For a long time, over a decade, the Pocologan Camp Party was a mystery, and they liked it that way. There were rumours, of course, but there was never any concrete evidence. Just tales about a festival told by a friend-of-a-friend who had been there. It wasn’t the sort of place you could just walk into, even if you knew where it was. You had to know someone for even a chance at buying a ticket. And who is this Rick Keleher character, anyway?
When we did find someone who knew anything, all we could get out of them were vague allusion and clumsy sidesteps. “I don’t know, it’s sort of just a family thing… I mean, I’m not family, but I really can’t say.”
No one had anything more to say than that. Camp Keleher was shut tighter than Fort Knox and kept quieter than a convention of mimes. And so we waited.
Three years we waited. Then the walls came down. The announcement finally came that Pocologan Camp Party wanted to put an end to the secrecy and go public. The festival had outgrown its ability to keep it under wraps and the organizers decided the best option available was to lean into it.
From their beginnings as a small family gathering with a humble bonfire surrounded by friends and neighbours to including a lineup of bands and DJs, the festival had grown little by little each year for a full decade. A tipping point was inevitable.
Even with an end to the secrecy, we didn’t know what to expect. The organizers had given a rudimentary description of the festival’s components—a stage here, a tent there—but it was like describing a person as having two eyes, a few limbs, and a mouth.
“You’ll just have to see it in person,” they told us.
Nestled amongst the blueberry fields of southern New Brunswick, within a tiny community, in a place that might not even have a name but is at least lucky enough to have a paved road, is the Keleher family summer property. By the time we showed up, there was already half a kilometre of cars pulled up to the edges of each neighbouring property.
Thinking we had lucked out on the best parking spot of the festival, we pull in next to a crowd milling about what we assume is the entrance, but turns out to be just a neighbouring yard full of tents. And we repeat this process every hundred feet or so. Every yard along the narrow road was the same way; neighbours who had long been attending the festival were in turn opening up their properties for others to camp in.
In comparison, the actual entrance itself was rather unassuming. The real giveaway was the large collection of blue portapotties that lingered next to the entrance tent and the crowd that cheerfully greeted us. For a mysterious bunch, the Keleher family can be awfully welcoming.
We’d come to know a handful of the Kelehers and their Pocologan posse in the months leading up to the festival. Many of them we had met at Folly Fest, where they had arrived early and in droves, choosing to show up on Thursday night to claim the best spots for their RVs.
Pocologan Camp Party was no different with the large cluster of campers set up around the edge of the property. There was some sense that this was business as usual for the Keleher family; they’d simply tacked a music festival onto regular family excursion to the camp. This year, business as usual or not, they may have reached the uppermost limits of whatever they were expecting.
The first sighting of Jeff Keleher, one of the festival’s principle organizers, is a brief one as he rushes past the entrance gate.
“What is happening in my backyard,” exclaimed Jeff, as he surveyed the large crowed that had gathered behind his family’s small cabin.
“This is as many people that showed up all last year and it’s only Friday night!”
It’s not a full-on sense of urgency that Keleher is exuding, but there is a touch of mania brought on by the throng that’s gathered early for what was expected to be a relatively quiet day. It’s clear that the festival is still very much a work in progress with the early start. There is a great rushing about to ensure things are plugged in, speakers are strapped down and things are generally in place.
The first few bands have already played—Jessica Darrah, McKinley, Morrison & Williams delivering a double set and Pat LePoidevin getting himself setup to sing about surviving in outer space—and no fewer than three Kelehers can be seen ping-ponging across the festival grounds at any given time in an effort to deal with setup and the vastly under-estimated crowd size. There’s a frantic energy that’s compensating for a lack of walkie-talkies, but most people in attendance seem to register this only as excitement.
Which isn’t inaccurate. This party is as much for the Kelehers as it is for anyone else. Many of the bands are returning friends of the family who have performed several years in a row, while more or longterm goals the family have been hoping to pull in for years. Half the family were squealing in the front row for Pat LePoidevin, and the biggest crowd pleaser of the whole weekend was none other than DJ Anteeq, Rick Keleher himself, performing his second set ever at the age of 60.
There’s a curious atmosphere as the core Pocologan veterans are awash with first-time attendees excitedly zipping about underfoot, giving the festival that much more an appearance of a family reunion. By the second day people were far more relaxed and intermingling. With all the pieces safely in place, there was time to breathe, take things in, jump in a swimming hole or meander down the eccentrically illuminated Trippy Trail to Giggle HQ.
It was also the day the festival planned for the big guns. While crowds were getting comfortable with their new surroundings, the festival were gearing up for a long night. Non-stop bands and DJs went until the break of dawn. The little festival that could was making a big show for their first year in the public spotlight. It was bold, it was ambitious, it was grossly overpowered as far as soundsystems are concerned. They might have accidentally defoliated every tree from there to the coast with a wrong turn of the dial.
At least the DJs were ecstatic.
The afternoon broke its auditory fasting with a river-side jam, followed by Natalie Lynn on stage, followed by Math Class, followed by a mob of blueberry farmers.
For a festival planted in the middle of several blueberry fields it’s almost a miracle this was the first time this particular problem had arisen. For over a decade the Keleher family had been throwing their party in midst of blueberry harvest season with no complications beyond a few purple-stained pockets. Now there was a gang of farmers with their harvesters ready to shut down the festival unless the road was cleared.
To be fair, the farmers asked nicely, and it was technically the organizers who threatened to stop the music until the owners of the cars made their walk of shame to clear out the no-parking zones. Still, it made for an interesting interlude as festival-goers sprung into action and offered all manner of alternative (but questionable) solutions. The drivers were successfully located, the festival moved on and the farmers were sufficiently distracted to neglect asking what colour our hands were.
The army has long made a science of getting people on their feet, and there’s nothing better for it than a bit of brass. The crowd didn’t know what they were getting hit with when Big Smoke Brass Band took the stage. Full of horn-driven hits and mashups, there was more going on than we knew how to appreciate in the moment. Then they doubled down by following Saint John’s rising stars Jamie Comeau & The Crooked Teeth with a surprise joint set, making for the highlight of the whole festival.
From there we weaved through an evening with The Brood, followed by another mashup of Betsy White and Gordon Gets Lost in the form of Lost Betts, before spinning out into the realm of DJs: TAAPE, KDZ, CRAYWAL, ANUBASS, and the unfortunate Fractal Code who bumped off last minute on account of blueberry farmers. Stuff happens.
For a festival that has kept itself a secret for a decade, we’re left wondering if this is what they’ve been keeping secret all along, or if they are beyond ready for a bigger audience. The real question is how will they fare next year now that the secret is out?
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