Büddies Fest takes over Tillsonburg

Tillsonburg, ON, may best be known for that Stompin’ Tom song about working in the tobacco fields, but its latest claim to music history fame involves a few punk rock legends, and a bunch of good buddies.

And man, what a weekend it was.

I first saw Büddies Fest advertised in the small southern Ontario town when one of my absolute favourite bands, Dillinger Four, shared a post on their Instagram showing they’d be headlining the first of the three night festival, happening July 11-13. I didn’t need to know what other bands would be playing – I was sold then and there. I immediately messaged my friend, Tyler, who is also a D4 fan, and who I’d last seen the band with live the last time they played in Toronto, which was a shocking 17 years ago! I hadn’t seen them perform since, but he and his partner, Lori, have gone down to see them at Punk Rock Bowling in Vegas once since then, and we’d talked about going other places in the states to see them over the years, so getting to see them closer to home was a no-brainer.

Büddies Fest started just before 4 p.m. on Friday, July 11. The main festival area had two stages going – one inside, in a venue called “Paddy’s Underground” which was the basement of a restaurant called “The Mill,” and then an outdoor stage on the same property, with a beer tent, merch table, a couple of food trucks, and even a little vendor selling jewelry and candles, set up nearby. 

I brought my dog along (not to the festival itself, as dogs weren’t permitted, and she wouldn’t have enjoyed that anyway – she just chilled in the hotel room while we went to watch) so I drove separately from Tyler and Lori. I got going a little later than I’d hoped, but we arrived just in time to hear the very end of female rocker, Loviet, performing on the main stage outside as we walked up. I’d never heard of her before, but I had kinda wanted to catch her set. (I love a female rocker.) Still, I wasn’t too upset to have missed it, because I knew she was also going to be playing the Tall Pines music festival in Gravenhurst, ON, this coming weekend, which I already had tickets for!

Next up outside was Pkew Pkew Pkew, who put on a really fun, high energy set, including the song Asshole Pandemic, which had me singing along with the lyrics “this is a building” even though I’d never heard it before. (Full disclosure, my friend listened to them ahead of time and told me that was one of the lines. But it was a really fun, catchy song, and I couldn’t help but sing along.)

After Pkew Pkew Pkew we started walking towards the indoor basement stage at Paddy’s Underground, but got waylaid by a tattoo artist set up on the grounds on the way there. One of my friend’s ended up getting a tattoo, being the first Büddie’s Fest attendee to do so on site. My other friend and I were supposed to both get one too, but we were trying to get inside to catch Flatliner’s lead singer, Chris Creswell’s solo set, so we put off our tattoos (and didn’t end up making it back to the guy – but he looked like he had customers every time we walked by after that anyway).

Of course being acoustic, Creswell’s Friday night set was a bit more mellow than the acts going on outside, and the variety was nice.

Afterwards we went back outside and caught London, ON based band, Single Mothers, who put on a great, heavy, energetic set. I’ll definitely be checking out more of their music – though they’ve been around since about 2008, (according to the internet).

After that, former Hüsker Dü bassist Greg Norton and Büddies (a.k.a. a bunch of musicians from a bunch of the other acts performing over the weekend, including Colorado-based musician and Büddies Fest co-creator, Jon Snodgrass) performed inside. 

But the main event of the whole weekend, for me, was of course, the aforementioned Friday night headliners, Dillinger Four. They started playing their sound check and it sounded so good that a bunch of people – including me – started gathering around the front of the stage, claiming our spots. The band basically laughed at us and told us to come back later when they were ready to play, so we spread out a little bit, but hovered nearby in anticipation. When their soundcheck was done and they were ready to go I still got a great spot, right at the front, with a pretty unobstructed view of the band, despite my relatively small stature.

The set was amazing, but not long enough, given the length of time I’d been waiting to see them again!! They played a bunch of my favourites, including Doubleswhiskeycokenoice, Maximum Piss and Vinegar, A Jingle for the Product, and ¡¡Noble Stabbings!!, with a fan who’d travelled all the way from Japan to take in the festival getting up on stage at the encouragement of co-guitarist/co-singer Erik Funk to do the intro for the latter, in Japanese, just like the album version.

The day was hot and sweaty, and bassist/co-singer Patrick “Paddy” Costello joked on stage more than once about the possibility he might die up there, due to the heat. Fortunately, the band all made it through the set without any incidents.

