The Junos!

The main event happened last night, and although I wasn’t in attendance, there were a lot of cool events leading up to last night. Biebs and Drake hit up the University of Ottawa to play in a charity basketball event on Thursday night. They didn’t announce the celebrities who would be playing until right prior to tip-off; I was going to go but as my last post shows, we went to the War Museum instead..

I went to “Junofest”, which was a gathering of Canadians bands and artists (some of them Juno-nominated) to play at venues in Ottawa on Friday and Saturday night. By purchasing a bracelet for the event, you can attend any of the shows and jump back and forth between venues since a lot of them are close proximity in the Market, and have multiple different artists sharing sets throughout the night.

On Friday, a misprint of schedules led me to unfortunately miss the show for my brother’s girlfriend, who participated in Junofest playing with her band “Loon Choir”. However, I did see the Juno-nominated “Anvil” at a different venue. It was cool to see the lead singer on TV as a presenter at the Junos two nights later.

Anvil

On Saturday I really enjoyed a more acoustic Junofest scene. We went to see Craig Cardiff and the guy before him was really great as well. Craig, who I’ve only ever heard sing and play guitar solo, had some backup consisting of a guy with a keyboard and a female beatboxer. They all sat on the floor of the stage so everyone at the show also sat down on the floor to listen. The result was some really great music and some pretty comfy floor seats front and center.

Craig Cardiff

Annnd ended the night with some sort of disco rap.