Last night was amazing.

I always have fun volunteering at the Ottawa Blues Festival that's held every year for a week and a half in July. This is my 3rd year as backstage hospitality, and I have to say it is the most interesting job that there is! Basically, I have to set up and take down dressing rooms, prep food trays, and, sometimes make fresh lemonade from scratch among many other special requests that I get! This also means that I get to meet and talk with the artists who play (this year we have the likes of Joe Cocker, Ice Cube, Toots & the Maytals, Estelle, Ludacris, Busta Rhymes, Ani DiFranco (at my stage last night!), Mother Mother, Cake, Jeff Beck.. and Wednesday will be KISS.) Now I don't get to meet all of them (there are 7 stages, and I work at about 2 or 3 within the span of the festival) but I get to meet some pretty great ones! And it is always interesting to see how bands and artists approach me or react to my being bald.

So last night I had 6 bands at my stage. The first, local band went on at 1 in the afternoon, and Ani DiFranco headlined at 9 pm. Between those were the mid-known bands.. they had a bunch of fans but they weren't HUGE. One was King Khan & BBQ show, and they were an awesome 2-man set (a brown guy and a white guy) who were nice and friendly and appreciative of the quality of hospitality that we provided:D

Anyways, between setting up dressing rooms and cleaning up, I still had the time to hang out with The New Mastersounds, a band from England! AND meet one of my favourite artists: Girl Talk. I got him to sign something and got a picture with him! That show was amazing.. he is a remix DJ, so he basically just has his computer on stage and mixes the songs on there with speakers. There are always tons of people on the stage with him too, dancing, and he had stage deco people who threw balloons with confetti in them into the crowds. I danced on the stage a bit and even kicked a beach ball into the crowd. After the show, I got my friends and their little brother to meet him as well.. they were so happy!

The New Mastersounds were just really funny guys! At one point I had to kick them out of their dressing room to make way for another performer.. and they were so nice about it! They said they would come back and I promised that I would give them the beer that they were promised, being a performing band and all. We were wondering each other's age, so they told me to arrange them in order of age. I got the order completely the opposite of what it was, so they were somewhat offended, but there were many many laughs! The main backstage hospitality person at that stage, Jenn, and I took pictures with them and they looked really cute! I love working back stage and I can't wait to work with Toots & the Maytals tomorrow!