Touch You Last

Kathleen Edwards is crazy pretty, let me just get that out there off the top. She also seems strangely approachable. Maybe it’s because she’s from Ottawa, or because she doesn’t take herself too seriously. I mean, if I found myself face to face with with James Taylor, I’d be so overcome by his New England charm and his shiny, bald dome that I wouldn’t be able to say a thing. But I feel like I could walk up to Kathleen Edwards on the street and just say, “Hey there, how’s it going! Can I buy you a shawarma or something?” For her set, she wore a long, black dress that the emcee called ‘Oscar worthy’. (Rightly so.) A few songs in, she addressing the crowd: “This is the last day of my twenties. I wore this dress to sort of commemorate the occasion. I don’t usually wear dresses for a show because I’m afraid that a gust of wind will blow it up over my head, and then…” she gestured to the dozen or so photographers at the foot of the stage, “… and then the Ottawa Citizen will get the...

This will be a quick one because I’ve zero free time lately, but I also don’t want five days of concerts to pile up. Sunday, we caught The Weakerthans play, which was officially the first complete set we’ve seen so far. They were out-friggin-standing. It’s always much harder to describe something you’ve enjoyed as opposed to something you didn’t. They played every single song we hoped they’d play… along with one we hoped they wouldn’t (which we’ll only refer to as “The song that makes Sarah cry and cry and cry .”) I think these guys have a universal appeal, which is remarkable when you dissect individual facts about the band. If I were to say to you “there’s this band from Manitoba, their lead singer used to be a member of the anarchist punk band ‘Propagandhi,’ and their lyrics are inspired by poetry, visual art, and philosophical works,” that sounds like a band that you don’t want to see. But I challenge you to listen to “ Our Retired Explorer ,” “ Watermark ,” or “ Tournament o...

Sarah wasn’t crazy about either of the two bands I wanted to see on Saturday—Elliott Brood and Steely Dan—so she took the night off and Isha subbed in. We got to the grounds close to seven o’clock and heard a bit of Ladytron as we were walking through the grounds. I don’t know if they are in fact lady robots, but they sounded like they might be (in an entirely awesome way, let me assure you). We snuck over to the other side of the War Museum to get to the Black Sheep stage. The Black Sheep had five bands from the same label (Six Shooter Records), who were going to end the night with a five-band hootenanny. We caught about three songs by Luke Doucet—and he was fantastic. I wish we saw more, really. I’m not the master of music genres, but I’m gonna go ahead and label his stuff alt-country. He plays some muscular guitar (someone else’s words, not mine, but I think they’re apt). Check out some of his stuff here . (Henceforth and retroactively, I’ll be including links to each band’s New Mus...

This was an all-for-Dave day. Sarah was fairly ambivalent about the two acts we were going to see— Wintersleep and Feist —but she knew I was keen on both, so she toughed it out on my behalf. There was a scheduling mix-up with Wintersleep, and their set started a bit later than advertised. Off the bat they had a decent crowd, but a mass migration started before they even took the stage. People just wanted to get a good seat for Feist, and when the band did start their set, other folks were just turned off by the reaaaalllly long slow-groove instrumental they played first. Without even trying, Sarah and I moved forward about thirty feet just by filling in the gaps that opened up in front of us. Overall, I was disappointed with the band. Given, I only know about three of their songs, but they’re not terribly compelling performers. It was a set that required patience and attention—which may have been on purpose. Maybe the band knew that all the casual gawkers would piss off to go see the ...

I’d forgotten a lot since last year about what Bluesfest is like. I’d forgotten that ninety-five percent of the crowd always misses the first song because they’re too busy jockeying for a spot closer to the stage, or they’re texting “WHERE R U?” to friends they can’t find, or they’re making poor-quality cellphone videos of a band that’s at least half a mile away. (I find this all alternately annoying and endearing.) Another thing I forgot was that, at the bottom of the giant video screens on either side of the stage is a ticker tape displaying text messages sent in by the crowd. There, you’ll find DRUNKUNKLE’s insightful: “Tragically Hip RULES!” There, you’ll read the profound “I like beer” courtesy of JONNYTSTICLE. So very inane and yet so strangely compelling. Where last year it took us a week to reach Bluesfest exhaustion, this time we’re coming in tired. We haven’t had a lot of downtime lately, so the thought of eleven days of concert-going has sucked the life out of us in advance....

I'm in the Executive Class lounge in the St. John's airport right now, and if I can find a way, I'll live here the rest of my life. Our original flight has been delayed, so they switched us over to another flight and bumped our tickets up to El- Swanko class. There's a self-serve bar complete with scotch, screech, port, and draft beer, internets are free, magazines are free, food is free: this is the very definition of good times. We've been in Newfoundland since last Thursday. For those of you who keep track of our comings-and-goings solely through this blog (and I doubt that there's that many of you), I know it looks like we died pretty abruptly near the end of Bluesfest . Not the case, obviously. We missed the Friday and Saturday (due alternately to exhaustion and apathy), and then we caught Sam Roberts (freshly shorn and no less awesome for it) and the Solid Gold Dance Party (including such acts as Peaches and Herb, Anita Ward, and the Village Peopl...

