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In 2009 the Ottawa Bluesfest proved to be even more of an endurance test than usual due mostly to the introduction of their short-lived Bluesfest In The Byward component, which saw the festival augmented with a free outdoor stage set up in Ottawa’s downtown Market area plus all kinds of late-night downtown nightclub bookings taboot.
And so it was that I woke up in the mid-afternoon of July 13th still reeling from the spectacular show Kid Koala had put on at Capital Music Hall the previous night. I got my work done and with one eye on the increasingly discouraging weather I made my way down to the Bluesfest site at LeBreton Flats to catch Stone Temple Pilots.
Being a Monday it was the only evening that the festival was running with just a single stage in operation and I was curious to see how many people were going to make it out on a school night. I noticed the bicycle valet wasn’t very busy so I expected a humble crowd at the mainstage, but when I got there I was surprised to find a phalanx of rabid fans stretching to the back of the field. Up on the stage lead singer Scott Weiland (dressed all in white á la Freddie Mercury and alternating between microphone and megaphone) led the Stone Temple Pilots through a raucous rock and roll show from atop his very own stagefront riser.
It was a full-on balls-to-the-walls fists-in-the-air concert awash in smoke machines, big-show lighting, and a megatron behind the band showing everything from car chases and nuclear mushroom clouds to randomized psychedelic patterns. I had run into the Bluesfest’s head electrician earlier in the festival and he told me that the lighting output on their Big Bank Sponsored Stage was equal to the mainstage at the enormous Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. And it seemed like the Stone Temple Pilots were using every single watt they could get their mitts on, much to the joy of the enthusiastic crowd. There was even some crowd surfing as the band raged through some of their bigger hits like Plush and (of course) Interstate Love Song. It was definitely a night to leave the lawnchair at home.
It was also the final night of the Bluesfest In The Byward downtown contingent and I wasn’t going to let it pass me by. I was pleased to see that the Great Lake Swimmers were playing at my favourite downtown venue (Maverick’s), but I just had to see the Tom Fun Orchestra first. Eight Cape Bretoners crowded onto the stage at Pier 21 and drenched a hyper audience with sheets of sound that – while never fully abandoning their entrenched downeast flavour – touched on styles that I overheard variably described as “ska”, “acoustic dance”, “electric east coast”, and my favourite from Lindsay the Merch Girl, “cluster rock”. Call it what you will, the Tom Fun Orchestra hosted a thickly textured, rollicking good time that somehow managed to avoid clichéd pandering.
Over at Mavericks I walked in on a wholly different experience: an utterly silent sold-out crowd who watched in rapt attention as Byward mainstage headliner Serena Ryder sat in with the Great Lake Swimmers for the last half of their quietly intense set. She has appeared on more than one of their albums and proved to be a focal point on this night as the band worked through an engaging string of subtle hook-laden ambient folk tunes. The wall-to-wall audience stared in awe at what we all collectively intuited was a very special evening of music, and it proved an excellent ending to the inaugural Bluesfest In The Byward exponent, as many in the crowd walked away from Mavericks with a familiar show-of-the-festival look smacked across their faces.
The end of the late night stuff was bittersweet. Though it provided for some of the best sets of the fest (naturally; it’s so much easier to connect with an audience in a bar than it is on a makeshift concert field) the late-night shows also took up a significant chunk of my sleeping/regeneration time, and sometimes a guy just needs to lay down for a spell, live music bedamned. Just typing that sentence makes me feel old but then, staying up until daybreak after seeing a bunch of live music night after night does tend to age a body somewhat.
Especially one with such high mileage.
Todd Man Out 