The first thing I noticed when my friends and I arrived there just past 1PM on Saturday (we were aiming for earlier, but that’s a long story involving cancelled subways, missed GO buses, streetcar confusion, and an overall inability to navigate downtown public transit) was the vast range of ages of the people there. I was only really expecting to see teenagers and twenty to thirty year-olds, but there were a ton of younger kids and older people as well. One of my favourite moments of the day was seeing this woman who was probably in her 70’s or 80’s getting really into dancing to Pins & Needles -- don’t let anyone tell you you’re too old to go to a music festival.
There was a lot offered for the really young crowd as well. Not only was the whole festival free for anyone under twelve (a 5’2” friend of mine joked that she should have pretended to be someone’s little sister), but they had a whole kids’ section with everything from bouncy castles to face painting, and an afternoon performance by the ever-cheerful Sharon and Bram. I won’t pretend I wasn’t at least a little jealous -- or tempted to run through the giant plume of bubbles that I passed by on my way to the TD Fort York Stage.
There were artists selling handmade pins and hats and and flower crowns, there was some kind of immersive technology game that I didn’t get a chance to check out because the line up was too long, apparently there was a stand up comedy show that I never got around to seeing either, someone was painting a mural, a couple of women were doing some pretty impressive hula-hooping, and that’s not even mentioning the food trucks! I had a portobello burger for lunch, which is essentially a hamburger except instead of meat it’s just one giant mushroom (I know, I couldn’t believe it either). Dinner was mac and cheese with gelato for dessert, and by that point I had to stop buying food or I wasn’t going to be able to afford the bus fare home.
Now, as much as I could spent the whole time talking about everything else, the most important part of any music festival, of course, is the music. I think the main thing I kept thinking about during the whole experience was that there was so much going on I’d never be able to see everything, but I managed to get to a hell of a lot. After seeing a great set by Pins and Needles at 1:30, we walked over to the other side and spent most of the time at the Garrison Stage. We lay down our blankets near the back of the field and ate lunch while listening to The Belle Game, and then moved right up to the front for the next act: From Jamaica to Toronto. We were pretty lucky in that we got to stay pretty close to the stage throughout the whole evening, as the crowd got bigger and bigger through De La Soul, The War on Drugs, Arkells, and finally the headliners for the night, Alabama Shakes. I wasn’t too familiar with most of the bands there, but not knowing all the lyrics didn’t stop the whole experience being pretty spectacular overall. Alabama Shakes were definitely my favourite, so thank you for that, Field Trip, I don’t know if I would have found out about them otherwise. Brittany Howard has a voice like you wouldn’t believe, and the whole thing was a perfect way to cap off a great evening. I think the sense of community in the audience was at its peak by that point, because I could almost feel the buzz in the air around me like something alive. Being shoved in at close quarters with a big crowd may have its downsides, but my god if there isn’t something magical about jumping up and down and cheering to the same beat as a thousand other people.
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