081514 David Wilcox/The 24th Street Wailers, Calabogie, ON

Sometime in the midsummer of 2014 it occurred to me that the 50th anniversary of the birth of my good friend and close neighbour Bruce (or as I call him: “Brucey” or even “BDubbya” though his last name is Young) was nigh and he had nothing in mind in the way of a celebration.  Of course I would have none of it so I hatched a plan that ultimately found the pair of us and two more friends besides arriving at the small but mighty Calabogie Blues & Ribs festival in Themidlleofnowhere, Ontario on August 15th, ready to consume whatever was on offer.

And what was on offer was a heck of a well-run downhome festival that was big on smallness and jampacked full of nice.  We got in with a smile and a wave and no waiting at all, and in no time we pitched our little phalanx of tents in the middle of a field of perhaps fifty others with about as many campers ringing ‘round and started our celebrating with the first of many shared drinks and high fives.  From our spot we could easily see the adjacent concert area which itself was ringed by a tiny fleet of chip wagons and rib stands.  There couldn’t have been as many as four hundred people in attendance, and it seemed like everyone thought that was just about the right number.

With such a beautiful day occurring all around us we were already having just the greatest time before we even set foot on that concert pitch, and when we did things just got better.  We caught much to most of The 24th Street Wailers, an Ontario-based gender-blended blues/funk outfit that was significantly better than just fine and made for an excellent warmup for the evening’s headliner, David Wilcox.

Now, I hadn’t seen David Wilcox in years and years – decades even – and though he was great back in the day all these miles later I wasn’t expecting too much.  But it turned out I could have been expecting the moon, because man, did David Wilcox deliver!  God, I wish I could remember what song he started off with but it was one of those numbers where it started with just him playing and had each band member slowly joining in until the song became positively explosive, and the show only got better from there!  David didn’t care that there were only about eighty people sparsed throughout the tiny field, he played like he was opening for the Rolling Stones.  Every song was a nostalgia trip wrapped in a rock & roll epiphany rolled together into a powerhouse that was delivered like firecrackers.  The band was so good and oh, how the four of us rained high fives upon one another!  And more drinks were just a thirty-second tent-trek away.  We took turns.

In the end Wilcox rocked us so hard that our late night was curtailed into a surprisingly early turn in, which itself resulted in the crew of us accidentally and unknowingly awakening around 5am and starting a day that I thought would be my permanent undoing.  But that’s another story.