middle of nowhere by Mark McEwan's cousin Chris Devlin. Oddly it was Chef Chuck Hughes of Montreal who put me on to The Belworth House in Waterford, whose Chef Owner Tracy Winkworth was putting together some pretty proper gear. Alternatively you could always drive South to Port Dover. David's has made a great name for itself in the Dover Coast community, and while fully stuck in 1983, The Erie Beach Hotel remains one of the great (if charmingly out of date) culinary experiences in Norfolk. You want their celery bread. Real talk. And while food snobs may disown me, the Perch and Pickerel platters at Knechtals are a thing of the most pure joy. There is crack in that batter. I am certain of it. Ignore the mural, the grease and the flies. Concentrate on the fish. And the pictures of Pierre Eliot Trudeau doing the very same thing.
As for Simcoe, for over a decade, your best bet has been the Blue Elephant. Great people and they were doing the brewhouse thing before it was thing to do in Toronto. But ALOT of the food is frozen, and in what should be a locavores dream, Simcoe was a straight up kitchen nightmare.
Cue the emergence of The Combine Norfolk. Chef Ryan's homecoming wasn't exactly planned, but a recent return inspired him to abandon his Chef's journey across the country in some of the most cutting edge food scenes to set up shop in his birthplace. More importantly, he is doing something that hasn't been done here before. Good honest cooking, fresh locally sourced ingredients, and EVERYTHING made from scratch on site. Its the type of food experience we take for granted in Toronto, but its absolutely a lightening rod for Simcoe. Along for the journey is Jen, whose background at Toronto's trendsetting Drake Hotel adds the kind of savvy that will go along way along with their honest rustic approach to impress the locals. Its an experience that is new enough to amaze the locals without the pretension that could alienate them. So exciting is the project that its attracted another Simcoe expat, Heather Bruce, Wine Steward from the heyday of Marben Restaurant, to move home to join the team.
My arrival on Thursday night was only their 5th night in operation, but already things were seamless. Sitting in their charming and cozy bar area I was in the best of hands with Emily, an aspiring photographer whose always had a hand in Norfolk's dining scene. Its clearly a passion for her and just about all of the staff I meet.
The cocktail list isn't exactly groundbreaking, but it is very solid. And its a very good introduction to cocktail culture to a community that is most certainly not quite ready for Moses McIntee or Sarah Parniak. My tequila watermelon agua fresca was a thirst quenching delight on a summer night.
In an ideal world, with all the great starters, the wood fired pizza and locally sourced entrees, I'd have sat down with 3 friends and ordered the entire menu to share amongst ourselves. Alas I am but one asshole at the bar and settle upon the lobster poutine and the perch tacos. Emily assures me I have done good and she was not lying. The poutine isn't exactly breaking new ground, but that is hardly the point of good comfort food. Lobster. Gravy. Fries. Cheese Curds. These are the things of fatness heaven. They should never be over thought. Just simply plated together in all their glory like a glutinous 4x100 relay team destined for the podium of your pending food baby. The Perch Tacos on the other hand were the definition of finesse. Simply put, in spite of the wealth of tasty perch and the decades of hungry mouths that have devoured them, Norfolk has never seen a dish like this. Every component has its place in the choir. And the sound is magical.
I Picked Up My Bag Went Looking For a Place To Hide, When I Saw Carmine and The Devil Walking Side By Side
Not alot of people can say they have done anything 1,000 times. Life is just too big to allow for that kind of focus. Those few things with which we are so connected, tend to resonate very deeply. I have teed up at Norfolk Golf and Country Club well over a thousand times and as such, the course that once molded me into a professional golfer holds a very special place in my heart.
I returned Friday morning before the festival, joined by my old man, former Club Professional, and Tony Nagrani, another expat home for the Stopover. I was distressed upon my arrival at the new condos being built along the driveway, stretching toward the right of the opening hole. Standing on the first tee, with the most commanding view of the town, I was a little sad that the character of this landscape was now forever altered by the unseemly capitalistic devil of new home build, in all its cutcorner ignominy. It was not long before all that was lost in the nooks and crannies of one of the oldest golf sites in the continent. For well over a century, these hills have harvested a crop of collective consciousness that the seasoned golfer cant help but soak inside of. There is a subtle genius to the old golf course that the Thomas McBroom's can never seem to duplicate, no matter how large their budgets. Holes carved of necessity rather than human vision are much like anything else in life. We are so often victims of our own intelligence. Its the life carved from the world in front of us that elicits so much more satisfaction than the one set from a blueprint. In golf and in life its our struggle that defines us. Displacing a few trees to build some new homes does nothing to alter that. Instead, the sale and development of this land ensures that the club has the financial stability to reveal its secrets to the future generations.
