The City Folk music festival in Ottawa really outdid themselves this year. There are some years when there is only one band I want to see. In a good year there are two. In an excellent year, three. Last week there were four bands I really wanted to see, and they were paired up on two different nights.

Night one: The Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge

Night two: The Dropkick Murphys and The Pogues

Both of these pairings were perfection. No notes.

City Folk only sells day passes so having multiple bands you want to see on the same day really takes the sting out of the ticket price. Also aside from the headliners, there are always lesser known bands that play before and in between the headliners. So we discovered two new bands we liked: Cat Bite (very similar to No Doubt), and Hurray for the Riff Raff.