As he prepares to head out on the road, Danny Michel has a lot on his mind—including the lamentable state of his semirural homestead near Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. “I’m sitting here looking out at my back yard and the grass is, like, up to my knees,” he tells the Straight. “I’m thinking, ‘I have so much stuff to do to take care of my life—and I’m leaving in the morning for a month and a half.’ ”

Making hay will have to wait, however. Not only is Michel embarking on the most ambitious tour of his career, he’s also having a small fight over whether his musical accomplices will be allowed to bring their percussion instruments into the country. The primero and segunda—roughly equivalent to a conga and a kick-drum—are all right, and so is the donkey’s jawbone that serves as a scraper. The federal Department of Fisheries, however, is taking issue over the turtle-shell rattles, claiming that they’re subject to international trade restrictions on endangered species.

“We’re dealing with stuff that I never even knew existed,” Michel says with a sigh. But he quickly cheers up when he thinks about his upcoming shows with the Belize-based musicians of the Garifuna Collective.

“It’s taken years of work,” he says of the collaboration that produced his 10th studio album, Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me. “It’s been like my blood, sweat, and tears for two years now. Now we’re touring, and putting that together has been unbelievably complicated and tough. But it’s worth it every time we hit the stage.”

That’s easy to hear on the remarkably warm and vital release, universally hailed as a career highlight for the 42-year-old singer-songwriter. It’s the culmination of Michel’s long-standing interest in the culture of the Garifuna, Afro-Caribbean descendants of shipwrecked slaves. It’s also been a fortunate roll of the dice for the Canadian musician, who had no idea what would result when he first entered the studio with his rootsy bandmates.

“There was no plan,” he stresses. “We had no idea what we were doing, and halfway through we were still going, ‘Is this good, or is this terrible?’ We didn’t know! But it also meant that everyone was trying really hard. Everyone was trying to maximize the talent in the room.”

Consider that mission accomplished—and expect a lot of joy to beam off the Vancouver Folk Music Festival stage when Michel and the Garifuna Collective come together again.