Posted by On July 15th, 2001 I sauntered down to see Little Feat at the Ottawa Bluesfest, which was residing on the pre-renovation LeBreton Flats for their third and final year.
Which made it the third and final year that I would find myself living so close to the festival, residing as I did just a few blocks and a tall cement staircase away from the flats in my nifty loft apartment on the fringe of Chinatown. Have I ever told you about that place?
Oh, it was so magnificent, and it made me feel like a million bucks every day. It was an open-concept place that took up the top two floors of a three-storey house on a quiet little street. Unlocking the front door you’d find a storage closet full of camping gear, a rack for jackets, a bicycle hanging from a hook, and a staircase leading up. Going up the stairs you’d never dream that you were about to say “Wow, nice place!” but every single person who topped those stairs for the first time said, “Wow, nice place!”
And why not? You would be emerging into the large cedar-highlighted living room, replete with a heavy punching bag hanging next to a blinking pinball machine (Truck Stop – Bally; 1988), dozens of instruments all set up and ready to go, a hanging hammock chair, lots of interesting art, and plants hanging down from the second-floor hole in the ceiling that led up to a pair of skylights.
In the centre of the living room you’d see a wooden staircase that rounded a corner to arrive at my skylit second-level bedroom on the right and a mirror-image space I used as a meditation room to the left. Exploring the main level you’d find an oversized bathroom and a modest eat-in kitchen with a window that emerged onto the roof of the downstairs neighbour’s bedroom, from whence my mighty cat Studebacher Hoch could easily climb up and down the adjacent tree so as to keep watch over the neighbourhood, and the whole place was wired up with a total of eight speakers, controllable from the very kickin’ stereo console in the living room.
Which brings me to the fact that my good friends lived downstairs, allowing me a pretty free range to crank said stereo whenever I felt the urge, and to practise unperturbed for hours on end at all possible hours, my foot stomping away relentlessly. I remember one 5am impromptu disco dance party in particular involving about fifteen screaming friends that went completely un-reported to any authority whatsoever, so accommodating were the folks downstairs.
Oh, the apartment was so, so wonderful. It added a lot to my generally joyous attitude towards life at the time and it was extremely conducive to the lifestyle of a hard-practising single musician.
And then I lost it all in a fire that woke me abruptly in the wee hours of a cold January morning about three years later. Well, I didn’t lose life or my cat, but almost. Nor my neighbours, but again, almost.
Ah, but enough about that. The Little Feat set was fun even if the music was pretty much 100% unfamiliar to me, as the classic band had managed to completely escape my radar up until this show (okay, I saw them at Bluesfest several years earlier but I remained quite insulated from them). I suspect I only went because all my friends were going, and probably because I was familiar enough with the name Little Feat that I knew I should have known more about them.
Oh, and because I lived so darn close to the festival.
Man, I miss that apartment.
Todd Man Out 