Immediately following their performance, Costello’s wife, Christy Costello, was playing with her band in the underground venue, so my friends and I hurried in that direction, right past a security guard who was trying to stop us, (even though we were walking the same route we’d taken earlier in the day where the tattoo artist had been setup). One of my friend’s made an excuse about needing to use the bathroom, and told the security guard that was why we had to go that way. He kind of protested as we continued on our way, but didn’t really stop us. There were a few guys sitting under the tent where the tattoo artist had been earlier and they overheard the exchange and were laughing about it, when I turned back around and realized them to be three of the four members of Dillinger Four, i.e. Costello, Bill Morrisette who also plays guitar and shares vocal duties in the band, and drummer Lane Pederson. Of course, once we realized this, we circled back to chat with them (which was probably exactly the reason the security guard hadn’t wanted us to go that way). Costello had already gotten up when we went back, but we sat and chatted with Morisette and Pederson for a couple of minutes, which was super cool, before continuing on downstairs. After not too long Costello came down to watch his wife play, and my friends and I chatted with (i.e. slightly harassed) him, doing shots, and getting photos with the guy. No apologies, they’re our favourite band, it had been 17 years since we last saw them, and we were pumped.

Christy Costello and her band put on a really great performance too. She even had a small horn section, and at one point had somehow rigged up an old phone (like the kind that plugs into the wall) to do some vocals through, which gave a really cool effect (and I’m still trying to figure out the setup for). Her set was definitely a good time, and I’ll be looking into more of her music too.

That was it for night one at the main venue, but the party continued just a little down the road at a Tillsonburg bar called The Copper Mug.

Because I had my dog waiting at the hotel, however, and being the anxious little Egyptian (former) street dog that she is, she hadn’t gone to the bathroom since we left home that morning (though not for lack of opportunity) I felt like I needed to go back to the hotel to take her out before heading to the afterparty. Before separating from my friends though, we’d (they’d) started chatting with a couple of guys walking just a little ahead of us (my friends are much more social than I am, especially when drinking) and they were headed back to our same hotel, so I walked with them, as they seemed more confident than me of which way to go.

It turned out they were also in a band from Minneapolis (i.e. where D4, and presumably Christy Costello and her band are from), called Rad Owl, and were gonna be wrapping up the show at Paddy’s Underground the next night.

By the time I finished walking my dog, my friends were already headed back to the hotel, so I didn’t catch any of the afterparty on Friday, but that was ok, as I was still basking in the glow of D4’s set.

On Saturday, July 12, the music didn’t start up again until about 4 p.m., which was probably a good thing for a lot of people, giving time to clear the worst of the hangovers from the night before. My friends and I found some things to do in Tillsonburg, including checking out the dog park with my pup, getting ice cream, hitting up a thrift store, and another local shop.

There were people in the crowd on Saturday who were even more pumped to see ALL, than I had been to see Dillinger Four the day before – and that’s saying a lot.

ALL is essentially all the members of pop-punk pioneers, Descendents, minus lead singer Milo Auckerman, swapping in other singers including Scott Reynolds, who sang with the group that night, and Chad Price, who sang with the group the next night; both of whom had performed with the band for different stints throughout the years.

These guys have been rocking literally longer than I’ve been alive – and although I had never seen ALL perform live before, in any rendition, I did catch Descendents at Riot Fest in Toronto, back in 2012. I remember thinking that was a big deal at the time, since the band members were aging, and they’d been around so long already, I had thought at the time that it wasn’t likely they’d keep going much longer. I actually contributed to an article for an online magazine covering that show, (which I looked up before writing this,) and it turns out, on that day in 2012 it was drummer Bill Stevenson’s 49^th birthday. I’m not going to do the math for you, but suffice it to say, I was impressed they were still going at that time, and it’s been quite a few years since then (although not as long as the gap between when I’d last seen D4, which continues to blow my mind)!

So much to the delight of many of the old school punks in attendance, Saturday’s outdoor stage was almost all about ALL. This time my friends and I arrived in time to catch most of the first outdoor act, which was Chad Price and the Peace Coalition. Next up, on the outdoor stage was Snodgrass and Stevenson(s), being ALL/Descendents drummer Bill Stevenson and his son Miles, with organizer Jon Snodgrass. Then came ALL with Reynolds on vocals, and this is when I fully realized just how special the whole thing was, to a lot of people in attendance that day. Fans were singing their hearts out, dancing, and all the usual stuff, but I also saw multiple people wiping tears from their eyes during the set, including a pretty hardcore gutter punk looking guy with a bunch of tattoos, and a little lady with a head full of grey hair who was singing along to every word at the front of the stage.

