Have you ever set out to do something awesome one night only to have the night go a completely opposite direction? That happened to me this past Saturday, but it was definitely for the better.
Last week (and weekend) was NXNE (North by North East) here in Toronto, which is a huge music festival. The festival toutes 650 bands playing at over 40 venues across the city over six days. Every year I look forward to this week because... well, because I love music. I'm always on the look out for cool new music and NXNE is a great way to find some. Finding new music was actually my happy accident on Saturday night.
On Saturday I was wandering all over the city seeing a ton of different bands. One band that I specifically wanted to check out was Handsome Furs. I've never seen them live, but heard they put on a wicked show. I showed up at the venue just before 1am (when they were supposed to be going on) only to find that the venue was packed to capacity. There was even a crazy line up for people who had "priority passes" which had worked to get me into a bunch of other packed shows last week.
Anyways, not one to be discouraged, my cousin and I decided to stop by another bar in the area that was also part of the NXNE venue list just to check out what was going on there. We wandered over to The Dakota Tavern and walked in to find the best new band I found throughout the entire festival. We got in to catch the second half of a band called New Country Rehab. I can only describe them as country/bluegrass/good-ol-fashioned-rock-n-roll. While it's not my usual type of music they were really awesome and definitely the best find of the festival (for myself anyways).
I managed to grab the last two minutes of one of their songs on video. Check them out bellow:
I wish I got to see more of them and got more of their stuff on video to share with you. Luckily, they're a local Toronto band, so I'll have my eye out to see them again.
In the meantime, here's another (full) song of theirs I found on YouTube so you can get a better idea of the band.
Can't wait for another happy accident at next year's NXNE!
