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On June 26th, 2018 I hit up the Ottawa Jazz Festival for a highly anticipated evening that very much exceeded my already-lofty expectations.
The mainstage headliner was Alison Krauss, and her great-as-usual country/bluegrassy self provided an easy candidate for set-of-the-festival before getting completely obliterated by Jerry Douglas and his band in the late-night tent just a half-hour later.
Talk about set-of-the-festival!
It didn’t hurt that I was as front-and-centre as one could get in the already-intimate venue. When Jerry Douglas and the band came onstage they were just a few feet from my roomy perch up front, and when they started playing I knew there was no way I would be able to go anywhere, not even for a moment, not even for a beer.
(Which probably saved me a bathroom run too, so there ya go.)
Douglas was a monstrously good Dobro player, that much I already knew from seeing him play before, both as a sideman to Alison Krauss and as his own bandleader, but he had clearly been taking things farther afield than his usual rootsy settings generally called for. For this tour Jerry had not only collected himself a crackerjack pile of musicians but he put them through some pretty progressive paces.
In short, Jerry Douglas and his band sounded not unlike the prog-grass that Bela Fleck and the Flecktones dished out a couple of nights later at the same festival, but to be honest Douglas and his boys pre-out-Flecked the Flecktones. I mean, these guys were absolutely stellar from one side of the stage to the other, it never got anything less than jaw-droppingly good, and I was enthralled until (and including) the final note.
Very, very special mention has to go to the young electric guitar player on the gig. He was one of those rare ultra-unique players, the kind that makes you wonder what they listened to growing up. Every note was a surprise, every entrance an adventure, every solo a complete and utter composition in and of itself. You just never knew what this guy was going to do next, and every time you found out it was a mind-melter.
The internet tells me his name is Mike Seal. Not the real-estate agent.
And now that I’ve pulled myself out of an epic youtube black hole of awe-inspiring guitar playing, I shan’t be forgetting his name again:
Mike Seal. Not the martial arts expert.
If you like good guitar playing, do yourself a favour and check him out on online. Just make sure you can afford to lose an hour or two.
Todd Man Out 