Missed out on the West Coast this summer? Ottawa’s Bluesfest is coming to town!  

Indie/Alt’s Edie Olender dives deep into why Ottawa Bluesfest—with its massive three-decade evolution and genre-defying 2026 lineup—is exactly where the music community needs to be this July. Cover photo courtesy Ottawa Bluesfest.

There have been two days of thunderstorms. Soaked clothes and two bathing suits are draped over the shower curtain rod: a duality of wanting to be dry and submerged all at once. Submerged in what? Submerged in experience because how can you say no to swimming in the pond at 2:00 PM on a Tuesday even though you have work to do. In “Healmode,” Jeff Rosenstock (2023) suggests that one appreciates the rain for its brief interruption to routine before the smothering heat takes over again; that we learn to appreciate both the multiplicity of possibilities in sunshine while the showers offer relief from the passage of time. This has been on the tip of my tongue for the past two days, because even as the storm takes out power and the sump pumps cannot handle the torrents, the people will miss the cool showers once the July sun starts to burn. At the same time, the heat brings promises of that submersion in experience. Sunbaked memories of festivals and music. As Matthew Specktor (2016) puts it in the introduction to Slow Days, Fast Company, a collection of essays on Southern California in the 1960s and 70s, “Who needs physical reality when you can gambol, instead in expansive space, in sunlight, uncertainty, and in the moment, which is to say – in eternity?”  

When I was about thirteen, my uncle sent me a postcard from the Burning Man Festival in Nevada and another postcard from a pitstop in California. The latter was one of those classic postcards with the block letters spelling out the state name and images of various attractions in each of the letters. I taped it to the bottom corner of my vanity mirror so that I could look at it each morning when I was getting ready. Back then, I believed that California was an answer. There was something very romantic about the idea of a place where avocados and oranges can grow freely on the trees. A place where it may “be another fourteen months before it really rains” (Rosenstock, 2023). In Jonas Mekas’ To New York With Love (2009), the words “YOU LOOK AT THE SUN. THEN YOU RETURN HOME AND YOU CAN’T WORK, YOU’RE IMPREGNATE WITH ALL THAT LIGHT” appear in one of the film stills. I wanted to be impregnated with all that light.   

I was recently presented with the opportunity to go to Long Beach, California to photograph one of the performances at the 2026 Warped Tour. The possibility felt so bright, so full of light. But amidst the political turmoil of border control and detentions coupled with my limited student budget, it did not seem like now was the time. Only a few days after making this decision, I received notice that I had been accredited to photograph Ottawa Bluesfest. We may not be able to naturally grow avocados and oranges, but there is still a lot of light here in eastern Ontario. I grew up in a small town in southwestern Ontario in which the local coffee shop that high school kids visited during lunch break made national news for being the opioid overdose capital of Canada (Gee, 2019). I have a soft spot for the nation’s actual capital, Ottawa, because there is a sense of community here that did not exist in my hometown. Not to say that there are no overdoses or homelessness or social issues here, but there is nightlife and art and culture that did not exist in where I grew up. When people say there is nothing to do in Ottawa, I am a bit offended because I know what it’s like to live in a place where there really is nothing to do.   

While Warped Tour is as glamorous as emo and rock music can be, Bluesfest offers a diverse listening experience that other festivals can lack. The first iteration in 1994 presented a bluesy lineup including Clarence Clemons, Randy Bachman, and Buckwheat Zydeco. Over the next three decades, the festival took off and expanded into other genres, offering a platform for Canadian talent while also bringing in international headliners. From five thousand visitors in 1994 to more than a quarter million in 2023, the festival has become one of Canada’s largest summer music attractions. The expansion has turned it into rhizomatic music, an assemblage of genres and people forming infinite connections.  

When I was ten years old, my parents made the seven-hour car trip from our hometown to Ottawa for the festival’s 20th edition. That year, the lineup varied from The Killers to Tyler The Creator to Lady Gaga to the Barenaked Ladies. We attended the day that included Snoop Dogg, along with performances by Childish Gambino and Awolnation. It was a very formative moment as a child; I knew that Snoop Dogg was a ::::::big:::::: artist and it felt like sitting on the cusp of something great. Though we were sitting and sitting and waiting well past the time he was meant to come on stage. I remember him being forty minutes late and completely stoned and I was a bit disappointed because this is not what I was expecting for a ::::::big:::::: artist. But in the end, it was all dandy and good because we also saw Childish Gambino and Awolnation and it feels like summer as my eyes were open, really open, and I jumped on my dad’s shoulders and sat with the world. I was impregnate with all that light.  

