K-Naan in Deep River

I can honestly say I have never been under as much pressure as I was to create this entry for a blog that probably nobody reads. With that being said, here goes.

Summerfest is an event that happens in Deep River every two years during the August long weekend. This year K-Naan was playing. Craig, Marie-Claire, Jordan and Doug were already up there visiting Craig's family, and they told me that I should come up for the party.

I arrived on Saturday morning to find everyone sitting outside on the patio. After some down time playing cards, drinking and BBQing, we all headed to Summerfest to see Doug Stewart's band, Sexual Leprechaun, play.

Before Doug's band went on stage, there were fireworks as part of the celebration. They were actually pretty decent.

A few other bands went on stage, but the setup of bands was terrible. The organizers expected that once a band was finished, another band would immediately start. I guess they forgot about setting up the equipment. So, as a result, Doug's band didn't get to play until roughly a half an hour later than they should have. It didn't help that the band right before them elected to play the full album version of Freebird as their finale.

Finally the anticipation was over. Sexual Leprechaun took the stage. They were fantastic, despite having to play a shortened set because previous bands went over their allocated time. Their finale, Paradise City, had the crowd rocking.

I mean really, how often do you get to see Rick Campanelli hammer away on his guitar?

On Sunday afternoon, we all headed to see what day activites were happening at Summerfest. When we got there, I noticed that there was a tour bus already parked there. Something else caught my eye as well. They had added extra fencing to the area so that there was no access to where the performers would exit. Balls.

We all headed back to Craig's parents to booze a bit and then returned later that evening. Also playing that evening were Amanda Rheaume, and Montreal band The Planet Smashers.

After scoping out the venue for a good while, I decided that there were only two ways I could meet K'Naan. Either he would be standing around before he was scheduled to go on stage and I could call him over, or I would have to wait until after his performance and get him going to the bus. I brought Doug over to ask him his opinion. He said that he felt he was already very invested in this blog entry and wanted to do whatever it took for a meeting to happen.

There was no sign of K'Naan until he was scheduled to go on stage. He came out of his tour bus, smiled and gave a quick wave to fans and walked towards the stage with coffee in hand. One option down, one to go.

The show turned out to be great. Despite a small stage, K'Naan had the crowd rocking.

I was even impressed at the way he involved the crowd in some of his songs. He would get the crowd to sing certain things and even told a story of how he ended up in Canada. For his encore, K'Naan played his most notable song Waving Flag. You might recognize it as the theme of this summer's World Cup.

After the show, I hurried to the side of the bus to wait. A couple of band members came by first and started to chat with people. By now there were probably sixty people or so waiting to meet K'Naan. I was the only one with photos though. As he came near the bus, he started walking down the fence and shaking hands with everyone. When he got close to me I asked him if he would sign an autograph and that I could hand the photo over the fence to him. "Um....", he said looking at all the people by the fence, "I don't really want to start signing right now". Great. He continued down the line touching hands with people that were waiting. I figured I could grab him as he returned to the bus, so I waited for a couple of minutes only to see him get on the bus and go sit down.

I had almost given up. I was just about to leave when I decided to give it a couple of more minutes. The bus wasn't started, his band was still outside talking, and fans were beginning to disperse.

K'Naan eventually came back off the bus with his own black sharpie and started to sign for the few fans that were left. People were handing him their shoes and any other objects they could find. I was the only one with photos for him. I handed him two photos over the top of the fence and he signed the top one and handed them back to me.

I looped him to see if I could get a photo, but when I asked, he said "um...don't really want to start doing photos right now". Well hell, I didn't want to wait around for even more people to leave.

I then saw Craig and asked him if he could go over and get one of my other photos signed.

We then met back up with Jordan, Doug and Marie-Claire. Jordan asked if I got all my photos signed. I told him no, so he took one over and got it signed as well.

I think its key to note that on my photo, K'Naan wrote "One love". On Craig and Jordan's photo he wrote "Love from". Seems about right.