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Writing daily reviews for the Ottawa Bluesfest wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. Though it was essentially a volunteer position with entirely self-imposed parameters, the benefits of a free pass and occasional semi-exclusive stage and artist access was balanced against bouts of conspicuously long hours and some tortuously hard choices. Take July 9th, 2011 for example:
It was a Saturday which meant the festival’s five stages would be busy from lunchtime until 11pm so a long day was afoot. I made it onsite early enough to impress the boss* and caught a pair of back-to-back honest-to-goodness blues acts for my efforts. First up was an American guitarist named Larry McCray who led his swampy organ/bass/drum ensemble through a string of distorted I/IV/V progressions that paired perfectly with the early sunny afternoon. I ducked out after a while and heard a totally different version of the exact same thing over on the Subway Stage at the hands of five-time British Music Award winner Michael Powers, who preferred a clean tone out of his tweed Fender amp. Still I/IV/V’s and nothing but, but really, what isn’t?
I met a crew of friends at Powers’ set and we moved en masse to a stand of trees alongside the Hard Rock Stage where we picnicked a chunk of the mid-afternoon away to the contemporary-Christian Jack Johnson-meets-John Mayer gospel-pop sound of Shawn McDonald. He was fine, but the company I was keeping was the main draw.
We all eventually realized exactly that and got out of there, transplanting our social gathering to an open spot of lawn back at the Subway Stage where the Spam Allstars were holding court. The Miami-based six-piece groove-a-tron was much more our thing, a percussion-heavy Caribbean-influenced funky acid-jazz looping hip-hop electronica band that gave us a reason to remain on our feet as the sun began to dip into the river behind us.
Hunger pangs led me to the mainstage area just before sunset, where I sat at a picnic table with a greasy pile of fish & chips and enjoyed Erykah Badu’s ultra-chill R&B as a sonic backdrop. Such is the festival experience (thought I, as I dipped fries into ketchup and serenely surveyed the crowd). While one person experiences a moment of music-is-life artistic transcendence reacting to Badu’s subtle jazzy-cum-hip-hop assertion that she was “…bigger than religion, bigger than government…” another sits a few metres away casually munching away on something as mundane as a hamburger, or in this case: beer-battered haddock.
Once darkness was complete it was time for the evening’s headliners, and with several highly anticipated acts mounting several stages simultaneously to kick off the evening’s swan songs you know I could only be at The Tragically Hip, right? And of course I was. Kingston’s favourite sons started the show with one of their countless mass-singalong’s (Blow at High Dough) and off we went.
Gord Downie (1964-2017) was the consummate host in his straw hat and black vest, literally introducing the crowd to his mic stand, which he used as prop, tool, and foil in an overtly theatrical show that was peppered with his signature non-sequiturs and decorated with slippery guitar work from a sunglassed Bobby Baker and his crispy Paul Reed Smith guitar.
The band was brilliant out of the gate and things got better with every three-chord anthem including Grace, Too, Ahead By a Century, and In View while Downie pranced around the stage like a caged thespian and playing his mic stand like a musical instrument.
But wait a second dude (you are probably thinking), what about all this torture you were typing about earlier? This all sounds pretty sweet, actually. And yes, sweet it was, my good reader. But imagine this: you and your buds are high-fiving and cheersing with plastic cups overflowing with contraband beers and The Hip are just launching into Poets and you think, “I should go.”
Huh? Wha?
“Yeah, I should go,” you hear yourself telling yourself. “Shpongle is playing on the other stage and apparently the kids really like him. I really should go over there for a while so I can write something about his set for the review.” And then you walk away from The Tragically Hip, away from all your friends and their knapsack full of sneak-ins to go see a psy-trance DJ that plays music from a hermitically-sealed booth mounted atop a 25-foot high flashing mandala tower called a “Shpongletron”.
That, my friends, is “sacrifice”. “Torturous,” even. Sure, not “hard work” but certainly “hard”. Made even moreso by the salient fact that it was I and only I who told me that I had to write about Shpongle. The Bluesfest people gave me totally free reign over who and what to cover (so long as it was all positive) so it was me who forced me to leave one of my favourite bands during a fiery performance only to stand amongst strangers listening to an unknown entity playing a style of music I find marginally interesting at best. Imagine!
Now, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea when I admit that I really, really liked Shpongle – so much so that I couldn’t tear myself away from his set to return to The Hip as I had planned to do. 3D images projecting onto the laser-emitting tower made for a spectacle that was endlessly enthralling and blatantly engaging. The music was a mishmash of techno world beats that drew on themes that ranged from Indian to Irish, and it complimented the spectacle perfectly in an audio-visual meld that was positively hypnotic and kept me rooted in place for nearly an hour.
But really, the fact that I really enjoyed Shpongle shouldn’t take away from my great sacrifice at all. In fact, it only makes things worse, as I ultimately had to force myself away from the wonderfully bombastic Shpongle in order to catch the final two songs of The Tragically Hip. Oh, the torture!
Though the pair were a pretty awesome capper to what was probably an amazing set; Little Bones and Locked in the Trunk of a Car. Epic. As the lights went up to end another Saturday night Gord left us with two good pieces of advice rolled up into one final Downie-ism.
“Enjoy your summer and drive the f***ing speed limit!”
In summary, my sense of responsibility forced me to have my butt and my free pass onsite for 10+ hours seeing great blues, acidy grooves, and lilting jazzy R&B before raging out to some fantastic Tragically Hip and experiencing a new wonder in Shpongle. Not bad, though missing out on the middle chunk of The Hip’s set still feels deplorable.
Oh, the things I do to keep me placated.
*That would be me. Like almost everything in my life, it is I alone who sets the tasks and expectations of the day’s chores. Unfortunately my forte is more geared towards assigning and critiquing work – aka “management” – than actually getting things done. As a result we undergo our fair share of labour disputes, work-to-rule situations, and outright strikes around here but somehow, some way the widgets keep going out the door on time.
Todd Man Out 