The more we (my friends) talked to people in the crowd, and saw posts on social media, the more we realized just how many people had made major treks to be there for the weekend event. We talked to a guy from Saskatchewan in the merch line; some people posted online about their trips up from the states; and as previously mentioned, at least one fan flew all the way from Japan, just to be at Büddies Fest in little old Tillsonburg.

After ALL, the older crowd stepped aside so the slightly younger (but still been-around-for-quite-a-while) fan-base for local Toronto-area legends, The Flatliners, could get closer to the stage. It was kind of a cool thing to see the crowd around the front taking shifts based around their favourite bands, and then dispersing amongst the lawn so the biggest fans of the next act could take their post closer to the stage.

The Flatliners are no strangers to success in the scene, having formed in 2002 and continued a successful career since, but even lead singer Chris Creswell admitted it felt odd to him to have the legendary ALL play before his band that night.

Of course following the Flatliners’ performance I had to head down to Paddy’s Underground to watch Rad Owl play, after having chatted with them on the walk back to the hotel the night before. It turned out one of the two guys I walked with was a fill-in for their usual guitar player who couldn’t make the trip, but you wouldn’t have known it to watch the set, as he played his parts seemingly perfectly (to my untrained ears in the very least). The other guy from the walk back the night before was Rad Owl lead singer, Jeremy Jessen.  The set was really fun to watch, especially the last song, as a favourite musician of the band members, being Brock Pytel, (singing-drummer of the Doughboys,) came out to sing a cover of the Doughboys’ “I Won’t Write you a Letter” with them. Keeping in the trend of musicians mixing in with other acts performing throughout the weekend, Pytel was around as his current band, SLIP~ons, were slated to open the outdoor stage the next day.

I had been able to get my dog to take a bathroom break outside shortly before heading to the festival on Saturday, so I was able to head over to The Copper Mug to catch some of the after party before heading back to the hotel this time around. The first band up was Welland, ON, based Dealbreaker who were really energetic, loud, and interactive, and just a ton of fun. There isn’t really a stage, per se, at The Copper Mug, which made it that much easier for the band and crowd to interact, adding to the fun. Unfortunately, my phone was almost out of battery power at this point, so I wasn’t able to get any photos or videos, but I enjoyed the set so much I went over to their merch table and bought a … tape? They didn’t have vinyl, or even CDs; just good old fashioned cassette tapes, but I was sure I had an old tape deck laying around somewhere, so I am now the proud owner of a Dealbreaker EP on cassette tape. I thought it was pretty cool, actually, to have bought my first new cassette tape in a couple of decades at least!

Then came Montreal-based four-piece The Lookout. They’re a female fronted band, which I loved, of course, and a high-octane, powerhouse. At one point lead singer, Martha Rockhard, noted to the guys at the front of the crowd that, while she loved them all, she really wanted to see the girls up closer. The men obliged and stepped aside to make room for some female fans to come to the front, which is the exact kind of female love-for-one-another the world needs more of.

I didn’t stick around for the last band of the night, The Penske File, because I knew my dog would be waiting for me to get her outside once again, but from the clips I’ve seen it looked like a great end to a great day.

My friends were leaving Sunday morning, and I could have either a) paid $200 for a hotel room for myself and my dog for one more night, b) gone to my sister’s about an hour away, left the dog there while I went back to night three of the festival, and then gone back to my sister’s to sleep, or c) headed home. I really debated between b and c, even making plans and changing them a couple times as I started driving out of Tillsonburg, but in the end I decided my dog had already been stressed enough, and re-locating her to my sister’s place for a night wasn’t gonna help the situation. There were so many other performances I would have loved to see on Sunday, but I had an amazing time regardless. In fact, that was probably the best time I’ve had in a very long time, and really something my soul needed, especially during these crazy times when pop culture and politics are trending towards a major social decline, in so, so, many ways.

It’s good to be reminded that the bands, culture, and people, who gave me so much hope for a better world are still out there – though it’s so sad to see things regressing as they have so much lately in the world.

We are not currently living in the future I had envisioned when I was first inspired by the punk scene as a teen so many years ago, and although it’s overwhelming at times to think about what the world is up against right now, it’s so good to know there are people like the Büddies Fest organizers and participants who I can continue to look to for inspiration when my spirit’s getting low.

I do believe the plan is to make Büddies Fest an annual event, and I read somewhere online they’re already scoping out bands for next year, so I’ll be keeping my eyes on the Büddies Fest social media pages for more info on that, and I suggest anyone interested do the same!