Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival

Oliver and I drove up to Rollo Bay this morning to take in the last day of this year’s Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival. We arrived just in time for the “Tune Writers Circle” in hall at Noon, and were entertained by the fiddle, banjo, piano and mandolin stylings of players like J.J. Chaisson, Brent Chaisson, Elmer Deagle, Anastasia DesRoches, and Mike Hall.

At 2:00 p.m. the afternoon concert started, and we stayed around for Courtney Hogan, the Queens County Fiddlers, Tim Chaisson, and another round of Mike Hall, who was the real highlight of the event for me.  Born in Saint John and honed in Cape Breton, Hall is a sharp player who’s obviously going places. We picked up his CD, A Legacy Not to Be Forgotten, and will look for him again.

By 3:00 p.m. Oliver was flagging — an 8 year old can only take some much fiddle — and so we took the long way home, up to Naufrage and along the north shore and over to Mount Stewart where we stopped in at The Trailside for a piece of cake and a chocolate sundae and a chat with the Doug Deacon.

All of this was part of the 2009 edition of “trying not to completely miss summer on Prince Edward Island,” an effort that, so far, we’re doing pretty good at.