A train-based music festival

Music cruises have become popular. So have music holidays at beach and mountain resorts. Here's a variation.

Roots fans find home on the rails: "Roots on the Rails is a moving music festival, seven extra cars attached to a Via Rail passenger train.

"Music promoter Charlie Hunter booked the first train in 2001, when 65 friends filled the cars with music on their way to the Folk Alliance Conference in Vancouver.

"Then Fred Eaglesmith, a roots musician with album's worth of train songs to his credit, convinced Hunter to book an extra set of cars in 2003 and Roots on the Rails was born. This year, Hunter ran four sold-out festivals, with the last train, including the Cowboy Junkies, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, the Skydiggers, Over the Rhine and Fred Eaglesmith, arriving in Vancouver Tuesday.

"On Hunter's trains, passengers live roots music. Bands jam together and in concert several times a day. Many fans bring their own guitars for the open mike and late-night song circles.

"But it's more than the soothing click-clack of the rails and the loneliness of the whistle that make a train uniquely fit for a roots music festival, Hunter said, leaning on the window frame as the railyard in Edmonton slipped away.

"'You need people with a developed career, whose audience adores them, and whose audience is at a time in their lives where they have the money.'"

music festival
music promotion
roots
Canada
train