Bluesfest July 7, Great Big Sea

6am: Load in. What a way to start. The stage only got installed late last night, so we had to let the lighting crew do their setup overnight and we came in at sunrise to set up the audio. Everything went fairly smoothly, save for some tents and scaffolding that were not supposed to be built on the stage yet, so we had to wait while they were dismantled and rebuilt in the proper spot. They had to be moved because they took up the space where we had to fly the PA.

 

The first night was headlined by Great Big Sea. Thankfully, we knew everyone on their crew so it made for a low key, low pressure day. We all had a pretty good time and it was good to see some faces we hadn’t seen in a while. About 30,000 people showed up and it made for quite the show. The highlight was when the band started talking about Beavertails on stage (if you’re not from Ottawa, it’s a sugar covered pastry that’s shaped like a beaver tail). The security guy on stage thought it would be great to get the band a Beavertail, so he went out, bought one and brought it back to the stage. I was looking at this guy holding the Beavertail at the side of the stage, and I commented to one of my crew guys that it looked like this guy was going to run on stage between songs and give the band a Beavertail. We opted not to intervene, choosing instead to watch how things would unfold. Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to not run on stage between songs. He did, however, wait til the band started playing the next song, ran out, grabbed Alan Doyle by the arm while he was playing guitar and gave him a Beavertail. The security guard was not back the next day.

 

18 hours later, show was done, gear was tarped and we got to head home. Not for long though; load in on Saturday morning was 8am….