FESTIVAL EXPRESS CHARTS WILD CROSS-CANADA RIDE

"Are we in Calgary already?'' laments a heavily intoxicated Janis
Joplin on a CN train coasting through Alberta."I don't think we can
quit now. It's gotten too good.''

Too good indeed.

The scene is from Festival Express, a new documentary which premiered
at the Toronto International Film Festival about a five-day train ride
carrying some of the greatest musicians of all time in the summer of
1970.

Aside from Joplin, the passenger list included the Grateful Dead, the
Band, Buddy Guy, Traffic, Tom Rush, Sha Na Na and Ian and Sylvia Tyson.

While cruising through the Canadian landscape, the artists partied
hard together on the train, with copious amounts of marijuana and
booze flowing freely. Cameras captured countless impromptu jam
sessions which provide incredible insight into the legendary
performers and are a sonic feast for fans.

"It was one of the greatest jam sessions ever. A party that was going
across Canada on this train,'' explains the Band's Rick Danko in the
film.

"It was a pretty wild ride. It was one helluva party. It was sex,
drugs and rock 'n' roll at its best.''

But the story of how Festival Express got to the big screen is almost
as mythical as some of the performers profiled.

"It's been an underground phenomenon for 33 years,'' says executive
producer Garth Douglas. "What went on on that train and during that
concert might have been perceived at the time as being completely over
the top and out of line and rock and roll madness. We look at it from
the perspective of 2003 and see it as being kind of sweet and charming
and innocent.''

But the public has never been able to see what happened because the
materials have been in hiding for so long. Rumours about the existence
of the footage persisted among the documentary and music industry,
explains producer Gavin Poolman, whose father Willem, a Dutch-Canadian
currently living in Toronto, was the producer back in 1970.

At the time, a substantial financial loss from the show, coupled with
Joplin's death and the disbanding of the Band, made Willem drop plans
to turn the footage into a feature film. With his dad's permission,
the old footage was recovered by his son and some friends in 1994.

Growing up, he remembers using the boxes as goal posts for street
hockey.

"Literally, we just made a feature film out of the film cans that were
in our garage that we used to shoot ice hockey pucks at,'' said Poolman.

After viewing those films, the producers looked for the original
negatives which they found in the Canadian National Film Archives,
where they were taken into receivership after the original production
company went belly up.

Now that the footage has been compiled, fans can follow the CN train
from Toronto to Winnipeg to Calgary, where the artists perform at
outdoor venues for thousands of fans.

Priced at $14 for two days and 20 bands, the festival -- organized by
Ken Walker and Thor Eaton -- seems like a bargain by today's
standards. But like the era, concer goers were filled with protest
fever, thanks to the May 4th Movement. The group pamphleted the cities
in advance urging people to demand free entrance to the shows. In
Toronto, as the footage shows, a near riot ensued, prompting the
Grateful Dead to stage a free show in a nearby park.

"It's one of the quintessential Canadian films about what it was like
to live here at the time,'' says Poolman.

"It documents events that took place in Canada that have never
happened anywhere else. What other country would have let that happen?
Canada's wonderfully naive sometimes in that way.''

To celebrate its debut, the film's producers invited some of the
musicians who travelled on the train for a reunion party last night at
Toronto's historic Palais Royale.

The artists had a chance to reminisce about the train ride and all the
hijinks that went on, including a pit stop in Saskatoon after the bar
car ran out of booze.

The 90-minute documentary -- which will no doubt find a home next to
other beloved music films like Gimme Shelter, Woodstock and The Last
Waltz -- is generating a great deal of buzz in the music community.

That's probably because fans don't often get to see footage of a
stoned Joplin singing with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Rick Danko. The
experience left such an impression on the artists that the Grateful
Dead wrote three songs in homage to the trip, including Might As Well,
in 1976.

Directed by Grammy winner Bob Smeaton, whose work includes Hendrix: Band of
Gypsies, the film will hit theatres sometime next spring.