Brenda Hansen, with her brother Dwayne and Kenny Hanuse, greeted the audience of Love Fest 2024 with the ‘Klahoose Welcome Song.’ (You can listen to it, sung in the ʔayʔaǰuθəm language, in the podcast version of this story.) 

Close to 700 people purchased tickets, performed, or were at the event on Saturday August 10. Cortes Currents went backstage to interview some of the performers and record clips of their music. 

Singer/songwriter Rick Scott explained, “I’ve often  been  interested in what happened with the hippie movement.  Because the hippies got it right on a lot of levels. The ecology, community,  the idea of cooperative  and  there was also a musical Renaissance that happened. All these  things coming out of that time were so great and it got co-opted.  Suddenly, Coca Cola had long hair, and the Monkees were clean-cut hippies. Like so many things, it got bought out and changed. We all grew older,  the computer age happened and all these things  distorted it in a different way. Something like the Love Fest reminds me of the essence of that time, that renaissance I call it.”

“It was always the same. It was community, community, community. This has that vibe that people are really trying to not bring back to life, but to just pay respect to. We weren’t perfect but there were some things about it that were just so special and so smart and love was certainly one of those things.” 

The other Klahoose performer at Lovefest, Johnny Hanuse, traced his musical career back 21 years. 

Johnny Hanuse: “The first time I performed, I was a young kid like 12, and I went up to my traditional territory in Rivers Inlet. There was a wedding, and my dad  was like, ‘you gotta go up and play. So I played Paranoid by Black Sabbath for this wedding.”

Cortes Currents: Why do you love music?

Johnny Hanuse: “It’s just one of those things that  I don’t even question anymore. It’s just a part of who I am and what I like to do. It’s how I identify  my spirit, or I identify who I am as a person.  It’s just like walking.  Or breathing, you always go back to it.”

Speaking as one of the local inhabitants, Cortes Currents imagination was captivated by the imagery in a song he wrote about Squirrel Cove.

•  “Well I’ve been hanging down, 
• yeah, been hanging down in Squirrel Town,  
• doing that stuff that I’ve only known as the BC, 
• yeah-ha-ha, known as,  it’s the BC home grown, 
• don’t you know?” 
• “If you want to hang out with me, 
• then you can walk to the top of Tork Road, 
• to the bottom of the hill.  
• And if you look to your right,  
• you’ll see me holding it tight, 
• playing my guitar.” 
• “You looked at my right hand,  
• see that red and silver can,  
• but we only got about two left.  
• But the good news is that the store 
• is only a kilometre away  
• when the tide is low.” 
• “Walk past that abandoned ship
• and you step on the cinder block
• when you’re crossing that stream.  
• The only thing around us 
• is the big tall mountains 
• and the deep blue sea.” 

6 Foot Johnson has also been playing on Cortes Island for about 21 years. 

“It’s always an adrenaline rush to play and to have an appreciative audience. The Linnaea Love Fest is always very welcoming, and well organized. Great sound, and  I was happy with our band’s performance today,” said band member Greg Osoba, right after their set. 

“We operate basically by consensus. There are three songwriters, and  people will come to the band with an idea for a song or a more or less completed song in terms of the first chorus arrangement. Then each of us adds our own instrumental part to it. Sometimes one of the band leaders will be very specific about the type of rhythm that it is, or the type of feel that they want in the song, but most often we leave it to ourselves to  figure out what works best given the nature of the tune, and songs are never played exactly the same way twice. All the solos that you heard today were entirely improvised. Three of us have been playing together for 21 years. And the lead guitarist joined us a couple years ago and has taken us to a whole new level in terms of sophistication. The thing with that is that there really is no ego, which is really helpful. Nobody needs to be in charge; nobody necessarily wants to be in charge.”

• “Sometimes you’ve got to talk the talk. 
• Sometimes you’ve got to walk the walk.  
• And if you choose to walk, you’ll need new shoes. 
• Talk is cheap, action’s expensive.”  