So I’m a day behind, but Wednesday was a one-band day so I haven’t totally screwed myself. Bluesfest fatigue is setting in something fierce. We’re enjoying ourselves a lot, but damn I’ll be glad when this is over. Wednesday was especially tiring because we played soccer before heading over. Our rec team (nameless no longer—we are The Wünderdogs!) played its first game of the summer season, and we kicked some serious ass. In the interest of full disclosure, the team we played had only met one another ten minutes before the game started, and we’d just picked up a new teammate who’s been playing soccer for 17 years, but whatever—our having won is the important part. And then we dragged our asses out to Lebreton to see the Steve Miller Band. They were fantastic, man. They sound exactly the same, and they played everything you’d want them to. Sarah’s favourite song is “Jet Airliner,” which is now also my favourite song. Just by the title, I always get it confused with something slow and p...

I would never ever have bought tickets to a Randy Newman show before seeing him last night. I considered it up there with going to see Jimmy Buffet; adult-contempo at best, novelty at worst. But he was funny, he was smart, and he was really engaging (unlike the shut-up-and-watch-me-perform styling of Bob Dylan). I would totally see him again and I would recommend him to pretty much anybody. Going in, I had this clip from the Family Guy pretty firmly entrenched in my head, and I think I sniggered through the first two songs, but then I was hooked. He’s got great stage patter: “This next song sums up the last 400 years of Western Civilization in two and a half minutes.” “A friend of mine had three sons and then a daughter. He told me once, ‘Randy, if we’d had the girl first, I would have thought the boys were retarded.’” He’s also, obviously, a pretty talented songwriter. There’s a darkly comic side to some of his stuff that I hadn’t heard until last night, “Political Science” ...

Last night was a little lighter than Sunday, thank jebus. The first band we caught was In-Flight Safety out of Halifax. I knew them by name but nothing about them otherwise, and as it turns out I recognized about two of the songs (but didn’t catch the titles). They’ve got a Sam Roberts esthetic going on, lots of hair, beards in various states of completion. They were great though; they’re a really solid rock band. I always feel a little bad about the lack of dancing I see at concerts (which is a stupid way to feel because you couldn’t get me to dance unless you were dressed up as a cowboy and shooting at my feet). I see and partake in a lot of what I’ll call the Canadian Concert Dance, which involves bracing yourself on one foot, bouncing the heel of your other foot, and nodding your head to the beat. I can’t help but think that there’s more energy to found in audiences abroad. If we were all, I dunno… Swedes, then maybe we’d be jumping up and down and losing our minds. But sa...

Last night, we caught seven different bands, some for a whole set but most for just a few songs. Clearly, it was our busiest Bluesfest day so far, and probably the busiest one there’ll be. We showed up in the early afternoon to see Joel Plaskett. He actually played two shows yesterday—lucky for us, because the first show was in a small theatre inside the War Museum. Which only seats about 230 people. And we were 258 and 259. Bo-urns, we said. But then we walked over to the Black Sheep stage and caught a few songs by hometown band My Dad vs. Yours. They’re a hard-rocking instrumental group, and I really liked what I saw. Too bad the music was drowned out by my bellowing “Ottawa represent!” over and over and over. (This did not happen.) After this, we saw Fight, Fight, Fight over at the River Stage, great venue, mediocre music. I guess they’re a punk band, but the line between rock and punk to me is pretty indistinct at times. I guess what makes them punk is that their lead singer was t...

This'll be brief, because I'm pretty wiped out and we have a damn full day tomorrow. We caught three acts today. First it was Sarah Harmer , who played pretty much every song of hers that I know (and who's super hot, BTW). Rest assured that there is no studio trickery involved in producing her albums because she sounds exactly the same live. Great stuff. Sadly, the memory I'll really take away is of this douchebag who sat down near us about three songs in. He was probably in his mid-forties, half in the bag (I hope), and he would not shut up. He offered such insights as: "This isn't blues." And: "I came here to hear some blues." And: "Is it too much to ask that I hear some blues?" He was there for about half an hour, until Sarah Harmer started to talk about Canada becoming too militaristic. Then he offered this rebuttal: "Fuck off and play some music," and an older dude in front of him turned and had some very angry...

George Thorogood looks a hell of a lot better than last time I saw him, which wasn't actually in person but on a pay-per-view preview for one of his shows. (I saw the preview on illegal satellite TV if that makes the story spicier for you.) Back then, probably five or six years ago, George was carrying another fifty pounds. He was also rocking this sleeveless black shirt with neon green piping. And he had a pretty bad case of bye-bye arm . He's not exactly svelte these days, but he's looking a damn site better. When we arrived, Sarah's first words were, "This is a different crowd tonight." True, indeed. A lot of... George's contemporaries, shall we say? But surprisingly, there was a huge youngster contingent. Some of them there to enjoy the show in an ironic way, I'm sure, but just as many there to rock out. I recognized every third song, the classics like "Move It On Over," "Who Do You Love," and "One Bourbon, One Sc...

I’m writing this very quickly over my lunch break because if I don’t do it now, I never will. It’s Bluesfest time in Ottawa, and after two years of saying we should go and totally not going, this year we’re actually going. I’ll try to keep up the daily updates, hence the urgency. If I end up getting four or five days behind I’ll be doomed. The fest opened on Wednesday and Van Morrison was the headliner. Although we have festival wristbands, he was a late edition and they were charging extra for that show, so we said frig it and held off until last night. The whole thing is being held at Lebreton Flats, right beside the War Museum—a bit of a hike from our apartment but still doable. Thursday’s headliner was Bob Dylan. We didn’t recognize any of the acts, so he was pretty much our reason for going. I’m neither a fan nor not a fan, but how many times are you gonna get a chance to see that guy in your life? We got there about forty minutes before Dylan came on, so we got to hear ...