Bluesfest: Blues, Rock, and Kanye West

What do you get when you mix a whole lot of blues music, a good helping of rock and a dash of Kanye West? You get the 2007 Cisco Ottawa Bluesfest. Now in its 14th year, the Bluesfest has seen such great acts as Ray Charles, James Brown, Little Richard, Sting, Bryan Adams, ZZ Top, The Tragically Hip, Simple Plan and Black Eyed Peas. Huge label bands and small up and coming indie bands are equally featured at the festival. Fans tune in to hear blues, rock, hip-hop, rap and every other genre in between. As such, Bluesfest attracts quite a diverse crowd of devoted fans, ranging from teens to seniors. This year’s Bluesfest took place July 4-15 and featured an all-star lineup that included Bob Dylan, City and Colour, Manu Chao, Mute Math, The White Stripes, Hedley, the Steve Miller Band, Blue Rodeo, INXS, Metric, Kanye West, Sam Roberts, Alexisonfire and even the Village People.

Founded in 1994, Bluesfest quickly became Canada’s fastest growing celebration of Blues and Roots music. In its first few years Bluesfest made its home at Majors Hill Park, then subsequently relocated to Confederation Park in 1997 and 1998 to accommodate the growing number of fans and headlining acts. From 1999 to 2001, LeBreton Flats was host to Bluesfest and the larger venue allowed for the introduction of an acoustic stage. Then from 2002 to 2006 the festival made its way back to the downtown Ottawa core with record-breaking attendance year after year, which allowed the festival to expand to multiple stages and offer a diverse mix of music. This year marked Bluesfest’s return to LeBreton Flats and, as in good tradition, the festival provided its fans with a high-caliber, multi-genre explosion of sound. I hadn’t seen the Bluesfest downtown in previous years, but the consensus among those who have is that the move was a welcome change.

I personally found the venue to be quite good. The grounds were big enough to accommodate the largest crowds, the facilities were well taken care of and clean, and the stages were well spaced, well organized and well managed. Each of the four stages played on average one act every hour, except for the headlining acts at the end of the night who played anywhere between one and two hours. The stages each had a name and the entire event was decorated with a New Orleans Mardi Gras theme. The two main stages were not exactly subtle with their commercial sell out names. The Rogers stage and the MBNA stage were stadium-sized stages with giant video screens broadcasting the performance in a few locations for people who were too far back to see well enough. The two smaller stages were not blatant sell-outs. The stage closest to the Ottawa River was aptly named the River stage, and the other venue relegated to the back of the war museum was appropriately named the Blacksheep stage. Generally, bands would alternate back and forth between the two main stages, and between the two smaller stages. For example, one band would play a 45 minute set on the Rogers stage at 6:00. Another band would start a 45 minute set on the Blacksheep stage at 6:15. The Rogers stage act would finish at 6:45, leaving 15 minutes for people to make their way over to the MBNA stage for the next act at 7:00. Meanwhile, the Blacksheep stage would play until 7:00, leaving 15 minutes for people to head over to the River stage in time for the band starting at 7:15. As you can see, it was a frantic and confusing schedule. There were almost always two bands playing at the same time; one on the main stage and one on a small stage. The good news is that sound isolation between the stages was very good. Each of the stages pointed in a different direction so sound waves wouldn’t interfere with each other. The two main stages were face to face (since they never played at the same time), while one of the small stages was on the other side of a large building (the war museum) and the other small stage was behind one of the main stages. Each of the stages must have been at least 200-300 meters away from each other. I was pleasantly surprised with how well the set-up worked out.