Posted by There is little question that when it comes to these ticket stories the three times I attended the Evolve Festival in Antigonish, Nova Scotia don’t count. Why? Because I attended all three of them in my capacity of managing the best jamband in Canada (nero) and if I started including the nero stories we’d be here for a long, long time. So, even though I invariably had a great time at all of the Evolve’s and I saw lots of great bands out there like Michael Franti, Grand Theft Bus, Jimmy Swift, The Slip and others I shan’t be sharing them here. Though I do have some stories I could tell. Whoo-boy do I have some stories from Evolve’s!
Well, okay, how about if we roll them all up into one and I try to keep it short? Then I suppose it would be okay, right? Just this once?
So, Evolve was a very unlikely success story (to my mind anyway, on both points), a grassroots festival taking place on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere just outside of Antigonish, which is just outside of Cape Breton, which itself is just barely on the edge of the continent. It was out of the way, it was small and mostly unadvertised, and it featured a style of music that I had not known even existed when I left the east coast a decade or so earlier: jambands. And small, unknown independent jambands at that.
The first Evolve was tiny. Were there a hundred people there? I doubt it. nero was just getting started and somehow they got a gig not only at Evolve, but also at a bar in Charlottetown the night before as well; Baba’s if I’m not mistaken. I was hankering to join them for the trip from Ottawa to Nova Scotia but I had a three-week solo camping excursion booked in Algonquin Park that conflicted. Somewhere around day two or three I had an epiphany. I dumped my plans and hiked out of the woods. I asked nero if they wanted a manager, they said “sure” and I hopped in the driver’s seat of their van. And there went my next four years.
Just as we were leaving Ottawa I saw an electric guitar maybe in the garbage somewhere or at a garage sale or something. I stopped and threw it in the back of the van. I had my nice new camera with me too. When we arrived at the festival we camped right next to the stage and I marked our campsite by hammering that cheap guitar headfirst into the ground. It looked epic.
Anyway, we had a fantastic weekend, met a zillion people, the band launched their little career and I accidentally left my new camera (chock full of priceless photos from the excursion) in the rental van and when I called about it the day after we returned it everyone at the rental place denied ever seeing a brand new, really expensive SLR camera under the seat. Unfortunate, that, but otherwise the weekend was rather home-runny overall.
In 2002 nero and I went to Evolve again, this time in our little handicapped bus. This was the festival’s third year and already it had grown leaps and bounds. There must have been three thousand people camped there. Anyways, two major memories from this one were when nero’s guitar player drank an entire bottle of I don’t know what and got completely pie-eyed and Cheerio’ed before their set. It was embarrassingly bad, and like I say: there was a big crowd on hand to see it. Another memory was walking by a fellow who called me by name and re-introduced himself as Chris from the band Downtime whom I had met in Charlottetown the last time ‘round. He asked me if I would drink a bottle of Old Sam rum with him and I said I would. And I did. I liked Chris a lot and it wasn’t too long afterwards that he ended up joining nero when the original bass player quit to become a micro-brewery magnate.
And that brings us to August 27th, 2004, the first day of my third (and nero’s fourth) weekend at Evolve. If you’re not surprised that we were back again then you don’t fully comprehend how devastating Dave’s sloppy drunkenness had been during Evolve 2002. Either that or you are familiar with nero’s undeniable place atop the Canadian jam scene and you realize that it didn’t matter how loaded he had been that last time. Even if he had somehow found a football helmet and had head-butted other musicians during their set (which he did) you just couldn’t have a Can-jam fest without the band back then. Not a good one anyway, and like I say, the Evolve’s were good festivals.
Anyway, we arrived and set up camp in the VIP/artist area next to the main stage and immediately took in the entirety of Grand Theft Bus’s set. Man, we loved the Bus back then and we would catch/play with the New Brunswick band any chance we could. Love those guys. At this particular show they rocked the casbah and then some. So, so good. The Slip followed on the main stage and were divine as usual. Even though they were based out of Boston The Slip were regulars at Evolve and that was a-okay with everyone I knew. In the loud, climactic, solo-centric genre we were entrenched in The Slip were offering up the most thoughtful music out there, and they played with such blatant honesty they sometimes made you want to laugh and cry at the same time, kinda like church on a really good day.
