At Westfest with Autumns Canon
The summer festival season is upon us once again. With things like Canada Day and Bluesfest looming over Ottawa and dominating the focus of most of the media, it’s easy to forget that there plenty of other outdoor events taking place in town that can offer an amazing festival experience. One of these events is Westfest. It kind of gets squashed under some of the other things going on around town over the summer, but it is definitely a worthy addition to anyone’s calendar. First of all, it’s free. You just can’t beat that. Secondly, they work hard to make sure that the entertainment is not only top-notch, but home grown as well. Every band is Canadian, and most of them hail from the Ottawa area. There’s even a day dedicated to just Ottawa bands.
This year I had the opportunity to take in Westfest from the other side, on the stage watching the crowd instead of the other way around. I was playing with a new project that I’ve only recently gotten involved with, Autumns Canon. The band features the strong songwriting and vocals of Shaun Francisco combined with a cast of some of Ottawa’s finest musicians; Nick Beaton on guitar, Marty Sobb on keys, Mike Hogg on drums, Anders Drerup on pedal steel and myself on bass. It’s been nothing short of a pleasure so far getting to know these guys and work with the music. Shaun’s songs are a reflection of his personality – honest, down to earth, direct and uplifting. They are driven by loud crunchy guitars and great vocal hooks. All the ingredients that I love.
Playing at a festival instantly makes you feel like a rock star. You come in through the back gates where it says “ARTISTS ONLY” and a security guard lets you and your vehicle in. You park in the back where they have handlers ready to help you get your stuff to the backstage area and you’re given a personalized lanyard that will be your access all areas pass for the rest of the day. From there, the rest is easy. You have your own tent or trailer, free beer, a catered lunch buffet, plenty of snacks and treats, even a starbucks coffee set up just for the artists of the day. The backstage area is comprised of the other artists performing that day or people who either want to interview you or ask you if you need anything else.
We had played a couple of small gigs before this and had a handful of rehearsals, but this was easily our first “real” gig. A festival gig is very different from a club gig in a couple of key ways. For one, you get the aforementioned treatment while backstage. Most clubs these days don’t even have a backstage. It’s outdoors, and brightly lit by the daytime sunshine. When you’re playing in a dark club, most of the time you can’t see the audience that’s right in front of you because you’re looking directly into stage lights. So you can see people’s reactions immediately and what is grabbing their attention and what isn’t. You can see all the way to the back and observe whether the crowd is coming or going. The sound system is a whole different beast than that of a club. It’s way bigger, and has a totally different feel to it. In almost any club, the sound system is mounted directly to the side of the stage and you can hear it from on the stage. You can hear it hitting the walls, the ceiling and the back of the room and coming back to you and get a sense for how loud you are and where the dynamics are going. When you’re playing on an outdoor stage, you have no frame of reference as to just how hard you are hitting the poor people who chose to sit right in front. The only thing you can really feel is the omni directional thump of the bass woofers rattling the stage. The stage itself is also much larger than any club’s. As a band, you need to feel where the others in the band are going musically and dynamically and feed off them in order to put on a good performance. This is difficult to do when you can’t really hear each other and are standing much farther away from each other than you’re used to. A festival is also more of an all-day experience not only for the crowd but for the band. You show up much earlier and usually stay until the day is done (probably has something to do with the free beer). It makes the whole gig feel like much more of an opportunity to bond and network with other musicians playing that day, fans, the guys in the band, volunteers and staff, and who ever else is hanging around. It turns the whole thing into much more of an outing than your typical club gig.
We took to the stage in the mid afternoon on Sunday. There was a decent sized crowd, and the weather was spectacular. Although our set lasted about 45 minutes, it felt like 5. So much of being a musician really has nothing to do with the time you spend on stage that by the time you actually make it to that stage it just flies by. All the rehearsing, recording, photo shoots, discussions, loading in and loading out, time spent alone perfecting your craft, networking, advertising, facebooking and tweeting….. It all amounts to this 45 minute long release of energy that has built up. You only get one chance to get it right, because there is a field of people in front of you watching your every move, and thousands of watts of power broadcasting every note and nuance that you play. Needless to say, it’s an incredible rush. Doing it with a new band that I’ve invested a lot of my time into only amplifies the feeling. Playing with a band that you’ve played with for years comes with a certain amount of comfort – you know the songs, you know the tendencies of the members of the band, you know who’s expecting what to happen and when. With a brand new band, you have no idea what to expect. It takes a long time to develop the chemistry between the members and that 6th sense of where everyone in the band is going to be and when. But it’s also a lot of fun to feel all these things progressing. It took us a couple of songs to get into a comfortable with our surroundings, and once we hit that stride I felt like we were nailing it. People in the crowd seemed to be enjoying it, and there were nothing but smiles on stage.
As soon as it’s over, you’re packing your things up quickly and getting off the stage so the next group can get on. Just like that, weeks or even months of work come to a conclusion, and you’re looking ahead to the next gig. You solicit the opinions of friends and other people you trust who caught the show for areas to improve, and go back to the rehearsal schedule to refine these things and work on new material.
- Check out the band at www.myspace.com/autumnscanon
- All pics were taken by Jen File, check out more of her stuff at www.jfilephotography.com. She’s excellent!
- Follow me on twitter if you feel so inclined and we can interact in 140 characters or less at a time! @schmarkty.
Tags: Autumns Canon, Jen File photography, Ottawa music festivals, Westfest 2010
