One of the drawbacks of free shows is that you have to get there early in order to guarantee your entrance into popular shows. For some reason I figured since they'd only announced the show the day of, there wouldn't be that many people lining up. I got there at 7:30 (show at 10, doors normally around 8:30) . At this point there were about 400 people in front of me, at least 200 behind and probably 100 or so already inside. I was told at my position in line, it was unlikely I would get in before the show started. Still, I was hopefully because with the high odds of seeing Emily Haines, Feist and Elizabeth Powell, it would be worth the wait. So I did. Man I feel like a chump. I'm not sure it was worth it.
I got in. There were about 50 or 60 people in front of me when they cut the line off at show time. However, the people running the show left 200 spots open for vips and other guests. Unused spots would be given to the people in line, 3 songs in. My first indication that something was up was when 2 songs in they played Shoreline, traditionally a Feist song. She wasn't singing it, Lisa Lobsinger was. I don't dislike her singing, in fact I think she's gotten a lot better at filling the large role she's been thrown over the years. She still has that dazed like look on her face though. Was a little surprised Jason Collett didn't show up. Andrew Whiteman wasn't around either. Mid set, Julie Doiron was brought out to help on a Neil Young cover. I sort of saw this coming because she was pretty friendly with the BSS members at the Hal Wilner show a few days ago. Sam Goldberg also helped with the vocals. To my disappointment they played Anthems, without Emily Haines, who was in town (again). Instead vocals were handled by Lobsinger and Doiron.
Julie was brought out again to perform "Consolation Prize" backed by BSS. To be honest the rest of the show was pretty uneventful. They pretty much rounded out the set with less popular newer songs that don't depend on female vocals. Most of them from the "BSS Presents..." albums. I wonder why Elizabeth Powell, who should still be in town and has put in time with BSS, was oddly absent. By the end of the set I had to reluctantly let go of the hope that this show would be like one of the classic BSS shows that gave them the reputation they have now. In fact, I have a feeling that this is probably a new stage in the band's life, one that does not include Feist or Haines and probably others. I'd love to see Julie Doiron in more BSS shows, but if she's going to re-join an ensemble, I'd rather see her play in Eric's Trip. After 90 mins the show was all but over. The crowd wanted more, but Kevin Drew came out with bad news claiming there was essentially a curfew. He did lead the crowd into singing a few lines from U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."
I don't think I would have gone to this show had I not been offered a ticket at a veeeeery reduced price. I was told this show was sold out. A week before I was checking available seats and noticed that you could pretty much get any aisle seat you wanted on one of the sides for the second night.
Glad to see two Canadian ladies that I really like, have a large role in this event, namely Julie Doiron and Elizabeth Powell. Julie was as energetic as ever and Elizabeth sang "Don't Let it Bring You Down" near the beginning of the set, which was well received by the crowd. When they weren't doing main vocals, they were doing backup vocals for other artists, so they were pretty visible the entire night.
Sam Goldberg does a pretty good Neil Young impression.
Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw did a beautiful version of "A Man Needs a Maid" that would make Neil himself proud. Emily sung while Jimmy provided keyboard support.
People really liked Lou Reed. A lot of "Loooooouu" chants were heard every time he entered and exited the stage.
Elvis Costello was as expected, a crowd pleaser.
I've never really heard of Joan as Policewoman, but I was impressed by her violin playing. The one solo she did was electrifying.
I've never heard of the poet Eric Mingus, but it would be hard to forget him after seeing him. He did a song with a such a dirty roots-blues intensity growl, he had to remove his glasses mid verse. He also performed a spoken word interpretation later in the set.
For some reason I always thought Sun Kil Moon was a she, he's definitely not. There were a lot of highlights this night. Elvis Costello had a blistering guitar solo towards the end of the night that almost lead me to believe that his guitar would catch on fire. He actually received a standing ovation for that. I can't imagine myself paying the amount of money it would take to see Costello now, so it was nice to see him at the top of his game.
In another show stealing performance, Jason Collett (if memory serves me) got the crowd to participate in a musical version of the wave, using hand rubbing noises and thigh slapping and floor stomping.
Fucking Up was a group song which featured an intense playing James Blood Ulmer on guitar. His axe chops gave Costello and run for his money.