The ‘Merry McKentys’ were once a fixture in Cortes Island’s musical scene.They were here for the first Lovefest in 2017 and returned this year as the ‘Awakeneers.’ Several members of the group are songwriters. Rose Giannone told Cortes Currents that she wrote the song ‘Pushing Up The River’ about how when doing something difficult, it can be much easier with a team. For example how salmon can make use of each others wake to move forward, or how geese use the same principle in the air and take turns in the front of the migratory formation. And besides the practicalities like that, just looking around and knowing that you are not alone really helps!

• “Pushin’ up the river
• Not an easy ride
• Pushin’ up the river
• Oh the journey’s long
• But if I don’t want to dream along
• Floating down the river
• Gotta stay strong
• Pushin’ up the river.”

Love Fest organiser Rex Weyler recently alluded to seeing Doc Fingers in Vancouver during the 1970s.

Doc Fingers responded, “it was probably at the Anchor Bar because that was my gig during the late 70s: 78, 79, 80 and 81. I think Rex was back there  in the old bad days.” 

Cortes Currents: How did you end up here?  

Doc Fingers: “I think we crossed paths on Facebook or something and he went, ‘oh you should come play at the festival.’ Or I noticed he had a festival and I said, ‘oh, you should have me come play at the festival.’ A couple years later, we worked it out.”

• “One night farmer Brown was taking the air
• And I locked up the barnyard with the greatest of care
• Down in the hen house something stirred
• When he shouted, “Who’s there?”
• This is what he heard.”
• “There isn’t nobody here but us chickens
• There isn’t nobody here at all
• So calm yourself and stop that fuss
• There isn’t nobody here but us.”

Ann Mortifee was already an internationally recognized artist, and recipient of the Order of Canada, when she moved to Cortes Island about 28 years ago. Cortes Currents did a four part series with Mortifee last year. Valley Hennell was Mortifee’s manager during the early years. 

Valley Hennell: “Back in 1968, when I was at UBC,  I met up with an emerging folk singer named Ann Mortifee.  She said, ‘I’m going to quit singing because I don’t have anything to sing that I believe in.’ I said, ‘I write poems.’” 

“So we started writing lots and lots and lots of songs together. She started doing concerts and I started producing concerts because I realized no one would hear our songs unless we did shows.” 

“One day I heard her on the phone saying, ‘Oh, I don’t know, maybe $25.’  She hung up and I said, what was that? She said, ‘Oh, somebody wants me to sing.’ And I said, ‘you’re going to charge $25, you’re being robbed.’  And then I was her manager because I started fielding the calls and making the deals and that’s how I learned to be an artist manager.  Ann and I worked together till 1982  . Ann and I were young, idealistic, fearless, young women, 18 and 19 years old. We didn’t know what we were doing. We were just doing it.  So we didn’t know enough to be afraid to do things like start our own record company.  Ann did Jacques Brel in Vancouver and became a household name overnight.”  

“Then she went on to ‘Jacques Brel’ in New York. While she was doing it, a very distinguished British man came up to her and said, ‘I want to record you. My name’s Norman Newell. I’m going on the Red Eye.’ The next day he faxed me a record contract, the fax was 14 pages long. I’ll never forget it. It turns out Norman Newell had produced Judy Garland and Barbara Streisand, and when he heard Anne Mortifee’s voice, he knew that she was in that same echelon.  So in 1975, we went to Abbey Road Studios in London, England, and made the album ‘Baptism,’ produced by Norman Newell. I co-wrote six of the songs in the original ‘Baptism’ album.” 

“Then as we were promoting the ‘Baptism’ album, which we did with a one woman show that ran for something like six months at the Arts Club Seymour Street, Ann decided she didn’t want to be a singer. She met  a man from the United Nations and she cast her lot with him. They went traveling around the world and ended up in Beirut in the war and they were both evacuated in different directions.” 

