Posted by In retrospect, 2012 was an odd summer for me festival-wise. As you must know, I rather meticulously collect and record my ticket stubs and concert experiences in a series of photo albums. As I was leafing through one of the albums this morning I discovered a strange anomaly: I didn’t have passes to either the Ottawa jazz festival nor the Ottawa Bluesfest from that summer.
How could that be? I scrunched my memory and this is what I came up with:
The jazz fest thing was pretty easy: that was back when my ace-in-the-hole for lifting my mood at work – Lori – would occasionally spring free jazz fest comps on me and this was the year that only a single pair of one-day passes came down the Lori-chute. I remember it well; Doug and I were both standing by the phone checking our messages when she came out of her office and offered up the tickets. We went together to see The Barr Bros., John Mayall, and Robert Cray. But the Bluesfest omission? That’s harder to figure…
Bluesfest ran from Wednesday, July 4th to Sunday, July 15th. I went to SPAC to see Phish on July 6, 7, and 8 so those days are out for sure. This was this summer right after the stage collapse at Bluesfest and the lineup for 2012 had understandably taken a serious hit so there were several nights with pretty much nothing booked that interested me (I’m looking at you July 5th 9th, 13th, and 14th…like, we’re talking a pretty weak lineup that year). And I didn’t do Bluesfest write ups that year either – of that I’m quite confident – so no free pass.
There’s not much chance I would’ve gone out of my way to be onsite on the 4th though I have a hint of a feeling that I might have seen Tangerine Dream that night, but it’s hazy at best. Which in itself may be further evidence that I was there, in which case I probably would have gone to see Fishbone or maybe Billy Bragg too. I know m’lady went to see Billy Bragg that night, I’ve found a thread about it on our old message board where she mentions seeing Bragg (and The Melvins and Grace Potter). Reading through the thread I noticed that I posted nothing about the 4th, so dream or no Dream I’m going to have to side on not having been there.
As a matter of fact, in that entire thread I only wrote two posts that give me any sort of clues relevant to the task at hand. In one I asked if anyone had an extra ticket for July 12th; surely I wanted to go see John Mellencamp but I’m pretty sure I’ve only seen him once – at the Corel Centre – so once again I’m going to assume I didn’t end up getting a ticket.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I definitely went on July 10th to see Tedeschi Trucks Band, despite finding absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back me up. But I 100% remember being there for it. No question, no doubt; I saw that set. I know I saw it. Why I don’t have it marked in my ticket book astounds and befuddles me, but I was there. And oh, it was so good.
My other post on that message board was the penultimate of the thread. It was posted on the morning after the final day of Bluesfest – which would have been July 15th – and all I wrote was “The Trews should be world-famous.” I click click clicked the internet and sure enough The Trews had played at Bluesfest the night before. Plus it was a Sunday (Bluesfest always ends on a Sunday) which meant I must have been onsite corralling groups of students on and off the Black Sheep Stage for their Blues In The Schools/Be In The Band performances. I did that every year for a long, long time. And because I was onsite ostensibly for the BITS/BITB gig I would’ve been given a paper wristband instead of an actual ticket, and I usually don’t save those things.
And so it’s confirmed: On July 15th, 2012 I went to the Ottawa Bluesfest and saw The Trews. I thought they were great. In fact, they were so good I wondered why they weren’t world-famous; I posted about it even. And that’s saying something.
(I suppose they were on their way: I saw The Trews open for Bruce Springsteen about six week later at a huge outdoor show in New Brunswick and that right there makes you at least a wee bit world-famous, doesn’t it?)
Todd Man Out 