In the fall of 2006 I saw Shot­gun & Jay­bird play in my home­town of Oshawa. It was the only time I ever got to see them play, but it really changed my life. I’ve told the whole story here before, but in fewer words, that was the night I dis­cov­ered the great fes­ti­val that is Sap­pyFest, which I had the plea­sure of attend­ing in 2008, 2009, and again just this month. It’s actu­ally the end of the month now — I’m not sure what’s taken me so long to get down to writ­ing, but if I wait any longer no one will care anymore.

This year for Sap­pyFest I decided to go for an entire week instead of the usual 3–4 days. Part of the rea­son I went for longer was so that I could just relax in a nice envi­ron­ment, but I also wanted to check out more of Ok.Quoi?!, an arts fes­ti­val that hap­pens each year in the week lead­ing up to Sap­pyFest. I went to a round­table dis­cus­sion about pub­lic art instal­la­tions, lis­tened to some live exper­i­men­tal music, saw a ton of amaz­ing short films and ani­ma­tions, and even par­tic­i­pated in the “Con­sen­sus Bus” (a free bus trip open to any­one, but every­one who comes has to agree on the destination).

Of course, Sap­pyFest itself was another fine 3 days of music, with a whole lot of my friends and favourite bands play­ing this year that was a given, but there were also a few new dis­cov­er­ies along the way. I had planned to shoot a lot of video dur­ing the fes­ti­val, but of course, once I’m hav­ing fun I tend to “for­get” my cam­era when I go out… but I did man­age to cap­ture two bands from the first night. Nei­ther band should need any intro­duc­tion for read­ers of this web­site as I’ve shot them both many times before.

Toronto’s best party band Steam­boat played to a packed main­stage tent in what I believe was their first out-of-town gig! The response from the crowd was enthu­si­as­tic, and the band had another chance to get peo­ple danc­ing when they did another set (with plenty of spe­cial guest vocal­ists), clos­ing out the fes­ti­val on Sun­day night at George’s Fab­u­lous Roadhouse.

Finally, here’s Attack in Black play­ing a few songs. Lots of new mate­r­ial in their set, really hope they record them and make another album.

Tags: Attack in Black, Sackville, SappyFest, Steamboat · Leave a comment