Festival Man

Written by Geoff Berner

Narrated by Toby Berner

Maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette makes a final destructive bid for glory at the Calgary Folk Festival.

Travel in the entertaining company of a man made of equal parts bullshit and inspiration, in what is ultimately a twisted panegyric to the power of strange music to change people from the inside out.

At turns funny and strangely sobering, this “found memoir” is a picaresque tale of inspired, heroic deceit, incompetence, and — just possibly — triumph. Follow the flailing escapades of maverick music manager Campbell Ouiniette at the Calgary Folk Festival, as he leaves a trail of empty liquor bottles, cigarette butts, bruised egos, and obliterated relationships behind him. His top headlining act has abandoned him for the Big Time. In a fit of self-delusion or pure genius (or perhaps a bit of both), Ouiniette devises an intricate scam, a last hurrah in an attempt to redeem himself in the eyes of his girlfriend, the music industry, and the rest of the world. He reveals his path of destruction in his own transparently self-justifying, explosive, profane words, with digressions into the Edmonton hardcore punk rock scene, the Yugoslavian Civil War, and other epicentres of chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ECW
• Release date: Aug 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781459747944

Geoff Berner

Geoff Berner is the author of Festival Man and the graphic novel We Are Going To Bremen To Be Musicians. A singer-songwriter and accordion player, he has released six albums and toured in seventeen countries. He lives in Vancouver.