NxNE: Party Nights and Hangover Days!

I just got back from the NxNE Festival in Toronto and I must say I had an absolute blast! One of the big reasons are the fantastic and gracious fans of CBC Radio 3 who are such a fun-loving, passionate, positive bunch of people that it just becomes infectious. Believe me, I haven’t partied ’til 5am in… awhile… and they had both myself and fellow R3 host Craig Norris out to all hours. And I think I can speak for Craig that he doesn’t do that too often either. There’s lots of video and lots of photos.

It helped that it was just full-on summer all weekend long, blasting temperatures of over 30 C, making cycling and hanging out in the park, and wearing little clothing, and drinking a lot, very easy. I even saw Saskatoon band The Sheepdogs perform in a giant tree in the middle of Trinity Bellwoods park, the most unique performance I saw over the weekend. My #1 show would be gorgeous Hannah Georgas, who brought her Polaris Prize-nominated record This is Good to loud rockin’ life at the Horseshoe on Saturday night.

I also picked up a beautiful original painting from The Weakerthans bassist Greg Smith (talented and gracious fellow) after seeing their new tour documentary We Are The Weakerthans We Are From Winnipeg at the NFB, met Chris Murphy‘s brand new three week old son Santiago, had my first Father’s Day with my father-in-law, announced the Polaris Prize Long List with Jill and other pals, re-staged meeting my wife at the exact location with Jian Ghomeshi, rode around town on the Bonecrusher, and managed to score yet another painting, this time a beautiful wedding gift from John “tb3” Teeter.

Who knows? Maybe the wife and I will be moving to Toronto sooner than later.