Saturday evening’s performance in Acadia University’s Convocation Hall at the Deep Roots Music Festival began with hot licks and hot beats from emcees Chuck and Albert Arsenault in the supercharged Acadian tradition of their former band Barachois. They rate as highly as clowns and slapstick comedians as they do as fiddle and guitar players.

Before the night was over, a bat had launched itself from an Acadia belfry, zipped across the stage, then criss-crossed above the audience’s heads, and finally, four and a half hours after Chuck and Albert first set foot to floor, the Wild Band of Snee ended the evening in a climax of frenzied yells and over-the-top musical and physical energy that stopped short of smashing guitars on the floor but nevertheless drove the audience wild with delight.

In the afternoon in the Al Whittle Theatre, Mary Jane Lamond and mercurial step dancer Georgette LeBlanc indulged in a little harmless male-bashing as part of the Women and Their Roots Project.

That concert, which also ran over by an hour, ended with Gypsophilia Nova Scotia’s most outrageous party band laying down, albeit rough around the edges, some new tunes in their delightful gypsy-klezmer-Hot Club de France style.

For the audiences it was all good.

Now in its third year, Deep Roots, while relying for the most part on standard folk festival fare, has established an edgy personality all its own. And with Saturday’s sunshine, Wolfville’s Main Street was abuzz with people and purpose.

The wildness and unpredictability at Deep Roots was balanced by solid musicianship and fine songwriting.

The festival venues were prime with the Festival Theatre’s dramatic thrust stage and spacious lobby and the generous acoustics of Convocation Hall. The Al Whittle Theatre is a gem — good sight lines, a generous stage floor, and a feeling of something special going on.

Even the Astor Theatre in Liverpool, one of the finest old theatres in the province, does not quite capture the magic of the playhouse as the Whittle does.

The one drawback to the day was the length of set-up time with on-the-spot sound checks adding minutes to every set.

Scott Parsons sang Delta blues in a crisply focused, brassy middle register whose timbre was trumpet-like, but with a finish to most lines in the lower part of his voice, a rich bass-baritone sound full of furry resonance.

Six women of We’koqma’q, including Margaret Poulette, Lena Bernard, Phyllis GooGoo, Karlena Johnson, Louise Delisle and ex-Four The Moment alumna Andrea Currie, stood in a line, each with a frame drum, supporting their unison traditional singing with one beat per bar.

Shauntay Grant, with djembe drummer Wayne Hamilton, gave a capsule, autobiographical demonstration of where her poetry, spoken word and gospel artistry comes from — North Preston and away beyond that the African continent.

Mary Jane Lamond, assisted by guitarist Dave McKeogh and Cape Breton fiddler Gillian Boucher, sang Gaelic songs introduced with wit and tongue-in-cheek asperity. Boucher’s rhythmic accents and jazzy drive gave life even to her harmonic drones. She has one of the finest, most fluent, most flexible bow arms in the trade and it shows in the explosive energy she infuses into even the tiniest notes.

Sara and Kamila Nasr, with Ken Shorley on tabla, gave a short set distinguished by good arrangements, sweet voices beautifully blended and balanced and outstanding musicality.

The evening show in Convocation Hall began with El Viente Flamenco. Every time I see this group they are even better than I remember them.

Dancers Maral Perk and Megan Matheson, egged on by the wonderfully hair-curdling voice of Sean Harris and the astonishingly sharp handclapping of the entire cast, the ground rhythms of percussionist Tony Tucker, and above all by Bob Sutherby’s passionate flamenco guitar playing, balanced the fluidity and airy grace of their hand, arm and swaying torsos, with near violent heel and toe taps. They were dressed in white (Perk with black polka-dots) and their dances led to Evelyne Benais’s dramatic finish in black.

Kevin Roach on mandolin, Jude Pelley on bouzouki, fiddler Adam Iredale and guitarist Seth Peters played traditional Irish jigs and reels in Medieval and Renaissance styles where the melody instruments are in unison and the colour of the sound is a rich paste of spicy sonorities.

Stephen Fearing gave a classic set emphasizing the loneliness of the long-distance songwriter, always on the road, always thinking of the next chord and the next turn of phrase, his romantic partners torn, as one of his songs says, "between the man who married music and the man who married you".

Even a fellow human being, standing in the rain by the side of the road with a carjack in his hand, is sacrificed to the ironically compassionate song Fearing wrote about him (One Flat Tire). He drove on, apparently, rather than pull over and help out. Fearing ended the set with a powerful song — he is, after all, a great songwriter — about Johnny Cash and his demons.

Rob Lutes, a fine guitarist with a strong voice and good musical instincts, spoiled his set with overwritten original songs with endless numbers of verses. His best work, and it was very good, came in his cover of the Mose Scarlett version of It’s A Sin To Tell A Lie and Deep River Blues based on a half-remembered Doc Watson tune.

The highlight of this concert, and indeed of the day, came in the Jay and Molly Ungar Family Band set with daughter Ruth’s intensely passionate singing of I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry. The audience had to stand after that one, if only to cool down. Her father Jay Ungar, playing fiddle, is an extraordinarily gifted musician. The true sign of his musical genius is his unerring ability to draw maximum musical effect out of very simple materials. If you want to know what I mean, just listen to Ashokan Farewell again.

With wife Molly on guitar, daughter Ruth on vocals and second fiddle, Michael Merenda on banjo and drums and Wild Band of Snee’s Jacob Silver on bass, the Ungars played bluegrass and klezmer-tinged Celtic tunes combining several traditions with a particularly serendipitous musicality.

Chuck and Albert, to introduce the Wild Band appropriately, entered from the hall. Chuck, with a wooden platform at his waist, slung from straps around his neck, marched down the aisle with Albert sitting on his shoulder playing fiddle and step-dancing on the platform.

The Deep Roots Music Festival ended its third year with a mainstage concert in Convocation Hall on Sunday afternoon.

( spedersen@herald.ca)