After sleeping in after the U2 concert (and revelling in the spectacle), Saturday night was calling our name and we headed down to the fairgrounds for a highly anticipated night. On the main stage, The Tragically Hip…one of Canada’s finest bands. On the smaller stage, M. Ward…one of folk music’s finest additions in recent years. Unfortunately, I had to make a choice between these two excellent bands and the winner was M. Ward solely based on the fact that I’m pretty sure I can see the Hip again in my life…M. Ward…not so sure!
M. Ward is an amazing, amazing songwriter and producer and I was looking forward to hearing him and his band. It’s interesting…I had never seen his band in photographs until the day of and I realized he has a fairly older gentleman in the band (who we joked that he must be his father!). We found a great spot in front of the National Bank stage which is one of the smaller, intimate stages which made the show even better.
They took the stage and the next few hours were bliss. They played my faves…Chinese Translation, Requiem, Magic Trick…you name it, they played it. They also ended with an excellent encore of Roll Over Beethoven. I really enjoyed the one song encore (as opposed to the multi-song encores most acts do nowadays). It brought something special to the show. Granted, they came back for a second encore, but at least they were one song encores.
I stumbled into the Dane Clan who were up from Sudbury so we got into a little Kapuskasing vs. Sudbury banter for awhile and then shared some beers. I literally shared some beers after the show was done and the beer tent was closed for the night. The next morning I awoke with a killer sore throat and the running joke for the next few days was how I got strep throat from the Dane Clan up from Sudbury.
I met up with Vero and Trish who enjoyed the Hip show (it was Vero’s first Hip show!) and afterwards I headed out with Andre and Karilee for a night on the town…well it started out that way and then we had horrible service at The Preston; some new bar. At least we had a great shawarma at the end of the night!
I would go see M.Ward a million more times. In fact, I heard he was in Gatineau a few months ago! How the heck did I miss that information!?