Music Festivals

Friday night, the 20th opening of the Atlantic Jazz Festival got things on high-boil with a night in the Jazz Tent of Afro-Cuban jazz and dance music. The all-ages capacity crowd was primed to party (and to dust off their latent Latino dance moves) by a set of high energy Latin grooves and Latino songs […]

I started to climb the stairs up to Ginger’s–believe it or not, this was my first time to the venue ever. I got up to the third stair and the guy at the door yelled “WE’RE FULL!!” over the sounds of someone tuning a guitar and what sounded like 600 people talking at the same […]

This is the one entry I’ve been afraid of writing. I don’t feel capable of expressing how moved I felt on Saturday night/early Sunday morning watching this incredible man perform. His musicians were deadly tight, the music ranged from gentle to fierce to playful to heartbreaking within the space of a song, the lyrics were […]

I don’t know how I did it, but I did it. I found my last reserve of energy and walked down to Ginger’s to see if I could find Christopher, then back up to The Attic to catch Chixdiggit. I have seen Chixdiggit about a billion times, back when I lived out west. That first […]

That’s it. That was the Halifax Pop Explosion 2005, the Tara Lee Wittchen edition. I’m exhausted (still…on Monday night), I’m hungry (who has time to buy groceries when there is rockin’ to do?), and I’m behind on my work (again), but man, I’d do it all again in a second. Welllll…(remembers how sore feet are)…maybe […]

HOLY FRIG!!! It’s just over an hour until the first band hits the stage at the Marquee/Hell’s Kitchen, and I’m so damn excited I think my head’s going to explode… I can’t believe it has been 10 years since I attended my first Halifax Pop Explosion. In late September 1995, I crawled into a smoky […]

You know that sinking feeling you get when you realize you’ve already missed your favourite song at a gig? Maybe the band started early or you arrived late–either way it sucks. At an event like the HPX, you run the risk of not only missing favourite songs, but possibly missing favourite acts altogether, just because […]

Um…so Christopher Rees is performing *tomorrow* night at Ginger’s. I don’t have to run between two bars after all. Until tomorrow. I walked downtown around 9pm, thinking I’d catch Special Noise at Stage Nine, and then, duh, realized the show wasn’t starting until after 10. I had time to catch Ted Leo at the Pavilion!!! […]

I think it’s nearly 10pm on Sunday. I feel like I’ve been asleep for a hundred years. And also like a large mammal has been kicking me in the guts, brain and soles of my feet. I ingested no booze, no illicit substances, and yet I feel WRECKED. I managed to wake myself up today […]

Back to Friday night. When last I wrote, I was attempting to race down to Stage Nine to catch Special Noise. I didn’t make it. My first “miss” of the weekend. I tried to console myself by telling myself that I could catch them another time. It’s only half-true. Yes, I can catch them another […]

So I’m going to see if I can handle posting photographs on this blog. Lately anything involving technology + me = crash (e.g., computer, camera flash, tape recorder, scanner, buttons on my shirt). HEY, IS THIS THING ON?!?

As I’m going through the hundreds of photographs I shot this weekend, I realize there are quite a few that don’t involve the musicians on stage. For a festival like the Halifax Pop Explosion to be successful, you need a lot of people to come together and play their own important behind the scenes roles. […]