From there it was down to Burning Kiln, Norfolk's flagship winery, and another place very close to my heart. From a very young age I had known Front Road outside of Turkey Point as home to my uncle's cottage. A place to fish. A place for family. For a couple of years in college a place to grow Norfolk County's OTHER sweet leaf. Decades later, newly minted as a sommelier, I was blown away that literally 100 yards away from the cottage a vineyard had been planted. Stranger yet, my ultimate hero in Ontario Winemaking, Andrzej Lipinski was overseeing the production. My third visit to Burning Kiln showed off vines that are really beginning to come into their own. Personally speaking Burning Kiln began releasing wines at least 2 years before I would have. Vines need to age, to dig into the soil, before they are worthy of the bottle. But investment requires return, and in the hands of Andrzej's appassimento techniques, they have been able to get away with releasing wines of note despite their youth. Without exception, each new vintage reveals a new layer of expression for these wines. I am seeing a development in these wines which bode tremendously well for the years to come. They are no slouch's on the marketing side either, as I note that they have bottled a bunch of both their Harvest Party White and Red as commemorative Gentlemen of The Road botttlings. This is an exciting property. The best is most certainly yet to come.
Do Me A Favour Son Won't You Stay And Keep Ana lee Company
Friday night arrived and nobody was ready for what was to come. The downtown core was blocked from traffic and an entire festival inside a festival was displayed. Three stages, beer tents, carnival rides replaced the slow living of downtown Simcoe. The host fairgrounds were opened up in a way we had never before seen. There was a feeling of "how is this going to fit here?" as you walked toward the grounds. Once through the gates however we found a land transformed. At no point for the next two nights were there logistical nightmares. Lots of space. Lots of food. Lots of portopotties. Lots of drinking holes. You needn't worry about a thing but the music. Norfolk County came ready.
As dusk set in the crowds were treated to one of the most endearing and organic moments I have seen in all my time in the music industry. Dan Mangan was finishing his set with his charming hit, "Robots", and as the song came to its climax, he took to the crowd and surfed amongst the arms of the masses for several minutes, leaving the crowd to take over singing over and again, "Robots need love too, they want to be loved by you." It was a moment that epitomized the entire festival, both from the music and the masses. Something very special was happening here.
Friday night was closed by the folk tent gospel revival stylings of Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros who unleashed a psychodelic romp that was entirely worthy of the experience at hand. Much like this festival was to Norfolk, this music is not like anything most of us have seen. As the festival poured into the Friday Night Lights, you couldn't shake the vibe if you tried.
He Said That's OK Boy Won't You Feed Him When You Can
The most glaring lesson learned Friday night was that cell phones were useless in this glut of connected humanity. Most of us took to social media and good old fashioned conversations to decide on meeting places for Saturday. By the time we found our way back Saturday afternoon, it was a homecoming party, for just about everyone I grew up with. I had friends back from as far away as China for this weekend. And it was like none of us had missed a beat. I couldn't help but think of the Eddie Vedder lyric from Corduroy "Everything has changed, absolutely nothing's changed". We have all gone on to our lives beyond Simcoe. From the little shitheads tramping on ginseng fields and dodging cops at bush parties, we have emerged as mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, travellers, entrepreneurs and bums. Over the background of a music festival we all got realize that we are every bit the people we left behind, just in new evolutions. Getting to connect with people that meant the world to you fifteen years before, and realizing how much they all continue to mean to you, even when you are half a world away, that is the kind of thing that goes beyond whose playing Bonaroo next year. This was more than a music festival, but something a whole lot bigger.
I have heard it suggested ad nauseum in the days since, that Simcoe should do this every year. That we have proven ourselves as ambassadors of the jam, and that with this kind of economic upside, we would be silly not to replicate this.
I COULD NOT DISAGREE MORE.
First of all pragmatically speaking, booking the kind of lineup that attracts the masses in the busy summer festival season is an Everest at best. You need to look no further than the recent Grove Festival and Riot Fest in Toronto. These were seemingly solid lineups. But we are all busy people. We have cottages, weddings, fishing trips and football games that cramp up that calender. The aforementioned festivals were literally giving away tickets and they still appeared as ghost towns, and certainly at the expense of organizers. What made The Simcoe Stopover so successful was its inherent specialness. You try to replicate those kind of intangibles and you most certainly will fail. Beyond every special moment that we forged over the past few nights, we must be anchored in the reality that is real life. We can yearn all we want but in the words of Dogen, flowers, while loved will perish, and weeds while loathed will flourish. Let us celebrate everything that was special about this weekend by keeping it special, not turning it into a franchise. Maybe in 5 years, or 10, or 20. Remember how long Woodstock waited until we came back. The alternative is to be the junkie, forever chasing the dragon.
Take A Load Off Annie Take A Load For Free
There was no better ending to this weekend than Mumford and Sons swan song. They concluded their encore by bringing to the stage the majority of the artists who participated in the 2 day festival. As a final testament to Simcoe, and to Rick Danko, the reason we were all here in the first place, the ensemble performed the Band's most prolific gift to the world of music, "The Weight". For 8 minutes 11 bands and 40,000 people were as one, singing and dancing to every note. Anyone who doubts that there is magic in this world is a fool. Trying to capture that magic is just as fleeting. Trick is to keep them eyes open for those big moments in time, and jump right in.
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