Midnight Shine shines on CityFolk stage in Ottawa debut

It was a beautiful late summer afternoon in Canada’s Capital, the great lawn at Lansdowne park was still soggy from the rain on Saturday but the crowds were starting to make their way down for the final day of CityFolk.

Sunday was my first ever experience with CityFolk and I have to say the festival has a certain vibe about it that’s hard to ignore. It was no accident or coincidence that brought me to Lansdowne park on a Sunday afternoon, in fact it was a group of very talented gentleman, from the far Northern Ontario communities of Moose Factory and Attawapiskat, called Midnight Shine.

Midnight Shine first appeared on my radar in the spring of 2014 and I’ve been an avid fan and supporter of theirs ever since. On Sunday Midnight Shine made their National Capital debut.

I had a chance to meet with the Zack, Stan and George before the show and you could feel their excitement, as Stan put it “back home we still have to setup our own gear and play on small corner stages. Here everything is being done for us and this is the biggest stage we’ve played so far in our career”.

I asked how they felt about the fact that renowned festival director Mark Monahan had selected Midnight Shine as one of his picks for this years CityFolk Festival, Zach and George said they were “incredibly grateful and humbled” by the positive attention they received from the festival.

We talked about new music, especially since their sophomore album “Northern Man” is now 2 years old. The good news is the guys are busy writing and are in the final stages of recording their new single “Sister Love” which they expect to release later this fall. So hopefully that means a third album will be close behind.

It was still early when their set started and crowds were still on the smaller side but it didn’t take Adrian and the boys to set the tone and slowly the crowd started to fill in, granted it wasn’t a massive crowd but it wasn’t bad for a relatively unknown band in Ottawa at 4 in the afternoon. The group played through much of their first two albums from “Since You Been Gone” to “Northern Man” and everything in between. They even previewed “Sister Love” for the crowd.

After their hour long set was finished the group spent the better part of the next 45 minutes meeting fans and signing autographs, something tells me we haven’t heard or seen the last of Midnight Shine.