Review: En Bref, I see Rowboats, Joel Plaskett and drinking at the Legion

In following with Palmer’s style of blogging I figured I would write a little review of this weekends concert goings. According to OttawaFestivals.ca there are 17 festivals during the months of June and July. You can go see 2 to 3 live bands minimum every single weekend during festival season if your up for it. This weekend I attended two such festivals: Le Festival Franco Ontarien and WESTFEST. I also went and had a Beer at the Royal Canadian Legion on Richmond road for good measure.

Thursday night started off meeting some friends downtown for drinks and dinner at the Elephant Castle. A friend of ours used to tell us that the Elephant Castle was the only place that sold this particular brand of beer. However it seems like they have not carried this beer for quite some time as the waitress had never heard of it. After a few pitchers and a decent meal we headed off to the Festival Franco Ontarien to see “En Bref”. This was a great evening for us as “En Bref” had been on hiatus for the past decade and this was only their second show since they reunited. The show was amazing and we had great spots right at the front. At the end of the show we got to meet the band and chatted with them for a while. André even mentioned that he still had the original demo tape with the lead singers old phone number on it from Sudbury. Just before leaving André asked the Singer if he (and the band) would like to attend his wedding at the end of August. The singer seemed genuinely interested and gave us his contact information. Maybe if I am lucky they will be at the wedding and I will get to jam with them :). Fingers crossed.

Friday I had to decide between going to the Festival Franco Ontarien or WESTFEST. There were a few bands I wanted to see at both festivals but in the end WESTFEST won out. The first band we wanted to see was I See Rowboats. I see Rowboats is this great band from Halifax that are making all kinds of noise. They put on a great show despite the fact that the band before them ran into their time and had to shorten their show by quite a bit and also didn’t get a proper sound-check. I highly suggest you give them a listen if ever you have the chance, you wont be disappointed. We even got to hang out with the band for a bit at the end of the night as Rémi is good friends with Darcy the drummer. We had a couple hours to kill before Joel Plaskett’s sets so we decided to grab a beer and a bite to eat. I got a bison burger on fry bread which was most excellent. We then checked out the scenery and ended up in at the legion. What can I say about the Legion …. I love them. There were two guys playing music and singing along with some CD’s and they had 710ml bottles of beer for $6.50. That’s right folks, for less than the price of a pint of beer from the pub we got this huge bottle of beer. It was awesome. Should any of you ever end up in a Legion though, please remove any hats before entering. It is a sign of respect and also if you get caught you have to buy a round of drinks for everyone in the bar.

After we finished up our pints, we headed back to the park to catch Mathew Barber’s set which is always a good time and of course the main act of the evening, Joel Plaskett. If anyone hasn’t already seen Joel live your missing out. There is something about Joel the way that he act’s on stage that just adds so much more to the songs. He is this tall and lanky guy but he sure knows how to groove on stage. He is just so at ease with the crowd and talks a bit before the songs and in some cases even acts out the songs as he is playing them. I have seen him a few times now and each show just gets better and better.