Wolfe Island Music Festival in review

The 14th annual Wolfe Island Music Festival was a huge success
Image by: Tiffany Lam
The 14th annual Wolfe Island Music Festival was a huge success

It’s not often that you can say you were so close to your favourite band during a show that you could feel them flick their drink at you. That was the name of the game at this year’s Wolfe Island Music Festival — a festival so intimate that the line between the audience and the performers became blurred with each song.

For some bands, the trip to the island was momentary — enough to play a short set and then jet-set off to a new location. First-time performer and popular blackgrass group Elliott Brood got to the island from Edmonton for a nanosecond Friday night before having to travel out west.

“You know what I just realized, we’re going to be doing three ‘tons’ this weekend — Edmonton, Kingston and Fredericton,” guitarist Casey Laforet said.

Their country style had the baseball diamond filled audience bouncing in the muddy grass after the torrential downpour of Friday night.

It might have been chilly outside, but over at St. Margaret’s Hall, it was so hot inside that Hollerado drummer Jake Boyd had his shirt off by the second song. Their hour and a half set saw streamers flying everywhere and had the crowd shake off their shoes and put their arms around each other, prepared to dance all night even after the show was over.

Fast-forward to Saturday and rapper D-Sissive had people convinced with his humourous and meaningful rhymes that rap can be your favourite kind of music even if you thought it wasn’t.

He’d just moved into a new apartment in Toronto the day before his Wolfe Island appearance. The performer and his DJ, Brendan, were joking around about this being their first time on Wolfe Island.

“There’s 1,000 islands, so I’m sure we can find you one, Brendan, and name it after you,” D-Sissive said, to which his friend replied that all they would need to do is find WIFI on the island.

In the crowd listening to the other performers of the Saturday concert were the three jesters of Parlovr.

They got onstage and started banging their heads along to the music, swiftly mimicked by the audience. Their songs ranged from sad love songs to buoyant music where they switched the name of the song with a little girl’s name from the audience.

Backstage, the three boys were joking around with the guys of new band Eight and a Half and one particular story from Louis David Jackson of Parlovr detailed a starstruck moment he had with the headlining act of the festival.

“Seeing Sam Roberts here is wicked. Actually, when I was working at Blockbuster one night he came into the store with his crew,” Jackson said. “They came and got a whole bunch of DVDs.”

Tags

WIMF, Wolfe Island Music Festival

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