When I went last year, I saw all these people from my past: the barista I used to go out with because I got free coffee, the frontman of the local band I used to photograph. I was also there with the future: my boyfriend with the stars in their eyes. A girl selling beer made my day in the present moment because she complimented my pink hair so kindly. There’s the rhizome again, the web of every point of my life connecting with every point. That is the true beauty of this festival: the varied lineup brings in diverse patrons, which makes for a beautiful assemblage of different lives and stories. Across the five different stages, there is something for everyone.  

This year, the lineup extends from Limp Bizkit’s rap metal to Lord Huron’s indie folk to Angine de Poitrine’s math rock:  

July 9 – Cody Johnson; Jessie Murph; Rev. Run; Digable Planets; GOAT; Lloyd Spiegel; The Longest Johns; Justin Fancy; Jade Hilton; Jermaine Holmes; Satellite Birdhouse; DJ Mace 

July 10 – Limp Bizkit; Cypress Hill; Marc Rebillet; Steve Earle; Hank Azaria and The EZ Street Band; Miko Marks; Gwenifer Raymond; Alicia Kayley; F!TH; My Son The Hurricane; SexBandit; DJ Mace 

July 11– HARDY; BigXthaPlug; Patrick Watson; cleopatrick; Luna Li; Mo Kenney; Ron Artis II; Aspects; Kat Pereira; Mikhail Laxton; Tiny Horse; DJ Mace 

July 12 – The Lumineers; bbno$; Leif Vollebekk; Hazlett; DijahSB; Reverend Peyton’s Big Damn Band; Kelly McMichael; JOLY; Les Rats d’Swompe; Mehdi Cayenne; summersets; DJ Karyen 

July 15 – Conan Gray; Myles Smith; Natasha Bedingfield; Sons of Legion; All-Star Women’s Blues Showcase; Reuben and The Bullhorn Singers; Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears; Yasmin Williams; Nikki D & The Sisters of Thunder; Adam Karch; Mecca of Stank; DJ Karyen 

July 16 – Lord Huron; Social Distortion; Lucy Dacus; Royel Otis; Dope Lemon; Billy Bragg; Thee Sinseers; The Pairs; Jamie Webster; Jadea Kelly; Koko Love; Nico Little and The North Americans; DJ Karyen 

July 17 – Ella Langley; Sheryl Crow; Death From Above 1979; Valerie June; Angine de Poitrine; JIMI; Thunder Queens; Nayana; The Jay Blues Trio; Emerging Artist Showcase; TYR ONE 

July 18 – Gwen Stefani; Mariah The Scientist; Shaggy; Grace Bowers; Aqyila; Here Come The Mummies; The Texas Horns; TJ Wheeler; Bridge Music; Eadsé; TYR ONE 

July 19 – The Guess Who; Connor Price; The Sheepdogs; Elisapie; Samantha Martin & Delta Sugar; 4KORNERS; Banggz; LeFLOFRANCO; Paolo Stante Band; Rebelle; Savannah Shea; TYR ONE 

General Admission tickets range from 87.00$ to 232.00$ depending on the lineup for that day, while three-day and full festival passes are also available. An order fee of 6.00$ is added to each purchase and fully goes towards the Blues in the Schools Community Fund, a charitable community program that gets emerging musicians into Ottawa schools, helping to foster connections with the arts.  

Can’t make it to the festival? Over the coming weeks, keep an eye out on Indie/Alt for reviews and snapshots of the various performances!  

References: 

Rosenstock, J. (2023). Healmode [Song]. On Hellmode. Polyvinyl Record Co. 

Specktor, M. (2016). Introduction. In Slow Days, Fast Company (pp. vii-xi). New York Review Book. 

Mekas, J. (2009). To New York with love [Artwork]. Apalazzo Gallery. https://www.apalazzo.net/prodotto/to-new-york-with-love/ 

Gee, M. (2019). In a Brantford Tim Hortons, the toll of the opioid crisis is in full view. The Globe and Mail, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-lessons-learned-from-a-downtown-brantford-tim-hortons/.