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July 16th, 2017 was the final day of the Ottawa Bluesfest so the timbre of the day was already set. Arrive early; obtain a fistful of day passes for the Be In The Band kids and their parents; corral said kids to the backstage area and run them through their tunes in one of the artist trailers; wait around for a couple of hours and try to keep the kids from travelling too far afield; panic and try to find missing kids when their set finally comes around; watch nervously as the kids play their allotted two songs on the large, professional stage at one of the biggest festivals in North America; tell the kids how great they did and shake hands with a bunch of parents; sit around and wait for my own time on the same stage.
I was fortunate enough to be the teacher of the Bluesfest’s inaugural Be In The band program back in 2009. An extension of the festival’s excellent two-week Blues In The Schools program, BITB collects young musicians in the 8-16 year-old range and puts them together into rock bands. They get together a couple of times a week and rehearse under the mentorship of people like yours truly and ultimately the bands all get to play their best two songs at the Bluesfest itself. It’s a great program, and one that certainly would have blown my little mind had I been able to experience it as a kid.
Once the program had expanded enough to involve a bunch of teachers the Bluesfest organizers turned the tables on us and put us all together into a band of our own and gave us the closing slot on the stage. So every year a revolving group of local musicians get together and pick a dozen songs over beers somewhere before whittling the list down to a forty-five minute set over three or four rehearsals, and all of this in exchange for a fairly decent paycheque and a full festival pass. It’s a fun opportunity to play in a professional setting with good musicians and I’m always thrilled to be involved.
Unfortunately on this particular day we had two things working against us: 1) the kid’s bands fell seriously behind schedule – even more than usual and then some – and 2) the headlining act on the main stage had made the unprecedented declaration that no bands were to be performing on any other stages once they began their set. The bottom line was that our stage had to be dark by 9pm sharp and the BITB bands played up to about 8:50.
So at 8:51 we teachers ran on stage and quickly edited our nine-song set down to two songs, which I believe were High School Confidential by Rough Trade and maybe Shape I’m In by The Band. And after a tidy eight minutes or so we were free to siphon beers out of the backstage cooler (teachers only) and head over to the big field for the headlining act.
And I’m so glad I did.
I had seen Tom Petty only once before and I remember thinking the show was just okay. I don’t know what was up with me back then – and I’m sure it was more me than it was Tom – but the show he delivered to close out Bluesfest 2017 was stellar.
I Won’t Back Down, Learning To Fly, Yer So Bad, Runnin’ Down A Dream; these songs are American icons in sonic form. Such a seasoned performer leading a perfect, time-tested and hand-selected band can only be sublime, especially with a well-worn catalogue of soul-ingrained hits to nestle into.
You Don’t Know How It Feels, Don’t Come Around Here No More, Free Fallin’, Refugee. See what I mean? With the relief and the sweat of a good performance drying from my body and a cold, free beer in each hand I stood there and took in that Tom Petty show like I was a sponge of happiness, with a smile smeared from ear-to-ear and a crowd surrounding me that clearly felt pretty much as good as I did.
And then just ninety-four days and eighteen concerts later Tom Petty (1950-2017) was gone.
Crazy.
Todd Man Out 