Date: June 14th, 2008
Venue: Some huge field of a backyard in Bradford
Series: Bradstock ‘08
It was Gideon’s idea to play a “practice gig” before getting on stage in front of music label reps at the Opera House on June 19th (see “Upcoming Events” section) – it seemed like a good idea until he told me it was all the way up in Bradford, ON, for an annual outdoor music festival called “Bradstock.” Apparently, Gideon and Aaron have been going up every year for the last two years to play sets with Gideon’s dad, Brian (who is, by the way, an extremely skilled guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter – you can tell where Gideon gets it from). This year, the bassist they normally go up with bailed out on them, so Gideon decided to cut his losses by bringing Soul Plane up there to play so as to a) help him defend his reputation at Bradstock and b) get us familiar with the stage as a band so that we wouldn’t have to do so in front of a panel of judges who already hate everybody as it is.
When we drove by the front of the property that was hosting the event, I noticed several clues that informed me at once that we were in a small town. The cardboard decorations with “BRADSTOCK ‘08” scrawled on them, strewn all over the driveway; the row of port-o-potties perched perpendicular to the road extending all the way to the garage; the line-up of pickup trucks parked along the road; mosquitoes the size of AK-47 bullets; the distinct fragrance of horse shit... I couldn’t wait to hop out of Mel’s Rav4 to get as drunk as possible. And if I wasn’t driving the damn thing, I wouldn’t have.
Picture my reaction when I saw that “Bradstock” was actually just a gazebo that someone had chopped up to look like a stage set up facing the bigger portion of a huge backyard. Picture my reaction when my first glimpses of our crowd for the evening included lots of middle-aged White men and women and virtually nothing else. Picture my reaction when I realized that I was the only non-White guy there, as well as the only one wearing anything even resembling a collared shirt on (a loud-ass one, too). I had jeans, they had cargo shorts. I had dress shoes on, they were barefoot or rocking sandals. I had aviators, they had facial hair. I stood out like Mother Teresa in a police line-up.
Trying to take my cue from my own band members, I realized the only one who shared my sense of initial discomfort was Patrick, being a kid from the city himself. Aaron, Gideon, and Kevin had spent most of their childhood summers going to camp and/or camping, and embraced this natural, rural atmosphere immediately. Mel’s personality constitutes being super-friendly with everyone, so she had no problem adapting to this new environment whatsoever – within minutes of our arrival she had gone around and networked with 3-4 different groups of people who were just hanging around socializing. As Kevin and the kids left to go pitch the tent they were going to sleep in that night in the field adjacent to the one the stage was built on (they had asked if I wanted to stay overnight, and I had been equivocal before touching down here, but after surveying the scene I was 99% against staying over and for going home right after the show with Mel and Patrick who both had early-morning commitments on Sunday), Patrick and I hung out with Gideon’s girlfriend Remy and her friend Yael at a picnic table under a tree minding our own business. The more I drank, the friendlier I got with everyone. Pretty soon I wasn’t shunning everyone, and I even managed to talk to this girl who was also performing that night. I told her I was worried about the reception of our kind of music here. She assured me that they love all kinds of music here.
I took her word until I heard several bands play on the gazebo stage. Country music, old blues tunes, classic rock covers, the random original track here and there that still fit comfortably into one of those genres... what the hell were these people going to think of us? I wondered this aloud everywhere I walked for a while before we went on, and somehow my concerns made their way to Aaron’s dad. Then Trevor Mellet gave me the best advice of the night: thank them for their music, let them know you fully appreciate what they’ve done here tonight, and then tell them that you’re going to show them what the new generation has learned from them... and then start playing.
I went over those words in my head until I was sure I could recite them better than the lyrics to the songs I was about to perform. Once we got on stage I regurgitated Trevor’s words into the mic. Because of how dark it was by then and how bright the stage lights were, I couldn’t see how many people cheered for us, but it suddenly sounded like we were at a Barack Obama rally. By the time we launched into “Welcome to T-Dot City,” the crowd was ours to keep. Some highlights from our set:
- I forgot to come back in for my second verse in “Welcome to T-Dot City.” Luckily, the boys and Mel were quick enough on their feet to make an extra chorus out of it and call it a day instead of making my slip-up obvious. Golf clap for Soul Plane.
- By our third song, “Impossible,” Gideon’s guitar literally broke. As sound tech (these guys did a phenomenal job all night) scrambled frantically to figure out what the source of the problem was, fiddling with switches and knobs, I tried to interact with the crowd to keep them entertained. And here’s where Mel stepped in to do something none of my female counterparts have ever been able to do: she followed up what I was saying to the crowd, addressing them and me, giving our act this “talk-show” ambience that the audience really got into and subsequently making very light of an otherwise ruinous situation. I love that girl.
