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On August 4th, 2018 I spent a full Saturday at the wonderful and unique Blue Skies Music Festival. It had been my habit in my recent semi-regular attendance to shun the hard-to-find weekend passes in favour of day passes, and y’know, I kinda liked it.
Back in the old days I couldn’t imagine going to Blue Skies without spending every last minute of the weekend onsite*. But as time marched on I started skipping a year here and there, then I started dating m’lady who’s hallowed and much-celebrated birthday often falls on or near the festival date, and eventually I started giving the day pass thing a try.
And so it was that an eager and semi-early departure from Ottawa led to m’lady and I joining the happy and relaxed Blue Skies parking queue shortly after noon o’clock. When the parking guy noticed that our car had four-wheel drive he directed us into a precarious parking spot that proved to be one of the closest to the gate. We quickly got our wristbands and meandered straight to The Finger where all our friends were camped with tents and tarps and kitchens and chairs and coolers overflowing with food and drink. Despite being mere daytrippers we were instantly set up to the nines!
Hugs and handshakes all ‘round, we dropped off our day-bag and our meagre cooler and made moves to catch the final workshop slot of the day.
One of the big things we day-passers miss out on is the bulk of the excellent and incredibly varied workshops that occupy the site’s half-dozen lean-to’s and teepees during the mornings and early afternoons. I borrowed a festival program and found a workshop dedicated to the music of Oliver Schroer. I announced that I had found my jam and several of us pounced.
Earlier I described Blue Skies as a “unique” festival and it is in so many ways. To wit: I can’t think of another place where you could gather fifty people that know who the late, great Oliver Schroer was, let alone eight musicians that could play music by the Canadian improvising fiddle phenom from memory.
And no wonder, at least half the players under the lean-to’s flapping canvas roof had either played professionally with the World’s Tallest Freestanding Fiddle Player or had been students of his.
(And what a teacher Schroer was! I first met Oliver when I booked him to open a Don Ross concert I was promoting. The next morning he was gracious enough to come to the improvisation class I was teaching at Carleton University, where he led the students through a three-hour workshop that still resonates with me today. Years later as he lay on his deathbed deteriorating from leukemia, Oliver Schroer recorded his final album: a series of songs composed for and in the style of each of his current students. You should look the guy up, he was pretty cool.)
After the workshop I spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing with good friends, eating every bit of food offered to me, and accepting m’lady’s offer to do the driving on our return trip to Ottawa at the end of the day with thanks, grace, and an ice-cold beer.
The day turned to night and the evening’s acts starting up on the nearby stage, but otherwise little changed. Aside from a one-song jaunt to the concert pitch just to say I “saw” some music I stayed at camp and stuck to hanging out, bobbing all the while to anonymous live music emanating from the good old picturesque Blue Skies stage.
Whether it was a delicate acoustic duo like Hannah Sanders & Ben Savage, who took up the middle slot in the five-act evening, or a boisterous party band like Les Rats d’Swompe, who followed them**, our usual haunt up there in The Finger was well within earshot of the stage so we were able to catch all the music without leaving the comfort of our…okay, their campchairs.
But alas, before the last act bid her final goodnight and well before the legendary Blue Skies campfire jams began the two of us were on our way back to Ottawa, m’lady at the wheel just like she had promised. As we headed south to hook up with highway 7 I could tell she was tired so to keep her awake I made it my drunky mission to regale her with a continuous stream of fascinating and hilarious anecdotes.
Once we turned east on the 7 for the straight-shot home we were rewarded with the biggest, roundest, yellowest, most incredible Hollywood-esque rising moon you could possibly imagine. Wow, it was just so magnificent.
Just another stroke of Blue Skies magic.
*Stingy as I was with my Blue Skies time, in all my years I’ve never once left the site to take a dip in the nearby watering hole, a common excursion for BS regulars on sunny afternoons.
**I have the program so the anonymous needn’t remain so. Turns out in addition to the fore-mentioned acts I also saw…okay, heard a vocal trio called Fruiting Bodies and a Cuban pianist leading his Miguel de Armas Quartet, while the headliner was an Afro-Brazilian singer named Flávia Nascimento.
Todd Man Out 