Sept. 15 kicked off the much-anticipated CityFolk Festival, starting off the night with Dropkick Murphys at 6:15 p.m. Crowds began filing in ready for more. There was a really refreshing diversity in the age range of attendees that came out the first night, from screaming youth praising James Bay, to older adults dancing along to the music of Skinny Lister.
The first noticeable difference from last year’s festival was the event ground layout, which holds both positives and negatives. The main entrance this year is through the Aberdeen Pavilion at Lansdowne. This is a limitation because during mass exit, everyone must file through the building before leaving. In addition, last year Marvest, a free companion to City Folk featuring all local music along the Glebe, also made use of the Pavilion. Placing the BMO stage and vendors in the Pavilion makes it exclusive for CityFolk attendees, which really takes away from the Marvest crowd. A positive to these layout changes, however, is that the BMO stage and the RavenLaw stage are both under shelter. Saturday’s weather is projected to rain, so this could be a major benefit.
Since the lineup for the first day was shorter than the few to come, it gave attendees time to explore the vendors inside the Pavilion, as well as merch tents and the great arrangement of food. Vendors included clothes from Express, BabesnGents, and many more. Really interesting jewellery was also sold from local Ottawa artists such as Strut and Wild Tree. Keeping with the celebration of music, there were two places attendees could buy records. There were CDs and vinyl records specific to the artists playing the festival at the merch tent on the same side as the main stage, and a minimum of eight crates full of good music in the Pavilion.
Future States took the RavenLaw stage at 7:30 p.m., beginning their set with sounds of a psychedelic pop garage rock band. Coming from Montreal, Que., the band was warm with the crowd and made use of the more intimate stage inside the Horticulture Building. Playing songs off of their newest EP Cassiopeia, the crowd received them well.
The Ramblin’ Valley Band began their set on the BMO stage at 8:30 p.m., making quite an impression. Their name really does elude to their performance, with great energy and crowd participation.
Screams could be heard all across the event grounds as fans erupted for James Bay at the Main Stage, just as Blind Pilot took the RavenLaw stage. Blind Pilot’s performance began at 9:00 p.m., sharing music from the band’s recent album And Then Like Lions. A really astonishing thing about the band was how multi-talented each musician was. Surrounded by equipment, they made amazing use of different instruments from a cello, to a keyboard, to a trumpet, and several others.
What makes CityFolk enjoyable is the community atmosphere. From the support of local bands, vendors, and even coffee shops, it is evident that the spotlight is on Ottawa rather than a bunch of large businesses.
Day one was definitely a success.
