Live music galleries: The Rural Alberta Advantage [2015]

(I got the idea for this series while sifting through the ‘piles’ of digital photos on my laptop. It occurred to me to share some of these great pics from some of my favourite concert sets from time to time. Until I get around to the next one, I invite you to peruse my ever-growing list of concerts page.)

Artist: The Rural Alberta Advantage
When: June 27th, 2015
Where: Ottawa Dragonboat Festival, Mooney’s Bay Park, Ottawa
Context: It’s been almost six months since I’ve seen any live music and I’ve realized in the last couple of weeks that I’ve been (for want of a better term) seriously jonesing. Seriously. I’ve been habitually checking the concert listings, reading all the festival lineups as they are released, watching live videos on the YouTube, and I’ve even been finding myself wistfully flipping through photos of past shows that I’ve seen. And in so doing, I came across this series of pics that I snapped during a set by Toronto’s The Rural Alberta Advantage at Ottawa’s Dragonboat festival five years (!) ago. I’ve seen them a total of four times, each time was a riot, but this show was the last time I saw them. They were still touring their third album, “Mended with gold”, which like all their others, is energetic indie folk with a heavy percussion edge, this last provided by Energizer bunny drummer, Paul Banwatt, and bundle of dynamite, Amy Cole. She would actually leave the band the following year, to be temporarily replaced by a Robin Hatch, but is now back in the fold, and the word is there is new material in the works. Maybe I’ll see them a fifth time later this year. One can hope…
Point of reference song: “Terrified”