Festival Express: Rockin' Across The Country

Canada Day. July 4th. Big celebrations at the start of the summer. Woodstock, Monterey Pop, and Altamont Speedway, big rock festivals that have become symbols of the counter-culture and hippiedom. This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of another big celebration and festival - Festival Express. While the other festivals cemented their place in popular music history, Festival Express quietly slipped into obscurity.

What's Festival Express you ask? Well, it was a cross-country concert train that travelled from Toronto to Calgary, Alberta and included some of the more famous groups and singers of the time. Imagine The Band (above right), Grateful Dead (right), Janis Joplin (below), Mashmakan, Tom Rush, Buddy Guy, Ian and Sylvia, Delaney and Bonnie, New Riders of the Purple Sage, Mountain, Traffic, and a host of others gathered together at the same time. All the musicians were sequestered on a Canadian National Railways train and they travelled across the Canadian Shield and the prairies. They jammed together, drank together, and hallucinated together all in the name of freedom, peace, and musical goodwill. Sounds fantastic I know, but it really happened.

Festival Express was supposed to begin in Montreal on June 24, but the date was cancelled; so instead FE began at the CNE (Canadian National Exposition) grandstand in Toronto on June 27 and 28. Riots occurred during the TO shows largely as a result of Woodstock, the famous festival at Max Yasgur's farm in New York state in 1969. There, over 300,000 people essentially stormed the gates and turned what was originally a ticketed event into a counter-culture love-in (see my previous post on the anniversary of Woodstock). Because Woodstock was ostensibly "free," thousands of concert-goers in TO thought FE should be free too. TO police quelled the uprising adding a black mark to the reputation of the show. The Grateful Dead ended up performing a free concert in Varsity Park to placate the protesters.

From Toronto the train rolled west to Winnipeg, Manitoba for a show on July 1, which was Dominion Day back then not Canada Day. The show went off without a hitch and the train chugged off to Calgary for the July 4 show, which was the last one on the bill. The final show was supposed to be in Vancouver but, like the Montreal show, it was cancelled leaving the McMahon Stadium show in Calgary the final one (video clip below the fold). An amusing event occurred after leaving Winnipeg when the train ran out of liquor. It made a pit stop in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and the musicians descended on the closest liquor store buying all of the Canadian Club rye, among other things, the store had. Restocked and happy, FE trundled on to Cowville.

Financial difficulties plagued the tour from the start and when it was all said and done, the organizers and sponsors, which included Maclean-Hunter and Thor Eaton (remember Eaton's department stores?), lost close to half a million dollars. In Calgary as well, controversy hit again as then-mayor Rod Sykes confronted the promoter Ken Walker demanding the show be free, like Woodstock. Walker, smarting from the financial debacle as it was, responded by punching the mayor in the face.

I remember when FE came to Calgary. I was a young, impressionable teenager that just started playing the guitar. As I recall, tickets were around $14.00 or $15.00, which was pricey for the time, and there was no way my parents would let me attend a festival that had The Band, Grateful Dead, and Janis Joplin. Horror of Horrors! So, despite the best laid plans of me and my best friend (his parents wouldn't let him go either), attending FE ended up being something we wished we could have attended.

Festival Express faded into oblivion until 2003, when the movie Festival Express premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Originally, the tour was filmed and the audio recorded for a concert movie and soundtrack album, again like Woodstock. But this was not to be as the film production company went bankrupt. The original film footage was lost and then discovered gathering dust in the garage of Gavin Poolman, son of Willem Poolman the producer of the 1970 footage. Anecdotal evidence reveals the film cans were used in a quintesstially Canadian way - as goalposts for road hockey games. Apropos? I think so.

Festival Express (the movie) is a valuable piece of popular music history. Mostly because of the performances and partly due to the fact the Calgary show was one of the last concerts that Janis Joplin would ever play. She died of a heroin overdose in October of 1970 a scant two months after FE (note: Joplin's last performance was August 12, 1970 with The Full Tilt Boogie Band at Harvard Stadium in Boston). Festival Express (the movie) is available on DVD and comes loaded with a host of extras such as concert performances not featured in the film along with commentaries by musicians, journalists, and academics. My Ph.D. supervisor Rob Bowman gives his usual astute analyses in the movie, for me this is worth the price of admission alone.

Festival Express (the DVD) is available at HMV, Chapters, and Amazon for less than twenty dollars. If you haven't added it to your collection, I highly recommend you do so. Festival Express (the DVD) is entertaining and enlightening, plus seeing and hearing these artists is a walk down memory lane you won't soon forget. And it's educational for the youngsters that have no idea about these artists or the movie.

Festival Express. Only in Canada, eh? Sweet.


Check out this performance of Janis Joplin doing "Tell Mama" in Calgary.