- By “Liquor on the Curb,” the song after “Impossible” in our set, Gideon’s guitar problems still hadn’t been resolved. Gideon knew it was time to switch guitars – his was on the fritz for the night. As he picked up his dad’s guitar and started plugging all sorts of shit into amps, pedals, and PA systems, Kevin, Patrick, and Aaron started jamming one of our songs that wasn’t in the evening’s set list – “Through the Fire and Fame.” In fact, Mel hasn’t even learned it yet, so I didn’t put my own vocals on top of their jam. Nevertheless, the crowd loved it – we know this because of the roar that came our way that almost drowned out the instruments.
- As Soul Plane played the introduction of “Liquor on the Curb,” after I introduced the history and dedication behind the song, I asked for everybody’s lighters to come out. By the middle of my first verse, the crowd had lighters, cell phones, and glow-sticks out. It was almost bright out there... it looked like a candlelight vigil from the future. Marvellous.
- As we rounded off our set with “Life is Beautiful,” the crowd forced us by popular demand to stay on for another song – the boys let loose with “Funk Off”, another track no one really knows (Mel and myself included). I spit two verses worth of freestyle, thanked our loving audience graciously, announced our Opera House show, and called it a night.
As I stepped off the stage, I was immediately accosted by three kids all holding their respective parents’ hands. The parents greeted me warmly and said they loved our music, and that it’s rare these days to be able to find “that modern sound with such an uplifting message in it.” The kids were about 7-8 years old, going ballistic like they had met their favourite Ninja Turtle or something – “WHOA YOU GUYS WERE SO AWESOMMMME!” “THAT WAS SOO GOOD!” “CAN YOU GUYS AUTOGRAPH A PICTURE FOR ME?” As I said enough “thank yous” to make my head spin and passed off most of the credit to my band members as they walked by me, I tried making my way over to Mel only to see that she was being pulled into another group throwing compliments at her, so I left her alone. As I turned around, I had several guys closer to my own age tell me that this was the “greatest shit they’ve ever heard at this party.” Three of them were telling me about how they make music and how we should get down on a song together. I took 2 business cards and a demo CD that I have since misplaced. Another group of guys thought I was some kind of superstar – they were trying to get me drunk, they were trying to get me high, they were trying to get me laid. One of them was telling me that if I wanted to “get my dick wet with some bush pussy tonight” he could arrange for it instantly – needless to say, I declined my first male groupie politely. Nonetheless, at least 10-12 of these newfound fans promised to make the pilgrimage to Toronto to see us play at the Opera House on the 19th of June.
I ultimately decided to stay the night in Bradford. After seeing Melanie and Patrick off, I headed back to the field to hang out with everyone around a huge campfire. We roasted marshmallows, we drank an assload of beer, we smoked out of the bong, we watched fat people sit down and just dilapidate the frail, plastic lawn-chairs that were provided. Several of our new fans sat with us around the fire and rolled (almost too many) joints of their weed for us to smoke. Let me say right away that I fully appreciate that respect. It was a grand ol’ time. Every now and then, into the wee hours of the morning, people of all ages would come up to us to compliment our music and ask us to come back next year. I actually remember Yael asking me after she heard a man pay me a huge compliment on our show: “So what does it feel like to have people say that kinda stuff to you?” I don’t think I answered that question properly then, and I don’t think I can now. I’m just fortunate to be working with the musicians that make up Soul Plane.
Even though I only managed to squeeze in three hours of sleep between 5am-8am in the driver’s seat of Kevin’s car (staying over was a last minute decision and I didn’t have a sleeping bag with me – the car seemed like a reasonable alternative to lying on gravel) it was all worth it. I got to see Brian (Gideon’s dad) play with his band, I got to laugh at fatties with Aaron and Yael, I got to talk to everyone who wanted to show us love – people were still talking about Soul Plane when we were cleaning up our tent in the morning.
Bradstock reminded me why this Soul Plane shit is a full-time job for me. Seeing people get so into our music made me realize that we could, if we kept working at it, make any given crowd of people feel the way I felt when I first heard Nas, Jay-Z, Biggie or Tupac rhyme. The music these hip hop legends made had a communicative depth to me; it reached out to me despite the fact that I didn’t share their cultural background. It appealed to me because they made their identities and mentalities known on record, and I could relate to it. I just hope our fans come away with the exact same feeling one day... Bradstock ’08 is obviously not the end-all-be-all – in fact, far from it, we got so many miles to go. The good news is that we’re in full-scale marathon shape, and that night in Bradford was certainly more than one step towards the finish line.
