070314 Gary Clark Jr./Beth Hart, Ottawa, ON

On July 3rd 2014 I tried to make up for past mistakes by getting myself to LeBreton Flats nice and early for Gary Clark Jr.’s set on the opening night of the Ottawa Bluesfest.  By “mistakes” I am referring to a) recent years when the opening night crush for tickets and wristbands made getting through the Bluesfest gates on time to see anything a task that fell somewhere between unlikely and impossible and much more importantly, b) that time that I made our party tardy to arrive at Outside Lands festival in San Francisco, which caused us to miss all but the last two minutes of Gary Clark Jr., the most anticipated set of my friend and companion (and the owner of the couch I’d been sleeping on).  Oops.  Sorry Gil.

I don’t quite remember what I did to make us late but I’m pretty sure it was my fault because I remember Gil nudging me to hurry so we wouldn’t miss Gary Clark Jr..  I’m extra sorry because when we did indeed essentially miss Clark’s set I kinda sorta shrugged it off as no big deal and just dug into the rest of the amazing multi-stage festival.  To be fair – not that it makes me any less of a jerk – up until then I was wholly unfamiliar with Gary Clark Jr., aside from seeing him sit in with the Rolling Stones in Brooklyn so I had basically no idea what we were missing.  Plus I had been distracted by all of the big shiny bands like NIN and Jurassic 5 that Outside Lands had booked on the same day.  

And so in an attempt at some sort of redemption – if not reparation – on this night I made sure to be onsite and standing beer-deep at the River Stage well before Gary Clark Jr.’s headlining set.  My anti-tardiness afforded me a couple of songs from Beth Hart, who played before Gary.  She was a pretty smokin’ blues singer who was at the time busy recording and touring with people like Jeff Beck and Joe Bonamassa.  I suppose there’s a chance that Joe was also on this gig but I don’t think so.  Regardless, nothing wrong with having some temporal elbow room with a pro like Beth Hart decorating the air.

But I tell you, Gary Clark Jr. was truly something else.  What a set!  Aside from a few forays through the beer line I didn’t move an inch for eighty minutes.  He had me totally enthralled.  My brain is currently reaching into its thesaurus and coming up with words like “bombastic”, “explosive”, and “crushing”.  I mean Gary Clark Jr. was just so huge up there on that stage, and his guitar tone was so dense it sounded like star matter.  Which I suppose it was.  I mean the dude was playing!  He made his lightweight Gibson SG sound like an iron-clad Les Paul Standard playing through a Marshall doublestack made of stone.  If I had felt guilty for robbing Gil of his set at Outside Lands before, well, every solo Gary bounced off of me at the River Stage made me feel exponentially worse.  

So that’s what my farting around had stolen from Gil.  Damn.  

I’ve hardly slept since.