Category Music

Random Thoughts from Buesfest I

I tend to graze at music festivals, nibble a bit of this act or that performer and move on after a couple of songs. I’ll only stay longer if they manage to grab my attention. The 2015 edition of RBC Ottawa Bluesfest started Wednesday night and I have been grazing the music on offer. Here […]

Welcome to Bluesfest – No Blues Required

Ottawa’s biggest annual music festival, the RBC Ottawa Bluesfest started last night. Each year I waffle: is buying a festival pass worth the expense? There are 11 day of music, but a lot of artists I don’t care for. Would I be better off just buying a day pass for the shows I really want […]

Music Month Begins

July is for me usually the busiest month of the year in terms of seeing live music. Ottawa has a number festivals, including the RBC Bluesfest, which features hundreds of acts (and where you have to try really hard to find a blues performer). So you can expect a lot of thoughts on the music […]

The Surprise

My friend Mike loves his wife. That is not surprising. After all, he is a Christian and there is a biblical element there. But he likes to go the extra mile (another biblical reference if you missed it) and think big. So when he phoned me and said he wanted to do something special for […]

Taking Centre Stage

She took the evening off from her day job with the geriatric geezers who don’t rock every night anymore. On this night, at the TD Ottawa Jazz Festival she was centre stage, not 20 feet from stardom. Immediately after the show she flew to Pittsburg to rejoin the Rolling Stones, who she has toured with […]

Refugees III – We Are One

Theoretically I am back home, though it is tough to say for sure since I am posting this before I leave. With the effects of jet lag expected and no time to write while I was gone, I thought i should have something ready to go, so I held off on posting this song before […]

Warped in Montreal – The Daycare

It was a decade ago, and I was much too old for it, but I took in a stop on the annual Vans Warped Tour when it came to Montreal. It was part of being a good dad. My teenaged son had some bands he wanted to see. My wife and daughter were away; I […]

High Praise

One of the things I miss about radio is the immediate feedback, people calling in to tell you they appreciate the song you just played, to make a request or sometimes just to chat. I don’t get that in my current radio gig, though there is the occasional email contact with listeners, if the customer […]

LeRoux III – Dinner In Detroit

The guys wanted barbecue, which obviously meant something different from my understanding of the word. They were from Louisiana after all, and I gathered this was some sort of southern cooking, not sticking hot dogs on a grill. I had met up with the guys in LeRoux (see the previous two posts) and they wanted […]

LeRoux II – Toiling In Obscurity

“Rock and roll is not pretty, but somebody’s gotta do it.” – Bobby Campo. I only met him once, but that statement has been stuck in my head for more than 30 years. Bobby Campo was then (and for most of the past four decades) percussionist, horn player and violinist for LeRoux (or Louisiana’s LeRoux […]