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On July 10th, 2009 the weather was in full co-operation as I biked down to LeBreton Flats under a perfect blue sky for night three of the Ottawa Bluesfest. No sooner had I locked up my bike when I ran into two-thirds of Monkeyjunk and hitched a ride in their golf cart to the Blacksheep Stage. I was intending to check out The Dodos entire set and though I found their aggressive drum kit/guitar/xylophone assault engaging, when I saw Steve Marriner and the Texas Horns duck into one of the backstage trailers I saw opportunity knock.
What a treat it was to be a fly on the wall and hear these consummate professionals cram a set’s worth of rehearsal into about ten minutes. I’ve been a musician for a long time and have played with lots of people – I know my shinola – and I can’t tell you how impressive it was to watch the Texas Horns in action. You sing these guys a line and they play it back at you in harmony, and you don’t have to go over it twice. The Texas Horns get it right the first time every time, and Ottawa music fans are very fortunate that they make a habit of skulking around backstage at the Bluesfest every year looking for people to sit-in with.
This was all in preparation for the surprise addition of a Monkeyjunk Power Hour. Previously the Bluesfest had always booked The Tony D Band to host the regular Power Hour jam session but this was the year that Tony’s new band Monkeyjunk took over the slot. They were joined by piano player extraordinaire David Maxwell, Zeke Gross on sax and of course the Texas Horns. Sitting in on this night were the Brothers Chaffey, Marty Sobb and others It was such a joy to hear the tiny trailer rehearsal jam come to fruition onstage. Music is cool.
The sound bleed from the Hard Rock Café Stage drew me over to where the raw energy of Okkervil River was dishing out a triple-guitar unison assault that was blowing the minds of those crowded around the stage. I heard more than one person say it was the best set they had seen so far at the festival and I’ll concede that I wish I had caught more of them, but I decided to cut and run so I could hit the mainstage area for Bluesfest favourite Sam Roberts. As Roberts tore through his signature hit Bridge To Nowhere I perused the vast array of food kiosks lining the field.
The options were pretty impressive. Concert sushi? Really?!?! The pulled pork sandwich looked enormous, plus there was fish ‘n chips and ribs and mini-donuts…this wasn’t your grandma’s festival concession area. There was even…could it be? Works Burger! Fate had decided.
After my burger I was facing a triple-conflict to close out my evening at LeBreton flats. It was a decision so difficult that I decided not to make one. Instead I started at the Subway Stage with the brilliant Steve Earle who was paying tribute to the even brillianter Townes Van Zandt. Earle was playing solo acoustic tracks from his recent album that was entirely a collection of Townes’ compositions and yet I somehow pulled myself away. I stopped in briefly at the Blacksheep Stage for some classic Afro-beat courtesy of King Sunny Ade & His African Beats and once again somehow pulled myself away so I could spend the bulk of the evening watching Jackson Browne on the mainstage.
If you’re at all like me you have Jackson Browne’s Running On Empty album ingrained in your psyche, and though he didn’t touch that album until the final two numbers (the set closing Running On Empty and The Load Out/Stay encore), every song he played on this night would have fit in perfectly on that brilliant album, and of course during those last two songs Browne had the entire field on their feet.
My goodness The Load Out is such a great song. Finally, a love song for the roadies (with apologies to Shel Silverstein’s Roland the Roadie)!
Being a Friday night there was nothing stopping me from heading down to the Market for another run at the brand-new Bluesfest In The Byward. I headed straight for the back patio of Fat Tuesday’s where the Mumbo Jumbo Voodoo Combo laid down a great set opening for zydeco great C.J. Chenier. It took until near the end of Chenier’s set, but he eventually got most of the crowd onto the dancefloor shaking their collective booties to his impossible-to-ignore rhythms before capping the night with encore after encore after encore.
I somehow got myself invited back to the band’s afterparty where C.J. was kind enough to give me an accordion lesson. His father invented zydeco (and named it)! We talked about the specifics of the genre until the wee hours. His guitar player Tim (Dickie’s Betts’ nephew…or was he his cousin?) maintained that the main difference between blues and zydeco guitar is the rhythm, beyond that the two genres (from his perspective) were essentially the same. Tim posited that it was the rapid chunka-chunka-chunka rhythm that takes a typically sad blues and transforms it into unmistakably happy zydeco. C.J. himself interjected that the timbre of the accordion plays a large part in it, and there’s no sense arguing with C.J. Chenier when you’re talking about zydeco.
Eventually there was talk of food so I pointed them towards Ottawa’s late-nite greasy spoon musician/scallywag magnet Mello’s (don’t look for it; it’s not there anymore) and got my butt home before sunrise. When the sun came up it would be Saturday and there was always a whole lot of music to take in on a Bluesfest Saturday.
Todd Man Out 