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OTTAWA - It was bound to be a night peppered with political commentary, what with a roots rocker of Steve Earle's stature and deep dissatisfaction with the state of the world headlining.
But what would opening night of the Ottawa Folk Festival be without a little lefty criticism anyway? It took Earle a half-dozen songs before he launched into a rant about the Lewis and Clark expedition, moving on throughout a 90-minute show to touch on everything from drug abuse to the potential for the U.S. to covet Canada's supply of water.
Before long he moved on to the Iraq war, telling the crowd Canada is involved regardless of whether we want to be or not.
"Now, the thing about people that start wars is that they're not f---ing going," he said in his laid-back, southern-accented manner, "and more to the point, because most of them are old f----ers like me, is their kids aren't going and their grandkids aren't going." It was a great intro to Rich Man's War, one of the tunes off Earle's clever, angry 2004 album, The Revolution Starts ... Now.
Earle held the crowd rapt with his one-man band on acoustic guitar, mandolin and harmonica.
The 51-year-old has much to draw from, after he famously took a four-year hiatus from the music business to descend into drug addiction in the 1990s, emerging to a four-month jail stint and a vow of clean living.
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There were lovely versions of his well-loved songs, hymns of longing like Goodbye, My Old Friend The Blues, and a spare Valentine's Day, plus the rousing Copperhead Road.
It was a characteristic low-key show spiked with righteous indignation from Earle, who confessed his first-ever Canadian show was in Ottawa.
"Don't be afraid to be Canadian," he said. "I'm seeing some frightening-looking American things up here."
Politics aside, a little rain and the odd inhaled bug never hurt anyone, so it was a pleasant start to the festival, which runs in Britannia Park until tomorrow and continues with two off-site shows Monday. Located beside Britannia Bay, the festival blessedly lacks the cloistered quality of larger downtown events like the Ottawa Bluesfest.
Chelsea native Ian Tamblyn, who had some political commentary of his own to offer, fit in with a roster of opening night talent that included the Kelli Trottier Band, Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir, Eric Manana and James Hill, and Dawn Tyler Watson and Paul Deslauriers.