By this time Evolve had evolved to include five stages, and they had music running on all of them all the time. Which is to say it never really got late at Evolve, or it was always late, whichever you prefer. Suffice to say: after The Slip ended things were just getting started. I cruised through the concession area and found a golden $3 donair tent that was to provide the bulk of my sustenance going forward, and then it was time to commence with the heavy partying in and around the late night stages.
I saw as many bands as I could and then became bombarded with dj’s. Earth shaking dj’s. All night. Which is fine. But all morning? Jeez. By 10am I could stand it no longer and I emerged from my tent angry and ugly. I was like the monster child of Scrooge and the Grinch who had gotten up on the wrongest possible side of the bed. Wiping the lack of sleep out of my eyes I loudly proclaimed to anyone with ears to hear that there better damn well be lots of bloody people down there watching that dj. The only person that answered me was our camping neighbour Jimmy Dorey, who was the festival’s founder and head organizer. He said he hoped there were people down there too. I grumbled and stumbled towards the stage and found one single sketched out dude on the concert pitch shaking like an epileptic in a lava lamp while three others sat beside him on the grass. I looked from the sketchy dude to the stage, where a dj stood smoking a cigarette and blaring his “sick beats” through a festival-sized PA system, and then I looked back at the dude. It was ten o’clock in the morning, this guy was so sketched out he would have danced to the sound of a lawnmower, and behind me a thousand tents were full of people trying to catch at least an hour or two of sleep. I was a band manager and I wasn’t used to standing around and doing nothing when faced with buffoonery. And I was facing quite a lot of buffoonery.
I grabbed a program and saw that the mainstage dj’s were scheduled to end at 10:30. At 11:00 I was back down there looking for the stage manager. When I found him he was all up in arms about an unscheduled puppet show that required a two-hour setup and the stage was already an hour-and-a-half behind, and and and…I suggested he cut the dj immediately – who was already a half-hour overtime and was playing to an audience of (barely) one – to give him a jump on the puppet setup. He agreed and unholstered his walkie-talkie. And I tell you, when that dj stopped it was like hearing the worlds largest fan-over-the-stove getting switched off. The white noise collapsed in an ear-sucking vacuum of silence that was pierced with a collective sigh of relief that emanated from all those tents behind me. I rewarded my heroism with a couple of donairs for breakfast.
Oops. I promised this would be short. Sorry, but I’ve found some notes. Okay, here’s a sprint to the end:
Spent the afternoon hanging with a couple of big shot industry dudes and drinking their beer. Got a bit of sleep somewhere and woke up in time for Michael Franti & Spearhead which was great, although the big man impressed me less than shows past. The trailer next to our campsite acted as Franti’s dressing room. His rider required that a buddha statue and an altar be set up in there prior to his arrival.
nero played afterwards. They had been contracted for a start-time between midnight and 2am though when we arrived we saw they were listed on the schedule as playing from 3:30am until 5:00. Oh, the buffoonery. In the end I haggled them to a 2:30am start which, while less than ideal, sure beat their 1pm mainstage opening slots of past Evolves. Regardless, the guys played a really good show. And I should know…I saw them a lot.
After a bit more partying and a few more donairs I found some toilet paper to stick into my ears and went down for the morning. My stuffed ears helped me stay down until noon, when I got up, grabbed a donair and tore down camp. Chris (who was in the band by this time) and I got on the road for the long haul back to Ottawa, the drummer went to Moncton catch a flight while the guitarist and his new wife hit Cape Breton for a little honeymoon.
So yeah, Evolve’s were fun. Sorry this turned out being so long. I edited out as many donairs as I could.
Todd Man Out 