“When Ann finally came home, she said, ‘I was sitting by the Mediterranean with a bunch of people from the UN and they asked me to sing and I realized this is what I should be doing. So do you want to do it again? So we started all up again.”

“That’s when we started our own record company because by then EMI was tired of waiting for her. No one wanted to be her label. So we started Jabula Records and were very successful. We were inventing our way as we went and I never really felt marginalized,  partially because we were fortunate enough to be successful at what we were doing.”

During her performance on the stage at Lovefest, Ann Mortifee declared:

“I was looking outside of myself and I said,  ‘It couldn’t just be the world out there that was messed up.  I must have something to do with it.’  So I decided I’d better start working on my consciousness.  You know, like expanding it.  So I took polarity therapy. I found out my astrological sign. Then I was in the hot tub with my Freudian massage psychologist and he told me that he knew what my problem was. I have been suppressing my body awareness, but he can help me. So you know what I’m doing?  I am going to Fred Astaire’s Dance Studio and I am taking – tap dancing!

• “Life according to Freddy is a soft shoe show 
• It’s a little give and take, a lot of heel and toe
• I said I lost my childhood Freddy, said that can’t be so
• Come over to my place and we’ll do the buffalo…”

Valley Hennell teamed up with Rick Scott more than 40 years ago and they would both eventually be inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame. 

Valley Hennell: In 1983, Rick asked me if I would manage Pied Pear,  which was just on the tail end of its eight year run. Rick got cast in this theater production  for the next eight years and I represented him in that. During that time, I asked him if I could just hear some of his songs?  He came over one day and he played me a song and I absolutely hated it. I thought, oh dear, how am I going to tell him? Then he played me eight songs in a row and I simply could not believe how good they were! I said, ‘I think we should start a band.’ I’ve been with Rick since 1983, I’ve done seven tours of Asia, a tour of Australia, and written a symphony. I produced a four hour, four CD musical audio novel with 17 actors, singers, and musicians in which Rick plays eight roles  and that’s called ‘The Great Gazoon.’ It’s just a wonderful audio novel that Rick had written.”

Rick Scott described his introduction to Rick Bockner:

“I knew about Rick Bockner long before I met him because he had a band called the ‘Mad River Blues Band’ and they were out of Antioch College in Ohio. Then they went to California and hit the big time. Antioch College in Ohio is where my sister, my father, my mother, my uncle, and my aunt all graduated, so I knew about his music.” 

“The first time the Pied Pumpkin toured  through the Slocan Valley,  Joe said,  ‘I got this friend we can stay with in Winlaw. His name is Rick.’ So we pull up to the house and there he is. It took me about half of the night before I realized this is the Rick Bockner from the Mad River Blues Band. I was in awe of him because the Mad River Blues Band was like nothing I’d ever heard before, just whack a doodle hard and rock and roll! You couldn’t even classify what they did, but you can’t know a more humble, a more gentle,  a more artistic man than Rick Bockner. You just go down the list and his musicianship is totally unique, it’s totally him. He was one of the first people I met when I started touring in Canada and it feels like his fingerprints are all over this festival.”

Rick and Amy Bockner joined Scott on stage for the song ‘Angels Do.’ 

 Rick Scott: “A little quick story about this next song. I am a grandfather.  I have eight grandchildren. Oh, there’s nothing to it. You just wait. It happens.  Yeah, another one’s on the way, but one of the journeys that I had to go down as a grandfather was with my second grandchild.”

“We went to the hospital, Vancouver Children’s Hospital, and we were going to celebrate this new baby that was in our family. Everybody was so excited. The kids were so excited. They had toys and they had chocolate. They were ready for this new baby.” 

“We’re coming down the hallway in the Vancouver Children’s Hospital, and the nurse stops me. She says, Mr. Scott, ‘before you go in the room, we have to talk to you.’  I said, ‘yeah, okay, but come on, I’ve got to go see my granddaughter. She said, ‘well, what we have to tell you is that your granddaughter was born with Downs Syndrome.’ 

