At Jericho Beach Park on Friday, July 17. Continues through Sunday, July 19

The Vancouver Folk Music Festival has always encompassed both the extraordinary and the inexplicable, but the proportions may vary. So far this year the balance seems right, which bodes well for those who plan to take advantage of the perfect weather—and a particularly strong Sunday program—to hit Vancouver’s most scenic music festival this weekend.

In the inexplicable column, we do have to ask why festival artistic director Linda Tanaka chose to keep Pokey LaFarge off the Main Stage on Friday night—although it’s possible she just didn’t realize how good he and his recently expanded band have gotten since making their festival debut in 2011. If it’s possible to talk about a “full house” in a flexible outdoor environment, that’s what LaFarge played to at Stage 3. It was standing room only—or, more particularly, dancing room only, as that’s what a lot of the spectators were doing, urged on by the Missouri singer’s hot blend of swing, Texas polkas, and hillbilly jazz.

They certainly seemed to be having more fun than those in the big field, who sat through back-to-back shows of indie rock: Said the Whale’s inoffensive pop-flavoured variety, followed by Hawksley Workman’s intermittently thrilling but excessively self-indulgent brand.

LaFarge has outgrown his earlier novelty appeal as a Pee-wee Herman lookalike playing ‘30s cartoon music. He’s now emerged as a master showman fronting a gifted and subtly subversive six-piece band; did anyone else notice guitarist Adam Hoskins pushing perilously close to abstraction during some of his dashing solos?

New Zealand songwriter Marlon Williams, on the other hand, appears to have emerged in the pantheon of the folk music greats fully formed, although he no doubt enjoyed an unobserved apprenticeship on the shores of the Tasman Sea. The young musician won the first spontaneous standing ovation of the day while sharing a workshop with two of the best, Richard Thompson and Mary Gauthier. Many of those on their feet had probably never heard an old-school Italian tenor—there was something of Mario Lanza here, along with perhaps some mellifluous strains of Polynesian singing—but Williams’ ability to harness those glorious sounds to the old folk ballad “When I Was a Young Girl” seemed new, and impressive.

Gaultier contributed the best song of the afternoon in the form of her tear-jerking “How You Learn to Live Alone”, complete with a sobbing, impassioned solo from Italian violinist Michele Gazich. Thompson pleased longtime fans with a slightly shaky rendition of his rarely performed “Hard Luck Stories”, which gave the workshop its title, but didn’t really shine until his own later Main Stage set, a typically masterful lesson in polyphonic guitar lines, incisive poetry, and surprisingly playful singing. Perversely, though, Thompson decided to end with “something totally inappropriate” in the form of the downbeat “I Misunderstood”, perhaps realizing that no matter how wonderful his skills, he couldn’t really compete with a sunset that offered at least 50 shades of scarlet.

After that, the Melbourne Ska Orchestra couldn’t induce this sun-dazed listener to stay, but the big, brassy band provided a wonderfully bouncy soundtrack for the long slog up the hill to the car. Not extraordinary, not inexplicable, but welcome nonetheless.