One-Man-Band-FestEverybody seems to make such a big deal about two man (or the more politically correctly “two person”) bands these days. Remember when White Stripes came out? You had a friend who would not shut up about how “it’s only two people making this music.” Similarly with Death From Above 1979, or more recently there’s that Twenty One Pilots band that some people seem to be really excited about. However all of these bands would not be invited to one particular Montreal based music festival this weekend for a simple reason: they would be too big to participate.

Montreal’s 3rd annual One Man Band Festival kicks off this Thursday, May 15th at venues all over the Plateau/Mile End and will be a celebration of musical acts that don’t need any backup. I’m not going to lie, when I first heard about the festival the first thing that popped into my head was the image of an old-timey musician with a bass drum strapped to his back and cockamamie contraptions allowing him to manipulate a collection of cymbals, harmonicas, string instruments and maybe an accordion tossed in for good measure. Don’t get me wrong, there is some of that at the festival, but there’s also a ton of other musical genres that will be explored by a lone performer.

Looking over the lineup I was hyper pleased to see that the festival managed to book a few my own personal favorite (Canadian no less) one-man bands. Although seeing them all might be somewhat of a trick; the organizers crammed over 60 performers (and each performer in this case being a band unto themselves) into 4 nights of music. So who are my picks? Glad you asked. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…