Edmonton Folk Fest: The Heavy Heavy holding the torch of jangly, '60s-tinged folk-rock

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The Edmonton Folk Music Festival is vibrating with upbeat and hip-shaking spotlight acts for its 45^th year, including Black Pumas Thursday, Saturday closers Fantastic Negrito and The Heavy Heavy Sunday night — up before Robert Plant and Alison Krauss.

Torchbearers without being stuck in the dungeon of rusty-dusty atavism, The Heavy Heavy’s jangly and spirited folk-rock reignites a sunny and generally hopeful sound full of echo and reverb from a hydra of social upheaval 50 to 60 years back, fittingly loosed into the current mess of high-stakes history happening around us rather insistently again.

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Song titles like Happiness, Miracle Sun and Wild Emotion even unheard telegraph the dreamy feel of the five-piece’s expanding catalogue, with Brighton-based core couple Will Turner, 32, and Georgie Fuller, 33, harmonizing sweetly.

The band has been relentlessly touring Europe and especially America doing headliner dates, Fuller and Turner calling with Asheville, North Carolina, in the rearview mirror as they prepare for the release of their fantastic debut full-length, One of a Kind — out Sept. 6.

Q: How did it all get started?

Fuller: We met about ten years ago on other musical projects, and then, probably seven years ago, we went, let’s make some music together, and that was sort of more dream pop. He asked me to lay down some vocals on his old band that was more ’60s and there was something about the way the microphone that was used and the range I was using and Will’s production technique where we both stepped back and had this epiphany moment. We did some demos and when we put my harmonies on them we went, “Oh shit, I think something has just been born.”

Q: You’re about to release the new album — jubilant? Worried?

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Turner: There are a lot of songs that we’ve played since the inception, really, so we know they’re good because we’ve had other songs we’ve tried in the live setting that haven’t really, and we’ve kind of ditched them. It’s daunting, and I can’t listen to it myself. (Laughs.)

Fuller: Those weeks and months leading up to it, you’re like, is this absolute crap? But now I’m really excited because we’ve been putting them on their feet live this summer and people are really grooving to them.

Q: How do you pull the songs together — is it lyrics on a napkin on the road, improvising in the jam space?

Fuller Will is a mad genius and he locks himself in the studio, a phenomenal guitarist but producer first and foremost. So I have to leave him to find the world and once there’s something there I’ll come in and maybe help arrange lyrics or whatever.

Q: Georgia, you pop out on the amazing song Dirt singing solo, what were the conversations leading up to that?

Fuller: (Laughs) How did that start?

Turner: I heard a Marvin Gaye thing, with the organ, and I was just riffing off that. And it naturally felt like it should just drop into a really big chorus. The influence was Ramble On by Led Zeppelin, sort of hot, cold. It’s like The Who, there’s a lot of breezy versus big choruses.

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Fuller: I don’t know if you just labelled it “Dirt,” and I was like, “I f—ing love that,” but we knew it was going to be a song I was going to sing. It’s not rapping, but it’s very fast, and that kind of fits my writing style because (laughs) I like to use a lot of words. I just went, I don’t want to chew on your dad, but this is just a chance for me to lyrically net rip on maybe feeling powerless — or taking your power back — but the words fell out extremely quickly. I mean, I’ve obviously been bloody storing them up for a while.

Q: Your influences are obvious, but I wonder if we can talk about nostalgia in general?

Fuller: Obviously what we write is feeding into the feeling — because we didn’t live through that time — the way that music makes us feel. It’s romanticizing a simpler way of life; I mean, everything is so overwhelming now. You have to be really careful, though, the way you create, if you’re inspired by nostalgia. Because of course, it could come off as pastiche.

Turner: For me, it’s so inspiring because it’s kind of crunchy and it’s real — it sounds like people actually playing music, and they’d just discovered all this technology. The ’60s, that sort of social optimism that was going on, these new recording techniques that came out, and the fact they had serious limitations — I think it was the perfect storm. They absolutely nailed it for a period around ’67 to ’74, let’s say. But that nostalgia is a funny thing, because it’s dangerously close to classic rock or pastiche or leather jackets everywhere. I just thing the sound was the best. You could apply the same technological and production techniques to Lana Del Ray and Beyoncé and it would sound phenomenal.

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Q: What did you learn touring with your label mates, Black Pumas?

Turner: They were our first introduction to any of this. Just seeing how the whole production works. They have a huge crew, so it’s a different beast — but seeing how it could be. They’ve shown us how to conduct ourselves, how to be a positive force in the face of adversity. “Be cool.”

Q: You know the history of the bands you like, and the next sound they go after this is more experimental, psychedelic. Do you have a Satanic Majesty’s Request lurking in you?

Turner: (Laughs) We’ve discussed this before, but I suspect that’ll be album … five.

Q: You were talking the optimism of the ‘60s, but it was also a time of intense tumult. You’ve been touring the divided states like mad, how are you feeling? Scared? Optimistic?

Fuller: We’re in a world where people come see music and have a good time, so we feel a kind of euphoria.

Turner: Certainly seeing some interesting decorations on people’s houses and cars. Something like Roe v Wade, to come from a country where as a woman you have rights over your own body to be here can sometimes feel conflicting. Particularly in places I absolutely love like Texas, and there are a lot of people who don’t agree with my beliefs. But then I see all the young women who come to the shows and they’re singing their hearts out and I’m like, “Ok, we’ve got this.” Everything is cyclical.

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Q: Do you get to stay and watch Plant and Krauss?

Fuller and Turner (in unison): Yeah! Yeah!

Fuller: I’m changing our bloody flight!

• • •

Just a little housekeeping: with the LRT up and running, Park N Ride is no longer a thing, but you can park your vehicle at U of A’s garages for $5.50/day and hop on the train.

As for the rain that shut down Heritage Days and Big Valley Jamboree — sorry Keith Urban — the fest’s longtime producer Terry Wickham feels prepared.

“We’re ok,” he says, noting on Monday there was a little standing water to deal with.

“We’ll put some sand down if we have to. Forecast is really good.”

As far as the show, “I think the main stage has a real contrast, and it’ll be interesting to see how it blends between really well-known names like Black Pumas and Blue Rodeo and Roberts Plant and Allison Krauss versus, you know, Danielle Ponder and Angie McMahon and Rhiannon Giddens, who are pretty well known, but Orchestra Gold who maybe aren’t as much.

“But I’ve got every confidence in all the bands.”

fgriwkowsky@postmedia.com

@fisheyefoto

PREVIEW

The Heavy Heavy

Where Edmonton Folk Music Festival at Gallagher Park

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When 7 p.m. Sunday (gates 4:30 p.m. Thurs./Fri., 9:30 a.m. Sat/Sun.)

Tickets Single day Thurs./Fri. available at edmontonfolkfest.org

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