You won't have to go down in the woods or be in disguise for this picnic, but it wouldn't hurt
 to prepare for a few big surprises.

 On Saturday, Citadel Hill's Garrison Grounds will be besieged by Newfoundland's Great Big
 Sea for their annual Great Big Picnic, with a raft of talent including fellow islanders the Ennis
 Sisters, Montreal dance/pop tribe Bran Van 3000, brainy Winnipeg rockers the Watchmen,
 Toronto soul merchants the Philosopher Kings, guitarslinger Colin James and his Little Big
 Band and the godfathers of traditional Irish music, the Chieftains.

 With all that talent in one place, might there be a chance of some overlapping? Perhaps
 some guest vocals during the Chieftains set by the Ennis Sisters (who appear on the
 quasi-Chieftains album Fire in the Kitchen) or a Colin James mandolin cameo for
 Celtic-pop combo Great Big Sea?

 "We would be very disappointed if there wasn't," says Great Big Sea multi-instrumentalist
 Bob Hallett by phone from St. John's, fresh from a four-day stint at Denmark's massive
 Tonder Folk Festival.

 You see, Great Big Sea really does think of the picnics as massive get-togethers for friends
 and fans.

 "I ran into Martin Fay from the Chieftains in Denmark, and the first words out of his mouth
 were 'Alright, we're coming to play with you in Halifax next week, we're looking forward to
 it!'" enthuses Hallett.

 "These guys have been playing for 35 years, they've done every gig on the planet. When
 they say they're looking forward to it, that's a real compliment towards what they expect to
 happen in Halifax."

 "I believe it's a very big event," enthuses Chieftains flutist Matt Molloy from his home in
 County Mayo. "We haven't played it before, but we get on great with the lads.

 "It'll be good if the conditions are right. For our type of music, playing acoustic instruments, if
 the weather is good and the sound is good, it can work extremely well, and we're hoping
 that's how it's going to be."

 For those who are wondering, the forecast calls for mainly sunny skies with increasing cloud
 late in the day, with a 10 per cent chance of precipitation. Not bad odds.

 The bottom line for Great Big Sea is that the picnic allows them to control the environment
 they perform in while presenting the type of show they'd like to see themselves. Maybe even
 extending to some mystical power over the elements, for those who remember last year's
 picnic, when a drenching downpour suddenly became a bright, sunny day.

 They may be one of the East Coast's most successful bands, able to fill an arena at the
 drop of the hat, but at the end of the day, the members of Great Big Sea are still fans as
 well.

 "It's a chance for us to have our perfect concert, y'know?" says Hallett. "When you're a kid
 you're dreaming about your favourite bands, 'Oh, I'd like to see that, I'd like to see this,' and
 the Great Big Picnic's a chance for us to bring these acts and make it really eclectic. What
 can we do that'd be really interesting and really fun and would make an amazing concert?

 "It's not like we look for who's gonna sell the most tickets, or who'll let us put up the price
 another five bucks. We just think of how we can make this the most entertaining event we
 possibly can. I'm going to be there too watching these bands, and I want to enjoy it!"

 The Great Big Picnic in Halifax is a co-production between local promoters Brookes
 Diamond and Sea Dog Productions, but the quality of the finished product rests firmly in the
 hands of its headliners, a responsibility Hallett says he and his bandmates take very
 seriously.

 "We're pretty involved," he says. "Our name is on it and if it sucks, people are going to
 blame us. We're pretty concerned; we do a couple of these a year and we want to make
 sure they're as good as they can possibly be. Everything from site logistics to bands to set
 times to making the tickets as cheap as they can possibly be, everything in this the band is
 involved in.

 "We might not be the ones on the phone ordering the sound system, but we're involved in as
 many elements as we possibly can to make this special for the audience. The Picnic is
 bigger than the band and we work very hard to make sure it happens."

 The closest comparisons one can draw to the Great Big Picnic are touring festivals like
 EdgeFest, Summersault and even Lilith Fair, but for now, the picnic will remain a special
 East Coast phenomenon.

 "Our goal was to put on good concerts in Atlantic Canada, and that's what we've managed
 to do," explains Hallett. "I don't think we've looked at it going a lot further than that. To take a
 show like that on the road means everything else disappears for three months and your
 whole career becomes these big concerts.

 "We enjoy playing all these different venues and playing to all kinds of different people and
 doing it in different provinces and countries. To lose that would be to lose what's special
 about Great Big Sea."

 Speaking of different countries, Great Big Sea are getting set to wash over the U.S., with
 the release of a compilation CD, Rant and Roar, and a string of American dates
 immediately following the picnic.

 The band has played the States before, and Hallett is confident they won't have to tinker with
 their sound or image to capture new fans south of the border.

 "The key to our image in Canada is that we have no image," he explains.

 "Our performance persona is our real personas, so we didn't want to be packaged as some
 sort of Pogues-ish revival or some crap like that. We wanted them to sell us the same way
 we've been portrayed at home, as four guys on stage and really enjoying it.

 "We had the advantage in Canada that even if people didn't know our music, they knew
 where we were from and they understood the history of Newfoundland culture being
 successful in other places.

 "In the States, they hardly know where Canada is, let alone Newfoundland, so we're starting
 from zero in that regard. But people who hear it tend to like it, so the trick is getting them to
 hear it. So, in the States, we're doing a lot of work on the live side of things."

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