Vancouver writers, poets and musicians are flocking to Gabriola Island this weekend and next for the Poetry Gabriola Festival. This is the fourth annual spoken-word and storytelling fest on the island, but this year there is much more than just voice.

Gabbing will mix with finger-picking as Texas' Charalambides perform in the Great Room of the Surf Lodge this Saturday night. I admit, having seen Charlambides perform once before in the appropriately freezing cold Butchershop, the thought of hearing their ethereal song cycles spin unknowingly throughout a "great room" on a rocky coastline - well, that in itself sold me. As a bonus, Glaswegian singer (and Will Oldham & Jason Molina collaborator) Alasdair Roberts performs on this bill, opening the festival with his take on traditional songs mixed with his own magical blend of guitar and voice.

If you miss out on the opening this weekend, due to a perfectly valid excuse like the Eastside Culture Crawl for example, fear not! The festival moves into high-gear the weekend of November 23-25, with more than a dozen events to take in.

Vancouver is blessed with an abundance: fertile Fraser Valley soil brimming with produce to the east, the bounty of the Salish Sea to the west, the blessed fruits and wines of the Okanagan some 400km inland and those famous Pemberton potatoes a few hours north.

Why then do we still find nothing but New Zealand Galas in our grocery stores in the midst of our fall apple harvest? Why eat imported European cheeses when Little Qualicum Cheeseworks is only a ferry ride away? Why is everyone buying Little Brown Mushrooms when there are so many diverse wild species to dine upon?

It's enough to make you want to just go out there and pick your own damn food. In the summertime that's actually not a difficult task to muster. Many farms offer tours and 'you-pick' possibilities. Come the grey skies and damp chill of the winter months and you may wonder if there can be any escape from the clutches of a Buy Low lineup.

Enter Vancouver's Winter Farmers Market. Now in it's second season, and expanded to twice monthly due to demand, this one-stop fresh fix happens down at the WISE Hall (1882 Adanac) with the first of the season this Saturday, November 10th.

Dundas, Ontario's Caribou - Dan Snaith's one-man recording visionary - brought his four-piece band to town on a cool Devil's Night to an oddly decorated and packed Richard's on Richards.

With the now classic dual-drum setup front and centre facing each other in a twisted new gladiator style and room in the back for the string slingers, Caribou has attitude from the get go. Trouble is, once the show began and the precise technicalities of the songs unfurled there was a bit too much brain leaving a lack of the essential soulful punch.

It was my third time seeing Caribou here in Vancouver (albeit once when he was still called Manitoba). Although Snaith's music has improved brilliantly from album to album, the live show was lacking this time around. The music never transcended from the stage enough to really captivate and enrapture the audience. Trust me, with the warped visuals blanketing the band in technicolour paired with sheer volume, this is music that should be capable of doing just that.

Mushrooms. Fungi. Fantastic foodstuff or forest fodder? Are some mushrooms really the "Food of the Gods", responsible for the spark that began the evolutionary track from primate to human as ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna has suggested? Perhaps they are what some consider to be the World's Largest Organism? A specimen found in Oregon actually measures a whopping 2200 acres in area - that's about 140,000 Vancouver-sized one-bedroom condos! Or maybe mushrooms are just tasty morsels and nothing more?

Diverging viewpoints can battle it out amongst the fungal elite with a visit to Vancouver Mycological Society's Annual Mushroom Show this weekend.

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This Saturday, October 27th when you are done battling zombies on Commercial Drive, head downtown and find a place of reprieve from all things ghastly in the night. You'll dodge a few of the 'undead' down on Granville Street (or nurses in hot pants, guys in granny dresses, etc), but by poking into the rear door at 1067 Granville you'll be treated to the sublime sounds of Sandro Perri, Fond of Tigers and Veda Hille.

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It was indeed a family affair at Richard's last night as the rambling crew of nomads known as Akron/Family rolled into town for their third time in a year and a half. Swelling from the core four, the NYC-based band have picked up a few extra players on the road and a pile more in the club. The result is a seven-piece band that can bring the noise - in a big way.

Cacophonous moments of bliss exorcised from their guitars went from sudden bursts between pin-drop quiet to walls of trance-inducing noise stretching for little eternities. The songs never stayed still, letting space breathe throughout the music and it changed up, a lot. I've never seen a band break out a bodhran, a few First Nations drums, djembe, Tibetan bells and penny whistles before silencing the crowd with a cappella harmonies that were just as crushing. More after the jump...