The limo driver
The first thing I asked Kamal Assio when we met at Bluesfest on Sunday was whether he worked there.
“Why?” he answered. “Do I look like I work here?”
He did not. Wearing a white dress shirt and tie, black vest, pants and dress shoes, he looked as though he were attending a formal event — a family wedding, say, or a funeral.
“No, not really,” I replied. “But you don’t look like you BELONG here, either.”
I was wandering the festival grounds at the time, asking people if I could photograph them and whether they had a story to tell. It didn’t have to be about Bluesfest. It could be the first concert they’d attended, the first album they bought, a favourite memory, or simply why they’d come — beyond just seeing the Lumineers or Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band or whoever else was on that night’s bill.
And of course Assio belonged there, just as much as anyone.
He was there, I discovered, as a chauffeur for Millennium Limousine Service, driving musicians between airports, hotels and concert venues. That explained the formal attire.
I asked him about any memorable encounters he’d had. He told me about the time in 2023 when he was driving KISS’s Gene Simmons to the Canadian Tire Centre for the band’s farewell tour show, only to be told to turn around — KISS frontman Paul Stanley had come down with the flu and the show had to be cancelled.
But what he remembers most from that brief experience was Simmons apologizing after initially calling Assio “driver.”
Bryan Adams, Assio said, was similarly thoughtful. Drivers are not permitted to ask for photos with clients, but in Adams’ case, it was the singer who insisted.
Kamal doesn’t remember either performer for his celebrity, but for treating him as human.
Then he reached back some 50 years to one of his earliest music memories, when he was a young teen in Lebanon, saving his allowance to buy his first record, a Deep Purple album. These days, it’s Pink Floyd that most captures his imagination, which is why seeing Roger Waters in Ottawa remains his favourite concert memory.
“Why do I love Pink Floyd? Good question. I love their music. I love the stories.”
Over the next few hours, I discovered that I wasn’t just getting people’s stories about music, but rather pieces of their lives. The musicians and songs provided the soundtrack to their memories.
The dedicated Bluesfest-goer
Jeremy Miller, for example, told me about the night his son Liam proposed to his girlfriend during Shania Twain’s 2023 Bluesfest concert . Liam ended up waiting until about 40 minutes into the show, Miller recalls, because he didn’t want to drop to one knee while Twain was singing about leaving a husband or doing something bad to men.
As he watched the scene unfold that evening, Miller recalls reaching over and quietly holding his wife’s hand.
He moved here five years ago from Purple Valley, a small farming hamlet in Bruce County with a population, he estimates, of about 200. Since coming to Ottawa, he’s attended every night of every Bluesfest. On opening night this year, in a crowd of thousands, he spotted the Gilberts, former Purple Valley neighbours of his. It was as if the tiny village was reassembling itself here.
“I think it’s just the atmosphere,” he said of the festival’s allure. “There’s so many things to see. If you don’t like what’s on the main stage, you’ll find something you like on the LeBreton stage or the Hard Rock stage. Every night you come here, people are dressed differently. There’s a different vibe, a different group of people.”
It’s almost as if there’s not just one Bluesfest, but countless ones. Visitors just have to find the one that fits them best.
The new Ottawan enjoying the freedom
For some, it’s liberating. Rose Shams was attending her first Bluesfest since moving to Ottawa from Iran in 2022.
Before that, she photographed concerts but, being a woman, wasn’t paid or even credited for her work. If she appeared in a photograph, she was edited out.
When I asked her what she liked most about Bluesfest, she didn’t mention a band or performance. Instead, she smiled and gestured to the crowd, saying she especially enjoyed the freedom women had to wear what they wanted and express themselves however they liked. “It’s my vibe,” she said. “It’s very fun and it feels very free.”
Bluesfest is also a catalyst for a different sort of freedom — an independence — that encourages finding your place and your people.
The teens at their first solo festival
“Bluesfest is the first concert teenagers go to alone,” explained Jordyn Lantin-Lagace, 17, who, along with her 16-year-old friend Auri Feraco, looked like Bluesfest bridesmaids in their white dresses and flowered coifs.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but she was right. For generations, Bluesfest has been a rite of passage, when parents have trusted their teens to go there and make decisions on their own. And unlike at an arena concert with fixed seating, a festival setting allows people to explore and meet others.
“Bluesfest is free rein,” said Lantin-Lagace.
“We’re able to connect with the music and the crowd,” added Feraco. The pair say they have made new friends at Bluesfest, and even connected with some of them again during the festival.
“People come here alone,” said Lantin-Lagace, “and then you leave knowing a bunch of people.”
The music fan by way of Bob the Builder
Not everyone is looking for something new. Fiona Smith traces her music history to an unlikely source: Bob the Builder. As a youngster, she heard Elton John’s Crocodile Rock in a Bob the Builder Christmas special and learned, to her surprise, that Elton John was a real person.
Years later, when she was about nine, her mother took her to see Sir Elton at the Canadian Tire Centre. She still vividly recalls his glittery jacket. “It was magical.”
But one of Smith’s favourite Bluesfest moments was more personal than most concerts. After studying performing arts at Algonquin College, she attended a concert by one of her singing instructors and saw the techniques she’d learned in class unfold onstage.
“It was interesting to see all the stuff that I learned in action.”
Others collect their music memories in more tangible ways.
The collector
Nancy Desaulniers was in the front row of the Leif Vollebekk concert when I met her, waving a handmade sign asking for set lists, guitar picks and drumsticks. So far, her collection includes 215 set lists, 126 picks and 15 drumsticks, as well as numerous posters, photos, T-shirts and other merch, much of it autographed.
To many, her collection might look just like bits of paper, wood and plastic. For her, each recalls a particular night, a different crowd. She was offered $50 once for a guitar pick she got from April Wine’s Myles Goodwyn, but she said no; this isn’t about money. These are mementos — the reminders of her life.
She recalls visiting her grandmother in a nursing home and noticing residents sharing photos of their children and grandchildren.
“I don’t have kids,” Nancy explained, “and I wondered, ‘What am I going to show when I’m in a nursing home?’ These are the memories of those nights.”
The first pieces came in 2019, at a CityFolk show by Bush, where she got a set list and one of lead singer Gavin Rossdale’s picks. Her biggest score, she said, was the Imagine Dragons set list she got at a Canadian Tire Centre concert.
As she describes getting a drumstick at a July Talk show at the Bronson Centre, she throws one arm in the air, re-enacting the moment in cinematic slow motion. “I went like that…”
Not all her souvenirs were intended: once, a crowd-surfer somersaulted overhead and accidentally kicked her in the face. She didn’t think anything of it until she returned home and discovered a perfect shoe print on her cheek.
She did better at the Lumineers show Sunday night, snagging a drumstick and a guitar pick.
The former fan
On my way home, I met another concert-goer, one who is only beginning to collect her memories and find where she fits in. She was maybe eight years old, sitting on the LRT with her parents. She had “LUMINEERS” written down one leg in orange marker.
“I take it you’re a Lumineers fan?” I asked.
“No, not really,” she answered.
When I gave a quizzical look, her mother explained: “She THOUGHT she was a Lumineers fan, but then she SAW the Lumineers.”
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