“You, you, you can’t say that.  You can’t tell me that – not my family! And I started losing it, completely. My children were looking at daddy, they’ve never seen him behave this way before. And I’m denying,  I’m so scared, everything is swirling around. And this nurse, who I believe was just not buying into my pity trip at all, said, ‘Mr. Scott, go see your granddaughter.’”  

“So we went into the room and there she was, Miel, honey.  Yeah.  And Miel is beautiful. And we didn’t know what to say, but we didn’t have to say anything because what we knew was now our family had an angel.”  

“This is not the Hallmark card angel, y’all.  No, this is an angel that goes out in the world with you  and will teach you ways to see the world that you never saw before  and will teach you how to cry in ways you never cried before and laugh in ways that you’ve never laughed before. And suddenly you realize that this angel was put here for your benefit to learn more about your soul.  And at the end of the day with this little angel, you will be exhausted,  but if you check it out, your heart will have gotten a little bigger.” 

“What I’d like to do, because you sing so beautifully, is I’d like you, on the chorus, to look at somebody, and if you know them, that’s good. If you don’t know them, that’s perfect. And just say, ‘You  look like these angels do.’They’re gonna go, ‘what the heck?  So you gotta say it again.” 

Amy Bockner: “You look like these angels do.”

Rick Scott: “Aha,  they get it. They look back at you and they say, ‘Angels look  just like you.”

• “I always thought they had a bugle instead of wings
• With flowing ropes that would never, never cling
• And played on harps that had at least a dozen strings
• And gathered up in groups to sing.”
• Everyone on stage: “But you look like these angels do
• Ha, you look like these angels do
• And angels look just like you.”

We’re going to close this program with a clip from Amy and Rick Bockner’s performance. 

Amy Bockner:  “It’s always special to perform with my dad. He’s such an amazing musician. When we were little, that’s all we did was play music.  We didn’t have anything else to do, like watch TV or the internet, nothing like that back then. So we just played music growing up and I really thank him for instilling that appreciation and love of music in me.  I always take the opportunity when I can to  do a set with him and Love Fest is one of the best events. Who could say no to that?”

You can hear Rick Bockner’s fingerpicking in the podcast, as Amy’s rich voice leads off: 

• “Trouble come down like rain on a Monday
• Searching this town, looking for me
• Trouble been making me keep my head low
• Gotta shake trouble or I’ll never be free.”

• “This old car don’t want to run no more
• This old house got a hole in the roof
• This old body don’t want to fight no more
• This old heart can’t face the truth.”

• “Preacher man says that God won’t forget you, child, 
• But he don’t come with me to the grocery store. 
• Got to find me a place to sow my garden
• Find me a place where a child can grow
• Find me a place where the work is plentiful.
• Find me a place that trouble don’t know”

Rick’s voice joined her for a repeat of the chorus: 

• “Trouble come down like rain on a Monday, 
• Searching this town, looking for me,  
• Trouble been making me keep my head low. 
• Gotta shake trouble or I’ll never be free.”

(Cortes Currents left before Elise LeBlanc, Cosmos Sheldrake or Adonis Puentes Cuban band came onstage, but has offered to profile any of them that so desire. Similarly, Cortes did not cover at least three acts from the period I was there. ) 

Links of Interest:

(See tabs below for associated articles on Cortes Currents)

• Johnny Hanuse Facebook page
• 6 Foot Johnson Facebook page
• The Awakeneers website
• Doc Fingers Facebook page
• Rick Scott’s website
• Ann Mortifees website
• looking for websites or facebook pages for Brenda Hansen, Amy Bockner, Rick Bockner 

Top image credit: Brenda Hansen, Ken Hanuse and Dwayne Hansen singing the Welcome song – Roy L Hales photo. All uncredited photos taken by Roy L Hales.

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