The night closed off with a sweet rendition of "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" featuring Kevin Drew and Julie Doiron doing a duet (with a handful of people and of course the audience doing backup). I'm glad they didn't decide to take the easy way out and use the almost cliched cover "Rocking in the Free World".
The whole gang
The man who brought it all together, Hal Wilner.
Oh yeah, the majority of Broken Social Scene is in Vancouver right now. The Ontario Pavilion is has a show that's TBA. My money is on BSS playing.
The first 2 days of the festival had bearable amounts of rain. I don't have any waterproof shoes, so I walked around in flip-flops all weekend. My feet were muddy at the end of most days, however I didn't have to endure the pain of walking in wet socks/shoes. On the ride over to the festival grounds we had so much rain, I thought we were driving under a waterfall. It was a pretty spectacular sight. The good thing about the rain on this weekend was that it usually only lasted about an hour max, and would come and go. But when it came, boy did it pour. Oh yeah and we got thunder too, more about that later.
I went to the Island tent first to check out the annual Sunday Gospel Session. Not surprising, It was packed. I guess people wanted to be in church on a Sunday morning. Amongst the assembled gospel singers, acoustic instruments and such were these 3 intense looking (they were wearing sunglasses) African's playing traditional African instruments. Those instruments made some really unique and interesting sounds, however my attention span is short and the rain had stopped so I made my way to the Lake Tent.
Being that I interviewed them, I figured I should probably see Dehli 2 Dublin play. They were playing with FRED and Eccodeck as party of "Kick out the Jams". The attendance at this tent was pretty low, however most of the people there were dancing it up. It was funny seeing the deadhead hippies dance it up. Dehli to Dublin are a pretty fun band to watch. Kytami knows how rock it out on the fiddle. Andrew their sitar player looked like he was handling bass duties today or maybe it was an electric sitar, he was also wearing a slayer shirt plus a kilt. lols.
I had to drop by the mainstage, and while I was waiting, I saw a bit of Sam Bradley's set. Weird, he's from Vancouver, though I've never heard of him. Standard acoustic guitar singer-songwriter type of stuff. He had a row of fans (maybe 4-5 ladies) with signs near the front of the stage. Vish from CBC radio 3 made a comment about the sign. He read it out but didn't get it. Some sort of inside joke or something.
I ended up at the spoken word tent to find open mic going on. One of the acts I saw was, well of "open mic" quality, and the other was someone telling a heart wrenching tale about finding inner strength and a (sigh, almost cliche) terminally sick boy in a hospital with a feather from a pillow, blah blah blah something about an angel blah blah, well you know how it ends, person is inspired and the boy, well he's terminally ill. Anyways, there was a Fresh Prince of Bel Air episode that was pretty similar. Crowd was very moved though. Saw more than one person with wet eyes and not from the rain.
I went down to a the Island stage to find another packed tent. This time Dancehall Free for All was inhabiting the stage. I was a little disappointed to not see some sort of "Dancehall" band from the Caribbean. They're local, so they had a lot of crowd support. I wasn't really into it and decided to check out the spoken word stage again.
I got there to see C.R Avery do a spoken word story about a boxer. Throughout the story, he did some beat boxing. It was pretty captivating.
What I saw of the Witchies I didn't really care for. I thought they were alright, but I just wasn't really into it and probably would have left to see something else had it not been a thunderstorm in mid swing outside. There was an announcement made by the organizers after the Witchies' set to stand away from the metal support poles that kept the tents standing, as essentially they were giant lightning rods. At one point during the storm between sets, lightning struck just outside the tent behind the stage. I don't think anyone was struck dead on, but I overheard people talking about being able to feel it come down near them. One girl claimed she was struck a couple hours after during the Julie Doiron/Patrick Watson workshop. She's probably a robot.
I know my other writing partner was sort of lukewarm on Clues, from Montreal, but I found their set to be pretty good. My set was probably shorter than his so maybe I had a more refined view of their live show. Clues is Alden Penner's (ex-Unicorn's) new band, I think it also boasts a former member of the Arcade Fire, though definitely before Arcade Fire was touring cross Canada. Clues really had some bad luck going for them. First their soundcheck went way over time causing them to have a shortened set and secondly they seemed to be having trouble finding their drummer as their set time drew near. Someone told me later, it was because he hurt his back from a lightning strike. (Another robot?) I'll have to see how they are with a full set.
