In a continuing journey to discover North America's great music festivals, I turned my attenion in 2011 to a smaller music festival in Squamish, B.C. simply named "Live at Squamish". With headliners Metric, Weezer, Stars and Girl Talk there was quite enough justification to throw down $200 for two days of music and three days of camping out in the Canadian wilderness.
Squamish for those of you who are unaware is a town in Bristish Columbia along the Sea-to-Sky Highway that travels up the Pacific Ocean coastline. Situated between Vancouver and Whistler, it's just small enough to have the charm of a cozy little tourist town and just big enough to hold a music event such as the one I attended.
The journey from Seattle to Squamish took about 7 hours after stops for food and weekend camping supplies along the way. Brief detention at the border by the mounties to search our car and a little stop over in Vancouver later, we were well onk our way into the Canadian Wilderness. I was a bit disappointed to reach Vancouver just before sundown as we didn't get to experience the full sunset that blankets the highway as you make the drive out of Vancouver.
In all the musical acts were simply phenomenal. Metric being the show that I wanted to see the most did not disappoint. Blending in newer music from their most recent album "Fantasies" as well as older stuff from "Live it out" made for one hell of a concert on Sunday Night. Camping was a very pleasant experience as well as we befriended some awesome folks from Canada who let us share in their sweet canadian beers as we did with our american beer. It would have bee nice for it to be a three day shindig but as Sunday night/monday morning rolled around some heavy rain moved in and it was time to get out of there. Quite the successful trip and something I look forward to doing again next year.
Check out some of the pictures and video below: