Ottawa Bluesfest

Ottawa's Bluesfest is one of its kind. Coming from Montreal, I couldn't imagine its scale to be comparable to Montreal's Jazz Festival. For one reason, Ottawa's Bluesfest is not free admission. Secondly, Ottawa is more than twice smaller than Montreal. Last night, Dennis, his friend Rob, Matt, and I went to see what Ottawa's Bluesfest is all about. Getting off the bus, we were immediately submerged into the flock of people rushing towards the festival. All of a sudden, the atmosphere of festivities surrounded me. We fastened our steps to the door, got our tickets ($42) and our green ribbon (as our pass), and went straight towards Rogers Stage. The crowd is so thick that we couldn't even get close to the stage. Nonetheless, the heavy strumming of electric guitars from DJ Champion and his G-strings were enough to get us rocking. The entire band was composed of guitarists and singers and yet the sampling of various guitars was able to provide a mixture of sounds. It was just amazing. After this show, we headed to the Riverside Stage to see the Blackies and the Rodeo Kings. Again, their guitar performance was just incredible. Before the end of the day, we were lucky enough to see Kanye's West. We finished the day in the sound of hip hop.