Hillside!!!

I've been completely lazy and exhausted today from a great first Hillside experience. Three days of music, beer, sun, water, food, and fun have left me absolutely shattered. I should be packing right now since I'm leaving for Chicago tomorrow morning, but well, I'm naturally a procrasinator, and when I'm tired, I'm even worse. That's okay though. I have a hard time falling asleep the night before I leave for a trip, so I might as well leave my packing until the last minute.

Anyway, I loved my first Hillside experience! Hillside takes place at Guelph Lake Conservation Area on the island. It's a beautiful site surrounded by trees and water. Jason, who has been to Hillside a couple of times before, had described the Hillside experience and philosophy to me, however, it was pretty amazing to see a music festival done "right". And by right, I mean that Hillside is committed to being good to the environment, and to creating an event that fosters community, and living in the moment.

You might remember that for Canada Day, I went to a show at Downsview Park. And while I had tonnes of fun at the show, it was pretty much the antithesis of Hillside. You couldn't bring in your own water, so you were gouged and had to pay $4 for bottled water; there was no tap water provided if you brought your own water container. Only Budweiser (yuck) was available, and served in plastic cups. The food was expensive and nothing to be impressed with. At the end of the night, my friend and I were thinking about all the waste that littered the park: water bottles, food containers, beer cups, and so forth.

Hillside, however, is all about people working together to protect the environment and produce little waste. In fact, the whole festival is staffed by volunteers. There was not a single bottle of bottled water on site, everyone (including performers) brought their own containers and got water from a giant water truck filled with tap water. If you wanted beer (yummy beer from a local microbrewery), you had to use a reusable Hillside mug. Since I hadn't been before, I bought this year's version, which is made from corn and biodegradable. Food was served on dishes that were washed by volunteers. There were trash turnaround areas where you could sort your waste into dishes, recyclables, organics, and finally trash. The main stage, which is now a permanent fixture on the island, has a green roof.

It's amazing to see how you can have an event and really minimize the impact on the environment simply through people working together and being conscious. At the end of the three days, there was very little trash on the ground, which was quite a difference compared to the massive amounts of litter produced at my Canada Day show.

Another great part of Hillside is the community. All the people washing the dishes, getting your water, etc. are volunteers, which is cool. Many of them have been with the festival for years. The food vendors are all local, and all the beer that is served is from local microbreweries. There is no big corporate advertising anywhere. Everything is very well organized and thoughtfully done: there are even nice messages taped inside the port-o-potties to make that experience a little bit nicer. (My fave: "Every moment is precious. Even this one. Breathe deeply.") People tend to be way nicer to each other at this festival than at others. In fact, I experience no CGR (concert-going-rage) at this event. A lady was nice enough to give me some toilet paper that she brought from home on the first night 'cuz the port-o-potty was out. I reciprocated this random kindness by giving a random woman a hair elastic because I heard her say she'd forgotten to bring one and needed to tie up her hair in the heat.

Of course, the music was my favourite part of the show. There are three stages, so you have to make some choices. Here's a list of everyone I caught:
- Lights
- The Dears
- One Hundred Dollars
- Torquil Campbell (of Stars) jamming with Hooded Fang
- Dala
- Dan Mangan, Mother Mother, and Hannah Georgas (all from Vancouver) jamming together
- Memphis
- Emmanual Jal (I caught one song, but he was impressive!)
- Dan Mangan
- Hannah Georgas
- These United States
- Mother Mother
- Lowlands
- Modern Field Recordings
- Old Man Luedecke
- Kevin Drew jamming with most of Sloan
- Shannon Kingsbury Band
- Kevin Drew & The Beauties
- The Rural Alberta Advantage
- Serena Ryder & The Beauties
- Common Grackle
- Seun Kuti & Egypt 80
- Slooooooooo-oooooooooooan (to close out the event)

Wow, that was a lot, but it was all excellent. What were the standouts? Well...

- I really enjoyed One Hundred Dollars. The lead singer has an excellent voice that reminds me of Neko Case.

- Memphis is Torq's (of Stars) side project and I've loved them for a long time, but this was the first time I saw them perform. They had to start off the set with just two members because they were waiting for the others to be boated across the lake to the stage. They made it though! The band closed with a great version of "Incredibly Drunk on Whiskey" which is such a fun song.

- Dan Mangan put on a great set even though he made a mistake of wearing jeans in such hot weather.

- I'd never really heard much by Mother Mother, but they put on a great show. It was really high energy with catching songs.

- Old Man Luedecke, my favourite banjo player who is from Nova Scotia, put on a great show which had the whole audience stomping and clapping, and even won over the grumpy old men behind us who declared him "boring with a banjo". Even they were clapping along a few songs in!

- Kevin Drew (of Broken Social Scene) put on a great show with Toronto's The Beauties. It was excellent. They closed with a great cover of the Arcade Fire's Empty Room.

- The Beauties also played with Serena Ryder, and put on another great set.

- Sloan closed out the event with a stellar version of Money City Maniacs.

And lastly, for some pictures! I was just going to post one of each band I saw, but I'm a horrible photographer, so I'll just put up the ones I'd posted on instagram, which I actually like.

My reusable beer mug, filled with Flying Monkey's Antigravity Light Ale:

Folk duo Dala on the Main Stage:

Memphis:
Dan Mangan:

Chris Murphy of Sloan during the afternoon jam with Kevin Drew (not pictured). Jay Ferguson of Sloan is covered by Chris' guitar.


Sloan closing out the festival:

Do I have any Hillside regrets? Yes. Two.

1) I only wore SPF 30 on Saturday and got burned on my shoulders. Yuck. I got SPF 60 for Sunday and did not burn any further.

2) I did not see Fred Penner. He's a kids' artist that every good Canadian of my age watched on CBC. He was playing at the same time as the Rural Alberta Advantage, who Jason likes a lot, and I was interested to hear. They were good, but then I heard that both Dan Mangan and Serena Ryder jammed with Fred. And I swear everyone I heard walking around said: "Did you see Fred Penner? He was amazing!"

Moral of the story: always choose Fred Penner.

I do not regret any of the food I ate. I had a really yummy Italian sausage with roasted corn on Saturday, and organic pumpkin ice cream. It tasted like pumpkin pie. On Sunday, I had the Indian taco, which Jason highly recommended from past experience. It had beef chili, cheese, peach salsa, cilantro, tomatoes, lettuce, and fried Ojibway bread. It was sooo good. That day I had chocolate ice cream, which was good, but not as good as the pumpkin.

I drank a lot of beer, but I sweat out all the toxins because it was hot and sunny.

All in all, I loved my first Hillside experience and I'm excited to go back.

Now I have to go pack.

Later all. Next post will be from Chicago!