Toronto, North America’s fourth largest city, offers the traveler and occasional visitor a wealth of urban pleasures: pleasant walkable streets through leafy neighborhoods; useful public transit that supplements and extends pedestrian excursions; mid-priced lodging; and affordable restaurants that serve delicious food reflecting the polyglot make-up of arguably the continent’s most diverse city.
If the visitor happens also to be a fan of live music, particularly indie rock n’ roll, the pleasures of the city are doubled, and then some. One time of year when the pleasures of Toronto’s rock n’ roll tourism are at a peak is the annual North by Northeast Festival (NXNE) which marked its twentieth anniversary this June 13-22. This was the fourth time I’d attended NXNE, which I write about on my blogs The Great Gray Bridge and Honourary Canadian. While NXNE began as a music festival, a kind of northern cousin to SXSW, it now includes Film, Comedy, Interactive, and Art. I attend largely for the music, while taking in other events as time permits, such as comedian Marc Maron’s rousing keynote.
More than 800 artists played NXNE this year, appearing at more than 50 venues spread across the city over five days and nights. The line-ups skew predominantly Canadian, which is fine by me because as I’ve found the past five years I’ve been following the CAN-Rock scene, there are a ton of great bands stretching from St. John’s Newfoundland to Victoria, British Columbia; from Windsor, Ontario—a city that is actually more southern than Detroit—to Nunavit, in the Northwest Territory. For a country of 35 million people, roughly the population of California, this continent-wide country has a remarkably vibrant music scene. me, because it is the Canadian musicians that bring me back each year. Even with the geographic emphasis falling north of the 49th Parallel, NXNE brings in bands from abroad, such as Spoon from Austin, TX, who played a great live show, as did the Felice Brothers from upstate New York.
The first act I saw on my first night out was Shawn William Clarke at a new venue for me, Baltic Avenue (perhaps named for a deed in Monopoly?). I liked Clarke’s self-aware lyrics, and learned that he’s making an album with longtime Ohbijou drummer James Brunton as producer. during the festival was a slow sThe acts I heard this year: Amos the Transparent (“Says the Spark) ; Shawn William Clarke; NQ Arbuckle, Lee Harvey Osmond, the alter-ego of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings member Tom Wilson, who performed with his son’s band, Harlan Pepper, and had Lindi Ortega sing several songs with them; Whitehorse, w/Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland, with whom they continued the father & son theme, performing with veteran member of Blue Rodeo Jim Cuddy, and the Devin Cuddy Band;