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By the time 2005 and 2006 came around there was no questioning that the Bluesfest was the undisputed champion of the Ottawa festival scene. After a dozen years of continually raising their own bar the fast-growing fest had become the focal point of the summer, delivering one knockout lineup after another to bigger and bigger crowds as the fest settled into its permanent home on the freshly landscaped lawns of LeBreton Flats.
All my friends would be onsite every night, I could ride my bike there, they kept adding more stages, and when the 2007 lineup was announced featuring everyone from Bob Dylan to The White Stripes the Ottawa Bluesfest was starting to look like a serious worldwide festival contender. Except there was this one little teensy tiny issue: lawnchairs.
Somehow, since the beginning of the Bluesfest, people lugged along their bulky lawnchairs and parked them as close to the stage as possible. Nothing so unnatural about that other than the fact that the festival organizers let them. When the fest started running multiple stages people started bringing multiple lawnchairs, arriving early and setting one up at each of the stages where these patrons expected to own their own little bits of festival property for the evening not to mention (as it turned out) they felt like they owned exclusive rights to all of the airspace between their bootlegged lawnchair property and whatever stage they were looking at as well.
In other words, these ground-hogging lawnchair sitters not only took up too much space in too many places at once but they also tended to get plenty angry anytime someone stood up in front of them. Because, you know, God forbid someone should want to get up and move around at a freakin’ concert!
Anyway, year after year the entitlement of the lawnchair people grew stronger as did the animosity between them and we concert-standers, and by 2007 things were definitely coming to a head. The first two nights of Bluesfest (starring Van Morrison and Bob Dylan respectively) had really highlighted the problem and it seemed to m’lady and I that something ugly was bound to happen to our awesome Bluesfest, and we weren’t willing to take it sitting down. I don’t know exactly how our plan was hatched but we hatched it and brought it to fruition in mere hours. This is what we did:
We made a flyer listing our own invented lawnchair rules and we attempted to make it look as official as possible without actually adding any logos or direct references to the festival itself. We went to Staples and printed, oh I don’t know, maybe a thousand of the half-page sized handouts, and this is what they said:
Welcome to another awesome Bluesfest! Let’s make it fun for everyone.
1. Enjoy music with other music lovers! We must share the space and show respect for the artists as well as other patrons by not interfering with the performance and other people.
2. Lawn chairs and their owners force standers into pathways that should remain clear for paramedics and ease of movement for all festival goers.
3. A lawn chair takes up the space of 2 or 3 standing people (2x that for the big recliner chairs). If its occupant stands for a time and does not fold down the chair, add 1. Please stop and think about how much space you are using.
4. A festival setting is not the same as a seated theatre – specific seats and therefore sight-lines are not reserved. People are allowed to stand to enjoy the concert wherever they please, just as the current rules allow for sitters to sit wherever they please. A person can not “own” a large portion of the site. It’s not a private show or a living room. Yelling or throwing things at standers is not appropriate behaviour.
5. Performers will play better if the audience is engaged (ie. standing up, energetic). There is give and take involved!
6. Lawn chairs and blankets can be easily folded up and carried, then used if a person wishes to sit for a time. The owner must understand that sitting means their view will of course be limited! If you want to sit for the whole show, please be polite and move back.
7. There were meant to be separate sections for lawnchairs and standing this year, which was a great idea for all of us. Since it doesn’t seem to have been co-ordinated yet, we have to all co-exist. Please be kind to others who are trying to enjoy the music! If you’re sitting, you can’t expect a perfect view.
8. If you are injured or truly must sit, there is a handicapped section with a good view.
Thank you for reading! If you are already a kind, courteous lawn chair owner, then thanks for setting a good example!
And then, on July 6th – day three of the 2007 festival – we both hid hundreds of flyers in our backpacks and snuck them in to the festival. We cruised from one stage to another and surreptitiously left stacks of them everywhere we could – at the beer stands, on the merch table, at the food kiosks – and people started picking them up. I remember stealthily leaving a pile near the cash register in the CD tent and a few moments later I saw the proprietor encouraging his customers to please take one. I felt the tingling excitement of clandestine activism.
While I was engaged in the secret distribution of our lying flyers of truth I also managed to catch sets starring Gary U.S. Bonds (who attracted my attention for no other reason than the fact that The Beatles opened his 1963 European tour), the amazing Bela Fleck* (who attracted my attention because he and those he surrounds himself with are stunningly brilliant musicians who play the most unique proggy jam music this side of anywhere), Nigerian musician Femi Kuti (who attracted about 5,000 of us to the River Stage for a lively set of very up beats punctuated beautifully by his incredible dancers and the amazing view), and rabble-rouser George Thorogood and his Destroyers (who attracted my attention because they were playing right next to the best beer tent, and because Thorogood’s one-chord drinkin’ blues was pretty much on par with my diminished sobriety by that time of the evening).
George Thorogood was fun as always and he perfectly capped a great Friday night at Bluesfest. The guy is basically a beer-swilling gravel pit party in a black t-shirt. Hit after hit reaching all the way back to grade nine. His set was fun and raucous, uninspired and fist-pumping, and I was singing along to just about every word.
The Destroyers ended their set by blaring a recording of O Canada over the mains while flags waved majestically on the bigscreen, and after a moment George Thorogood marched out from the wings with his arms raised in the air. The roaring crowd greeted the American blues co-opter by singing our anthem at him loudly, proudly, and unsolicited. Coulda been the bourbon, mighta been the scotch, coulda been the three or four plastic beers, I don’t know but I thought it was fun albeit rather strange way to close the set.
In the end I can’t say if the flyers did any good or not, but I can report that the fest managed to avoid any major lawnchair brawls for the remainder of the season (and beyond) and that the sitting vs. standing issue did eventually calm down considerably despite the steady inaction from all official channels.
So I guess to the standers out there I can say: you’re welcome. To the sitters: at least there’s always jazzfest*.
*In between songs at Bela’s set I inspired an altercation. A dozen feet in front of me four people were standing in front of four unused, space-eating lawnchairs watching the show, so I handed them a flyer. They shrugged and kept their chairs set up. Another song later I engaged the fellah and asked if he didn’t agree it was a bit rude to keep the chairs set up in the middle of such a thick, fully standing crowd. He called me a f***ing bastard. I could only smile.
**The Ottawa Jazz Festival actually does have a lawnchair policy, and it distinctly favours those who want to bring lawnchairs and park them up front.
Todd Man Out 