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On July 12, 2006 I was excited to head down to Maverick’s bar on Rideau Street to see The Slip, a jammy trio form Boston that included the namesake duo from future The Barr Brothers, Brad and Andrew Barr. But I thought: “Heck, while I’m cycling past City Hall anyways, why don’t I stop in to the Bluesfest to see Dan Bern, Dickey Betts, and the Grande Mothers along the way?
“I might as well,” I continued figmentally, as of course this inner narrative didn’t actually happen, “I have a festival pass and everything. Plus I’m supposed to review the evening for the Internet.”
All of this imaginary talk (and several hours of teaching guitar lessons) kept me away from the festival until about halfway through Dan Bern’s set. This was the first time I had seen him and I was hoping to catch the only song of his I had ever heard, the hilarious and insightful Tiger Woods but I must have missed it. No matter, the guy writes smart songs with clever lyrics and his backup band for the set was two-thirds of The Slip so I loved what I did manage to hear.
The next act was the main reason I and most of the people I knew were onsite: an evening of high-quality southern rock courtesy of the Dickey Betts band. Okay, it wasn’t an “evening” as much as it was about seventy-five minutes packed into a single set, and while the songs in that set were some of the greatest of the entire southern rock era, to be honest the music didn’t quite reach the “high-quality” category either. But hey, it was Dickey Betts playing some of the best music the Allman Brothers ever put out so it’s not like it was bad or anything, far from it.
A little context: This was the last year that the Bluesfest would be held at Festival Plaza, the soon-to-be-misnamed* area surrounding Ottawa’s city hall, and in fact the grounds in 2006 had been expanded to include the soccer pitch of the adjacent high school (Lisgar Collegiate) in an effort to reduce sound bleed between the festival’s 387 stages** and Dickey’s set took place on a lonely, small-ish stage perched out there on the edge of the grounds. This is in direct opposition to the actual Allman Brothers concert that was presented at the Bluesfest three years earlier, a rollicking pile of music that poured from the big, main stage right there at Festival Plaza. Which is fair enough I suppose, as Dickey made up only one seventh of the Allman’s (never mind that Betts wrote the largest chunk of the Allman Brothers’ most legendary songs) and his popularity had declined somewhat following his undignified arrest for domestic assault and subsequent boot from the Allmans band several years earlier.
And so the bandless guitar hotshot surrounded himself with a group of young’uns (including his own son, I believe) who looked and sounded like they were fresh out of the high school that loomed behind the stage. Like, sure they were all good pickers but were they qualified to stand toe-to-toe with Dickey Betts (1943-2024) and present some of the best blues-based jam music ever written? Certainly not. I won’t say it sounded like amateur-hour*** but it sure didn’t sound total-pro the way the Allman’s Brothers always did, even on their off nights.
And yes, I know that this is quibbling, but I have to complain about the fact that all three of the guitar players were playing Les Paul Standards – heck, they might even have all been 1960 reissue gold-tops – and all of them sounded like they were permanently switched to the bridge position, which just ain’t right. You gotta mix up the sound at least just a little, no? Funniest part was whenever anyone switched to a different guitar it was always and exclusively another Standard.
Anyways, there was certainly no griping about the setlist, which was one golden Allman’s hit after another; I mean the setlist was stacked. If it had actually been an Allman Brothers show it would have been off-the-hook.
But it wasn’t an actual Allman Brothers show, and it wasn’t off the hook.
I left during the drum solo (yes, a drum solo during a single-set festival gig. I think the drummer was also playing a Les Paul Standard****) but this was by design and not a statement of criticism. Y’see, a collection of Frank Zappa’s former employees banded together under the suggestive moniker The Grande Mothers were playing on another sidestage and my reverence for FZ mandated that I be there for it.
With the exception of the guitarist (who was phenomenal) everybody on stage was a part of Zappa’s band at one time or another, and they tore through a blistering set of their old boss’s music with manic dexterity. The playing was out of this world (of course), and one had to admire the amount of rehearsal hours that would be required to get a show of that caliber off the ground. Purely on performance-based criteria The Grande Mothers put in the best set of the entire 2006 Bluesfest season.
But really, the very best set that I heard during that summer’s Bluesfest didn’t even happen at Bluesfest. The booze-fuelled aftershow with The Slip at Mavericks was packed to the roof with every musical friend I had and the show was completely and utterly off the hook. Like, hands-down amazing.
*That’s not at all true as there are still puh-lenty of small, mostly single-day fests that take place on the grounds of Festival Plaza, perhaps even more since a festival behemoth like the Bluesfest pulled up stakes. But I felt like writing it so I did, proving that it’s just as easy to type a lie as it is to type a truth.
**It’s even easier to lie when you’re typing numbers. Watch this: I weigh 185 pounds. See? Easy-peasy.
***Though typing a tiny near-fib like that would take little-to-no effort at all.
****This one isn’t a lie, it’s a joke.
Todd Man Out 