Folkfest Day 3: Lee Fields & the Expressions, Pony Girl & The National
Seven is just a number. It’s really only one more than six, two less than nine. It’s also a mystical number, sometimes considered holy. Even if you’re not spiritual you can agree that it’s prime, and that in art or composition it’s esthetically pleasing. Last night, the three sets that made my night at the Ottawa Folkfest were each presented by seven artists on stage, almost always three musicians on each side of a vocal frontman.
It began with Lee Fields and his backing band The Expressions (seven), a soulman from the late 60s with the young Truth & Sould Records’ house band from Williamsburg, New York. We walked up to his song “Ladies,” which showcases Fields’ adoration for all womankind. “Ladies! Beautiful ladies! Hey girl, what’s your name? Oh wow, you look so nice. I know your man is satisfied!” Lyrics coming from just anyone could come off as egotistical but from the soulful smile of Mr. Fields exudes his genuine appreciation of the women he meets.
His love for “short ones, tall ones, big ones, small ones,” is as evident as his grief in singing songs from his latest album, his fifth with the Expressions, Emma Jean. Named after his deceased mother, the album covers a wide range of emotion that certain artists can’t harness over their entire careers. He mentioned that he considered this album a whole mess of flowers for his mother, each song a bouquet for Emma Jean. “It Still Gets Me Down” and “Just Can’t Win” were as genuine as the Expressions backing him were expressionless. Perhaps their listless behaviour was to accentuate the passion in Lee Fields, as their languid side-step constrasted their leader’s sass.
“Ottawa, I love you!” he cried as his band side-stepped. His jet black hair might not have been authentic but this 63-year-old’s affection for music lovers was as honest as the day is long.
The seven musicians that are Pony Girl started 20 minutes late, presumably because they’d just fallen out of a tour van fresh from St. Andrews by-the-Sea, New Brunswick, where they’d played on Wednesday. Despite this intense day trip at the end of an extensive two-week tour, the local collective still wowed the patrons of the Hill Stage last night. They were the second set on the stage’s local bill, coinciding with J. Cole on the Ravenlaw Stage, which they were sad to miss. They played several new songs from their upcoming sophomore LP called Foreign Life, and demonstrated just how creative their composition will continue to be. The 2014 winter addition of Mitch Cousineau on organ & piano is a boon to their sound.
I don’t want to be accused of beating a dead horse (let alone a healthy pony) but the septet once again showed us how they are more than the sum of its parts. Take Pascal Huot for example. He is the soft-spoken frontman who guides us through their set, and he is also one fourth of the singing quartet, one third of their guitar trio, and at least half of their synth duo. Impressively enough, the other sample-wielder is their drummer Jeff Kingsbury. All these fractions amount to a whole that seems to expand the more you look at it. Their vibrations present a mosaic that’s just beautiful.
“Sleeptalk” had the crowd take up a double clap at the second tempo change near the end of the six-minute song, and the band sustained it longer than usual. The swaying necks of the stringed-instruments showed us in old & new songs just how danceable their beats are. It was, as always, a stirring performance. “Hey guys, whether you are a concert-goer, a photographer or a fellow musician, keep doing what you’re doing,” said Huot. “Remember that you are the scene.” We feel the same way. It takes a lot of little things to make a big thing, doesn’t it?
Afterwards, we elbowed our way to the Eh! Stage to get as close as we could. When the lights finally flashed and turned, and the sound system took on that crunch it gets when the band approaches, “Riders on the Storm” by The Doors calmly ushered in two sets of brothers, a lead singer and their back-up brass (seven). The slow realization among the crowd that The National had just taken the stage caused a dull roar to grow and grow. They opened with “Don’t Swallow The Cap” off their 2013 album Trouble Will Find Me, a song that references two albums that allegedly make singer-songwriter Matt Berninger cry: Let It Be and Nevermind. Along with the sound of rain at the start of “Riders” and Jim Morrison’s lyrics describing a killer on the road, his mind squirming like a toad, The National’s atmosphere descended upon Hog’s Back like a fog.
Moments before their set began, the quintessial snowy-haired sponsor came on stage to thank everyone who made the festival possible. He also shared his hopes with the crowd that these concerts were going to “make Ottawa the greatest place for live music in the summer!” An assertive plan that we should get behind! Moments later, a speaker blew out and feedback assaulted every ear present for a beadonor.ca ad featuring Hélène Campbell & Ellen DeGeneres. The will is there! Now we just have to find the way to a good sound technician.
I’ve heard it’s incredibly difficult to get terrific sound at outdoor concerts, but every artist who puts in an earpiece and wails into a mic is putting his or her ear at the mercy of the technician. It would only benefit the artists and our experience that every mic was at a reasonable volume. Not being able to hear either of the Dressner twins for the first two songs painfully reminded me of Deltron 3030’s Bluesfest show — neither Del nor the Automator’s mics were working for several songs.
A couple missed lines and an entirely absent bridge to “Squalor Victoria” indicated that Berninger might not have been too happy with the sound, but it also might have just been his sweet shine on. Was white wine the culprit of his angry sway, or was it truly those demons that he feels every time he performs his songs? Berninger is a poet with rhymes that fall plainly into the esoteric emotional kind, whose depressive content reminds one of Leonard Cohen. Despite all indication that The National is a downer, I assure you it’s not. Their amped up renditions of “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and “Sea of Love” (music video below), were the leg-shaking anthems fans crave. Nothing can quite beat Berninger’s penchant for jumping into the crowd with his stage-anchored mic and running as far back as he can while singing “Mr. November.” Perhaps leering over the crowd like a lecher while oozing the words of “Terrible Love”?
According to one fan, the horn of Kyle Resnick was “the most epic use of trumpet since the middle ages,” at the end of “Fake Empire.” Before the song, Berninger quipped, “It’s not cold, it’s crisp!” and sipped from a plastic cup. Throughout the entire set there were moments that made us melt: one of the twins holding a guitar by the body and bouncing the headstock on the ground to play on the reverb, the other playing piano with a guitar hanging upside down on his back like a medieval weapon, and of course the epic conclusion with “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks.” It’s a song we’ve sung at a party, in the kitchen, at 3 a.m. — and it’s one of the things we howl to get through a bad day — and when the entire crowd at Hog’s Back gets into the the song and sings every word, the silence between verses was dizzying, just beautiful. They ended on a high, just five minutes shy of 11 p.m., making us think we’d have an encore, and sadly we didn’t. Truthfully, that kind of hurt.
“Hey Joe, sorry I hurt you but they say love is a virtue, don’t they?” Well, that’s true. Thanks guys!