Feet will be tapping along as musicians sing at various outdoor concerts over the summer.
Ottawa’s largest electronic music festival, Escapade, will mark the official summer music festival season in Ottawa. It will run from June 20 to 22 at its new location, the RA Centre grounds. Notable headliners include The Chainsmokers, Kygo, Kaskade, Disclosure (DJ Set), and Above & Beyond.
Then, from June 20 to 29, the Jazz Festival will take place at Confederation Park. On June 22, the Roots, the house band on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, will headline the event.
Other upcoming jazz acts include Gary Clark Jr., Mavis Staples, Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis, Broken Social Scene, Samara Joy, Allison Russell, and the Branford Marsalis Quartet.
Fan favourite Ottawa Bluesfest kicks off July 10 at Lebreton Flats with dozens of all-star names. The musical range will include folk star Hozier, rock legends Def Leopard, rapper Sean Paul, pop-punk group Green Day, and country stars Lainey Wilson and Shania Twain.
Local artists Elizabeth Royall, Claude Munson, and blues guitarist JW Jones will also perform.
Jones, from Alta Vista, has played at Bluesfest over a dozen times since his first appearance in 2001. Jones took to music at a young age, playing the drums as a child. But when he was a teenager, Jones saw blues legend B.B. King played at Ottawa’s old congress centre in 1994 and that changed everything.
“That was the moment for me where I was like, ‘I want to do that,’” Jones told the Kitchissippi Times. “I had already been playing blues on the drums, but that was the moment where I really wanted to play guitar,” he said.
A friend started Jones with the basic blues chords, but he mostly listened.
“Most of what I learned was just sitting down with a tape and rewinding it 100 times,” he said.
Jones said all that listening made him a better musician. He could hear his trio beside him on stage and play together as one unit rather than three.
When King returned to Ottawa to play at Bluesfest in 2013, Jones was one of King’s opening acts. “I met him several times… meeting B.B. was the greatest,” Jones said.
The atmosphere at Bluesfest is different every year, according to Jones. He’ll be playing with his trio on the River Stage this year.
“I’m excited this year because we’re going to be on an outdoor stage again,” Jones said. “Outside, you can turn the amp up; then you really get the sound you want.”
Jones’ show is at 7:45 p.m. on July 19, the second last day of the festival. Before and after his stage time, there are other bands Jones is a fan of.
“We’ve got the Texas Horns on right before us and Kingfish after, and they’re all my friends,” he said. Jones hopes to have a chance to jam on stage with some of the other groups.
Jones, bassist Harrison Singer and drummer Joel Oppong-Boateng will rock the stage with a collection of tunes, including songs from their latest album, ‘Everything Now’.
To cap off the summer concert season, City Folk is returning to Lansdowne Park from Sept. 10 to 14. Alex Warren, Dropkick Murphys, The Pogues, Down with Webster, Melissa Etheridge, and Indigo Girls will be among the headliners.
Some local talent will include Ottawa’s School House, Gatineau’s Mia Kelly, and other well-known Canadian artists such as Tyler Shaw and Junkhouse.
“It’s a great time of year to stage an event,” Mark Monahan, CityFolk executive and artistic director, said in a statement. “People are always up for one last chance to enjoy some great music under the stars, and the musicians always seem ready for more outdoor gigs before heading back to the indoor concert scene.”