Knowing that I had very few breaks from this point on, I went to grab lunch. Wanting to try something new, I opted for an African peanut stew form the food tent. Very tasty, however, I would have liked to had some meat with that. I topped it off with an organic Maple Crunch ice cream cone from another vendor.
So the Andrew McPherson/Julie Doiron/Sam Bradley/Patrick Watson Workshop (entitled Brand New Day) was one of the highlights of the festival for me. Patrick Watson played host and mentioned that Eric's trip was the first show he ever saw as as a kid. Sam Bradley, Andrew McPherson and Julie Doiron each got to play one of their own songs, and then it was improv time. You could tell it wasn't rehearsed because during McPherson's set, you could see Doiron and Bradley looking over at McPherson to try and find the chords to play. Julie Doiron was initially hesitant about the improv idea, but Watson kept pushing for it, as a good host would do. Doiron, mentioned that her daughter Rosey was better at the improv thing so Watson suggested she sing a song about Rosey. And that's what the song was about. Chorus was basically "Roooseeey, Rooooseeey", etc. Pretty cool. Doiron dedicated the song to her kids, the ones not named Rosey. Watson created the next improv by asking the crowd for a song name. I think they settled on "Radical Sock" or "Radical Shoe" something like that. One of Doiron's backing band decided a reggae jam was what it would be. Each performer took turns on the verses. Overall this was one of the cooler acts I saw at Hillside, musicians doing what they do best, creating music.
The previous stage was running later than schedule so by the time I left, it would have been pretty late into The Rural Advantage's set. I reluctantly decided to skip it, because I had to get to the main stage and my stomach was growling at me again. In case you're interested, and I know that you are, I had some yellow Thai chicken curry. Like everything I at this weekend, it was delicious.
I caught Great Lake Swimmers next just as the sun was coming up. They were a lot better than the last time I saw them. Maybe it was the location, but they seemed to have more of a stage presence outdoors. Oh yeah they attracted quite the crowd as well. The front of the stage was elbow to elbow in terms of space. They played a mix of new song and older songs like "Your Rocky Spine" which kept me happy.
You know a couple of years ago I was a little disappointed when Patrick Watson was announced as the 2nd Polaris prize winner, not because I didn't think he deserved it, but I thought others were more deserving. Well after seeing him live, I'll have to retract my disappointment. He really is a gifted song writer. His stage show consists of a drummer, violinist, bass and guitar with himself handling the vocal and piano duties. He seems to find the right balance between folk and rock. In a way it reminds me of the mellower Radiohead songs.
Because this was a festival show, Final Fantasy today was just Owen Pallett, without the projectors. Actually I prefer his show without the projectors, because I find them a little too distracting. Pallett hasn't had a proper studio album in a while so most of the songs he played today were new songs off his upcoming album "Heartland". The highlight of the night during "Lewis Takes off his Shirt". It had started to rain a few songs before, but it really started to come down during this song. I'll let this video explain the rest:
and here's another new song:
The Skydiggers were introduced by one of the organizers as a band that played the Hillside Festival 20 years ago. They're sorta folk/country/bluegrassy. I wasn't really impressed because it's not really my kind of music. Though they seem to have a following that thought standing in the rain/mud was worth staying for. I was pretty bored until one of the guitarists introduced a song about North Vancouver. They I was back to being bored.
And there we have it, 3 days of Hillside Festival. I for one, had a blast this weekend, you know, aside from all the rain, mud, more rain, more mud, thunderstorms, etc. With a strong sense of community, solid Canadian indie rock lineup and overall chill atmosphere, I could see myself coming out to this next year as well.
I started day two in the Island stage. The first act of the day at this stage was a collaboration between two of the better (imo) up and coming Ontario bands: Bruce Peninsula and The Rural Alberta Advantage. I think Bruce Peninsula was a few members short from the last time that I saw them. I don't remember hearing any Bruce Peninsula songs, but they did jam on Fleetwood Mac's "The Chain". Afterwards they joked about covering Stairway to Heaven. The two bands seemed to be having a good time collaborating. I think The Rural Alberta Advantage played and had Bruce Peninsula jam on a few of their new songs. Pretty cool stuff.
