Maybe I got off on the wrong foot with this year's version of the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

Then again, maybe I didn't.

As I walked hurriedly through the festival parking lot on Thursday night, rushing to see Dobet Gnahoré, The Weakerthans and Michael Franti and Spearhead, my innate leftie sensibilities were assaulted when I came across an honest-to-goodness VIP parking lot at the Winnipeg Folk Festival.

Not just any VIP lot, either. This one offered status parking for people who drive Volkswagens. Old Beetles, new Beetles, beat-up Westfalias and top-of-the-line Jettas - about 40 varieties of "the people's car" were represented in this privileged vehicle pen, set a scant 30 metres or so from the festival's main gate and ticket booth.

"I don't think I like that idea," I said aloud as I walked by the lot, which was marked by navy sails featuring the circular VW logo.

Murmurs of assent came from the five or six people beside me, all of whom were slogging their gear in from points much further afield in the festival's multiple-acre lot.

Later on in the evening - after The Weakerthans' John K. Samson had publicly stated his opposition to a Point Douglas football stadium and musical satirist Geoff Berner had poked fun at Volkswagen during his brief, 'tweener set on the festival mainstage - the topic of VIP parking came up in the group of people with whom I was sitting.

"It's the complete antithesis of everything the Folk Festival is supposed to be about," said one. "We're all supposed to be equals here."

I couldn't have agreed more.

As much as I loved The Weakerthans' set - which now opens regularly with the aching strains of Bigfoot! from last year's Reunion Tour album - and as much as I loved the new, reggae-heavy-but-still-eminently danceable material from Franti's about-to-be-released new album, All Rebel Rockers, I left Birds Hill Park on Thursday night with anti-corporate fire in my belly, accompanied by civil disobedience fantasies involving red paint and shiny new VWs.

So that was how my festival started. with a hearty stirring of the old rabble-rouser in me. I didn't hit my usually serene festival stride until Sunday afternoon, when I spent 75 minutes listening to the spare, hauntingly off-kilter tunes of Georgia singer/songwriter Jim White (who played with three members of Olabelle, including keyboardist Glenn Patscha, a Southdale kid-turned-Brooklyn hipster).

The Friday and the Saturday of this year's festival were exercises in fits and starts for me. I didn't arrive at the park until 8 p.m. Friday and I wasn't get over the anxiety of rushing until I stood watching hippie-dippy rave kids take over the stage at the Big Bluestem tent, where New York City's DJ Rehka was mixing a bamboo-bangin' set of pounding bhangra music. And then it was time to go.

Saturday was a write-off due to the weather and the cancellation of Lee Perry. The one happy exception was a smoking Bur Oak concert by soul/funk masters The Dynamites, featuring fiery singer Charles Walker. Hot as the music was, I did realize I was gittin' on down while trying to raise up shelter for my kids out of three folding chairs, a plastic wagon and a tarp.

So it came down to Sunday being the day that was going to give me that old Folk Fest feeling again. Thankfully, it got off to a good start with Jim White and segued into an even better groove with the last part of a Snowberry Field concert featuring Charlie Louvin, Kathleen Edwards and Justin Townes Earle. The latter two performers seemed to get along quite naturally, and it looked as if Edwards made Earle's weekend when she dedicated a song to him.

"Of course," she said, as she introduced Six O'Clock News, "it is about a guy who winds up dead on the curb."

The Ottawa chanteuse carried this easy humour into her mainstage show, an energetic run through her three albums which settled easily onto a crowd that, after a difficult weekend, was looking for something of a release.

Thankfully Ray Davies was on-hand to provide that outlet, even if his set started ominously with sound problems. However, after a couple of run-throughs of Waterloo Sunset, Davies and his accompanying guitarist settled into a show that featured a few of his solo songs set against his more familiar Kinks material - including wonderful renditions of early singles A Well Respected Man and Dedicated Follower of Fashion.

By the time he was hitting songs such as All Day & All of the Night, Victoria and Lola, Davies had much of the festival-closing crowd on its feet, dancing and clapping along. There was perverse delight to be taken from hearing 10,000 people shouting at the top of their lungs about the girl "who walked like a woman and talked like a man," and it seemed about as fitting an end as any to this twisted weekend.