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I’ve been fortunate to receive a free Bluesfest pass for the last several years as part of my reward for playing a set at the festival with my fellow Be In The Band teachers, but as the fest shifted focus m’lady had stopped buying herself a full festival pass in favour of buying passes for select days.
However, I believe that 2017 was the first year that she bought no passes at all, and as such I spent most of the shows that year standing alone or with some random friend or stranger. But on July 12th a bunch of friends decided to gather at a new bar another one of our friends had just opened near the festival grounds and walk down to the site for the evening. M’lady had been mildly interested in checking out LCD Soundsystem – that night’s mainstage headliners – so she decided to come too.
After the bar m’lady and I found ourselves approaching the ticket booth to shell out $75 for her ticket when I heard someone behind call my name. It was one of my temporary bandmates, and he was on his way into the VIP section for the Be In The Band teachers night.
Well, this was news.
Every year all the teachers are given VIP tickets for one of the weeknight shows and somehow I had missed the email. Quick as you want my buddy went in and grabbed a pair of VIP passes and just like that m’lady saved seventy-five bones.
We went into the VIP section, thanked people and said hello to others and quickly booked it.
I wanted to check out Choir! Choir! Choir! on the Bluesville stage. They were described as a band that used the crowd as an on-the-spot choir but it turned out being a guy with an acoustic guitar playing campfire rock (Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah when we happened upon them) standing next to a guy who was presumably the ‘conductor’ – though he knew nothing about conducting (trust me) – who encouraged the crowd to sing along by flapping his arms wildly in their direction.
It was quite possibly the lamest thing I’ve ever seen at a festival.
I won’t even say I saw The Shins, as we spent most of their mainstage set bouncing between the VIP section (which wasn’t very VIP at all, aside from being off-limits to the rest of the crowd) and looking for our friends. As distracted as I was I paid so little attention to the music they might as well not have been on stage.
We finally found our crew just after the headliners started up. I caught a bit of LCD Soundsystem – which alternated between heavy, hypnotic, and boring – before joining a splinter group of friends that was much more interested in seeing Gary Clark Jr.
As expected, his set at the Black Sheep Stage was packed – the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen at that stage by far. And no wonder, the guy is like the next Hendrix without ever coming close to doing a Hendrix thing (thank goodness. I wonder if he was ever tempted to cash in on doing a tribute act?).
The first third of his set was incredible, just mind-numbing blues-rock played with ferocity and gigantic spirit. When Gary brought out the guitarist from the Fabulous Thunderbirds for a three-song sit-in the music took a decided turn towards straight-ahead blues, which was too bad, but still great.
During the second song the guest guitarist’s amp stopped working in the middle of his solo and Gary Clark Jr. immediately put down his guitar, walked over to the guys amp, unplugged him and plugged his patchcord into his own amp. Clark spend the next two songs just singing.
That was super-classy. It even happened in the middle of a slow blues, the kind of song that every guitar player just loves to solo over, and Clark handed over the song (and the next) to his guest. Nice.
When the set ended on time at 10:45 the crowd was having none of it. The band came back on and gave us an extra fifteen minutes – including two songs with the guest guitarist where his amp went out again and Gary Clark Jr. did the same thing, plugging him into his own amp again – before closing the show with one more bone-cruncher that harkened back to the beginning of the set.
If you haven’t heard of him yet you have now. Gary Clark Jr. The Real Deal.
I met up with m’lady and we cycled home in the cold rain together, nice and slow. Which was pretty nice actually, it being our twelfth anniversary.
Todd Man Out 