I figured I would walk over to the next stage and try and get a good spot for Julie Doiron. To my surprise, the tent was pretty packed for the band "Green Go". I later found out their a local Guelph band, so I guess most of the crowd knew them before hand. They were pretty entertaining, playing a sort of electro-dance /rock sort of sound. They reminded me of You Say Party! We Say Die!, but instead of punk influences, electro synth.
The sucky part of festivals are that you sometimes get two or three bands you want to see playing at the same time. Case in point, I had to miss Bruce Peninsula playing in order to see Julie Doiron. The latter played a set filled mostly with lower key fan favorites. She was still great though, but with time restrictions she didn't have a lot of time for between song banter.
I checked out a bit of Treasa Levasseur next. Wasn't really too into it and took the time to have lunch after a few songs. Yeah I don't remember too much about this set.
Wanting to get a good spot for Ohbijou, I wandered into the tent to find 'Bahamas' finishing their set. I think Bahamas is just a drummer and a guitarist/singer. People seemed to like them as the tent was filled up. The last song saw them bring up a few friends to help out with extra vocals. The names of those friends have since slipped my mind, however, I do recall seeing members of Great Lake Swimmers, possibly Tony Dekker, and possibly Owen Pallett.
I've heard good things about Ohbijou through other media outlets like cbcradio3. I can't really say they blew my mind though. I enjoyed a few of their songs, however found that were kind of boring live, especially in this sort of setting. However, I did get the impression that they would be more enjoyable in a small club with nice lighting.
I made my way down to the Sun stage next where they mostly had spoken word and workshops. Final Fantasy, Buffy St. Marie and Notre Dame de Grass were doing a workshop entitled "Yes we Can". This slogan was also used throughout whenever any of the artists showed any insecurities onstage. Owen Pallett mentioned that he gets nervous on stage, to which someone shouted "Yes we Can". Anyways, the workshop basically consisted of each of the 3 artists taking turns playing a song. Not really familiar with Notre Dame de Grass, who are a Bluegrass act or Buffy St. Marie, but Owen did do a Buffy St. Marie cover, "The Dream Tree" which was kind of cool. That must have been nerve racking, since he mentioned being a big fan of hers.
The workshop ended a bit late so I arrived at Attack in Black's set midset. The room was pretty filled. Towards the end of the set, they brought out none other than Julie Doiron to sing on a few songs. I enjoyed what I saw from Attack in Black
Everytime I see the name "Hey Rosetta", I also think of "Hey Ocean". Anyways, they're an indie rock band from Nova Scotia, and they're pretty cool. They were one of the better acts I saw today. After seeing them live I'd have to say that they are totally deserving of their Polaris prize nomination. They played a good mix of slow mellow songs and rock out jams. I really wish I saw them with Two Hours Traffic now.
While waiting for the next band on the main stage, I saw the tail end of Buffy St. Marie's set. I suppose you could consider her a Canadian institution as she's been doing her thing for a while now. Not really my thing, but if you don't already know, she plays native/aboriginal influenced folk. So yeah there are songs with the Indian chants drums.
Tokyo Police Club had one of the longer time slots of the day. However due to technical issues, they didn't really make good use of it. I've stated before that I found their songs to be too similar sounding. I don't disagree now, but I will admit to having a much better time seeing them this time around. Along with their regular material, they also snuck in Tom Petty's "American Girl". It was nice to see a band looking like they genuinely like playing with each other as they seemed to had grins on their faces their entire set.
Caught the end of Woodhands' set. The place was packed. I think this was the Volunteer afterparty show this night. I'm pretty surprised, I wasn't aware of their popularity. Anyways, they're a duo that are dancey and the crowd loved it.
I don' think anyone left after the Woodhands set, as the Arkells set was also packed. The latter put on a really good rock show and the crowd was eating it up. I think they're local or something because on the ride over we passed "Arkell" street in Guelph. This show actually had a lot crowd surfing at it. I saw a bunch of beach balls and toilet paper flying around. I don't really remember much about their songs, but it was pretty standard rock out stuff. Actually come to think of it they sort of remind me of the Trews.
