M Ted you need to fact-check. Mitch Podolak cannot be fired from the Winnipeg Folk Fest, because he doesn't work there and hasn't for years and years. He is the much-loved and respected founding artistic director, whose vision made a mosquito-filled prairie park in the centre of North 'America, but far far away from anywhere, the site of one of the continents' premiere folk festivals for over thirty years. Nowadays he devotes his energy to organizing a cross-Canada network of house-concert bookings, much to the benefit of the musicians involved.

He's also an unapologetic hard-core leftist (obviously) who says what he believes, an interesting contrast with the current generation of please-everyone-offend-no-one professional arts administrators who tend to run such events these days.

Geoff Berner by the way is a great songwriter, and could go head to head with Billy Bragg any day. Look up "Don't play cards for money with Corby Lund". I hope this controversy causes more people to look him up! (Beer, check him out, seriously.)

I think it's depressing that VW or any other corporate sponsor could have their logo prominently displayed on the main stage of a festival...really messes with the visual. Wonder what Utah Phillips (a Winnipeg regular back-in-da-day) woulda said?

W-O