Owen Pallet doesn’t give in

Owen Pallett (aka Final Fantasy) is an extremely talented musician out of Toronto. Grant and I had the pleasure of seeing him at the Regina Folk Fest a couple of years ago (that’s one of the pictures I took of him above). We saw him in a workshop as well as the main stage, and I was just blown away at his ability to construct a song out of essentially nothing; he would use a loop pedal to build a song out of snippets of music, and it was incredibly impressive.

I came across this video of him performing the song “Lewis Takes Off His Shirt” at the Hillside Festival last year in Ontario, and it just blew me away. It is a raging storm, rain and lightening, the tech’s are having a fit, trying to get him off stage, and like a trooper he keeps on playing, shouting to the stage tech “Let me finish this song!”

It reminds me of the Winnipeg Folk Fest this past year. Imagine a sunny, but slightly chilly Thursday evening: The Punch Brothers were performing on the main stage to a huge crowd; the sky started to darken and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees; lightening flashed in the distance but the lively bluegrass from the stage remained; it poured, it thundered, it gusted wind; the band didn’t stop; it passed almost as soon as it appeared, and all that was left was this:

As the announcer said afterward, it was one of the most epic performances he had ever seen. I agreed. And I imagine that’s how the audience felt after Owen Pallett finished his song.

I have such respect for musicians who will continue to play although the weather is intent on making them stop. It shows that they care for their fans who want to see them perform, no matter what.