I'm in Ontario this year, at a family wedding, which is lovely, but I'm sad to miss this festival, which a friend of mine last year called "BC's only folk festival." So best wishe to the Princeton crew and keep an empty chair for me, for I'll be back next year.

And as a blessing, here is the song I wrote last year for Jon and Rika:

THE NEW INTERIOR

The coast is all green, up here it is red
They have the money, our forests are dead
They never took notice of the things that we said
And the old ways slowly are passing

If it weren't for the real estate, the wine and the oil
We'd have nothing to show for our decades of toil
Now we watch as the rains wash away the good soil
And colour our rivers with mud.

The mines are all shut and the mills scaled down
The Chamber of Commerce is running the town
Now the tourists fly by without stepping down
They never have time for a story.

But we're people of rivers, we understand flow
When the water's in freshet and the times when it's low
And the strength of the currents that stir deep below
And how to hold back what we need.

So damn their neglect, we'll make a new start
Beginning with songs sung straight from the heart
That honour this place, of which we're a part
And remind us of who we once were.

We'll sing of the mucker who takes gold from the veins
We'll sing to reverse this bloddy red stain.
We'll sing for this valley to rise up again
And take it's own place in this world.