We've done a write up on Julie Doiron pretty recently, so this will be a bit of a shorter review for the Vancouver Biltmore show.
Dog Day started out the night with a blend of rock not so much unlike Eric's Trip. Boy/girl vocals and post grunge like sound. Their set seemed a little rushed, but I think they were under some time constraints. They played well, but I wouldn't say they rocked out like what other people have described. I'd probably still check them out again. Maybe a headlining show.
I don't know why I'm mentioning this, but during the set change I went and tried to play some of the arcade games at the Biltmore. To my chagrin, after about 2 minutes trying to fish out my quarter from the busted money slot of the Marvel vs Capcom machine, I decided I probably won't be doing that again. The other writer of this blog tells me that the pinball machine has a sketchy launcher.
Similar to the Waterloo show, Julie hit the stage with 2 or 3 solo songs. After that the rest of the band came in and rocked out. I'll try not to repeat the previous review, but this show was a little longer. Usual Julie Doiron fun banter and overall charm was present. Actually there was one point in the show where she sort of implied feeding her kids wine. At the end of the show, one thing was fairly obvious. Julie's backing band is incredibly talented. As mentioned before, her shows don't really use a setlist, but instead are based on what she wants to play and usually will entertain some requests. This night was no different. Some in the crowd requested a song from one of her side projects. She obliged, which resulted in her band fumbling through the song. In fact, I get the feeling the lead guitarist pretty much just improvises all his solos. Which leads me to a whole new appreciation for her live show.
Interestingly enough, about a month back, the Starlight was in the running for CBC Radio 3's best venue in Canada contest. Having now been in it and seen a show there, I'd have to say that it deserves all the adoration it gets. It has just enough lighting, decent enough sound, nice large hardood dance floor and great inside decor. I'd be similar to the Biltmore in Vancouver, maybe with a slightly higher stage and tables instead of booths. Anyways onto the show...
$100 opened up the show. They were a 3 piece band doing the alt country thing. Really the only alt country artist that I listen to is Neko Case, thus it would be very easy for me to make Neko Case comparisons. And I will. The lead singer of $100 actually sorta has some resemblance to Neko. She sings with more of a southern country drawl though. I can't really think of anything else worth mentioning as my interested started to wane after a couple of songs. Like I said, I'm not really into alt-country, though my friend who is, said he enjoyed it.
When I was living in Vancouver I had at least a couple of opportunities to see Julie Doiron live, but for some reason or another never got around to. I'm beginning to regret it now. For those not in the loop, Julie is known for playing bass in Eric's Trip, or Canada's version of Sonic Youth. For some of you I realize that I just tried to relate a relatively obscure Canadian artist with another equally obscure Canadian artist. You'll just have to take my word for it that Eric's Trip was an awesome band. For that reason, amongst others, Julie Doiron is (arguably) Canada's reigning Indie Rock Queen and not Feist. Speaking of Feist I recent came across a side by side photo of both Doiron and Feist on flickr that showed some really eerie resemblances. Also they both have an apparent affinity for Vox solid state amplifiers.
First off, Julie Doiron is sooooo adorable. Probably the cutest little thing I've ever seen on a stage. Gushing aside, Julie started her set solo playing "Untitled" and "Me and My Friend", which were by her own admission, "sad" songs. She played a couple more and a few requests from the crowd, "Wintermitts" and "Snow Falls in November", before calling for her band to start the full band portion of the night. The whole show had a very loose feel to it. Doiron didn't have a setlist, pretty much playing whatever song felt right at the time. This included songs which weren't even rehearsed. There was even a song, where Julie taught her bassist how to play it moments before it started. Between songs, Julie recalled a really amusing story about drinking wine, or as she called it 'diet alcohol', in her home province of New Brunswick. Highlights for this reviewer were "Consolation Prize", a new one from her just released album and "Nice to Come Home", which she played while the bassist was sorting out a problem with his amp. After almost 90 min of playing and chatting, she ended her set solo with "Glad to be Alive," also from her new album, which was quite the happy and upbeat song and pretty much the perfect song to end the day with.
