Calgary Folk Festival 2025s Headliner Cake: The cherry on top to another splendid Folk Fest
By Mia Gilje, August 4 2025—
Anticipation ran rampant through the crowd while awaiting the final performance of the 2025 Calgary Folk Festival. Audience members eagerly chanted “We want CAKE!” until the speakers began playing a final boss-video game esc introduction — the perfect warm up for CAKE’s geek-rock music. However, I couldn’t help but agree with the kid behind me stating “this is the longest ever intro.”
Then finally, after the long wait, the main attraction walked on. Originally from Sacramento, California, CAKE is known for their ironic and comical lyrics, as well as their willingness to experiment with a wide range of genres. They produce music from new-wave pop to country and everything in between.
Opening up with their song “Frank Sinatra”, the melancholy and trumpet centred melody felt appropriate for the rainy weather that controlled most of the weekend. However, they ensured the performance remained lively, as bubbles began cascading across the stage and remained a statement for the rest of the show.
Lead Singer, John McCrea welcomed the audience stating, “We are CAKE and we are here to serve you”, and proved this by bringing out a t-shirt cannon. McCrea claimed they originally wanted to fill the gun with hot dogs – but was denied due to needing a food permit, he then rhetorically asked the audience “sports people can do it but music people can’t. […] If there’s someone here to circumvent this bullsh*t-”.
Later on in the set, they got the attendees to become a part of the act with their song “Sick of you.” McCrea split the crowd in half, drawing a line from the microphone to the very end of the grounds. Each half sang a separate part of the song at the same time to create a glorious polyphony. The overlay of hundreds singing the verse, while others sang the chorus was an overload of powerful and enchanting harmonies.
The audience wasn’t just simply split in half but they were also given characters to play building an engaging storyline.
While guitarist Gabe Nelson kept the baseline going, McCrea described half of the audience as the escapist side, the kinds of people that “when life becomes confusing or terrifying they turn to things like vampires, video games, parkour and online shopping experiences”.
As for the other half, they were to sing the “angry side of the chorus”, supposedly exploding “with powerful anger and outrage, […] when someone is wrong on the internet…[you lose] your shit.”
Like many artists performing the past week, CAKE dedicated a portion of their set to the late singer Ozzy Osbourne. They played Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs”, a beautiful way to pay tribute to one of the greatest influences in heavy metal history.
After a few more songs like their chart topping “The Distance” and “Short Skirt / Long Jacket” it was time for the final song of folk fest. That song being their cover of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, the most fitting finale. The crowd had truly survived this weekend, right to the final chorus rain poured down, soaking lawn chairs and dripping off makeshift camera rain sleeves. For myself, it was reminiscent of a testament to surviving my first summer as an editor, hopping from festival to festival and publishing photo after photo, article after article.
Following the annual tradition, other performers, staff members, and the lantern parade joined CAKE onstage singing and dancing one last time. It felt like the ending of a cheesy straight to DVD Disney movie, and it was absolutely perfect.
You could say it was the “cherry on top” of the final slice of Calgary Folk Festival 2025 (pun intended).