Ottawa / September 20, 2026
By Alain
There comes a moment every September, usually around the final outdoor concert of the season, in this case CityFolk, when it hits you that the next festival season is still a long way off. The lawn chairs will go into storage, the winter jackets will come out and the outdoor concert calendar will become a distant memory until 2027. It’s a bittersweet realization, and CityFolk’s final night certainly wasn’t interested in making the goodbye any easier. If the festival intended to ease gently into the autumn night, somebody forgot to give the bands the memo. The final evening at the RA Centre was less folk festival and more rock ’n’ roll annihilation and anarchy. Seven acts, two stages and enough leather, eyeliner, feedback and attitude to make Ottawa feel, for a few glorious hours, like it had been relocated to a particularly noisy corner of London.
The evening started close to home with Steady Rain, the Ottawa pop-rock quartet fronted by Marlayah “Miss” McLeod. Mixing originals with covers, including Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone,” they brought plenty of energy before closing with their own “Liar.” Over at the TD Stage, Essex punk-rockers Bad Nerves, included: Bobby Nerves on vocals, Will Philipson and George Berry on guitars, Jonathan “Jon” Poulton on bass and Sam Thompson on drums — arrived like someone had plugged a live wire directly into an amplifier. Their gloriously frantic power-pop attack included “Baby Drummer,” “Radio Punk,” “USA” and “Network,” among others. Subtle was never really the objective. Then came Panic Shack, Cardiff’s wonderfully unruly five-piece: Sarah Harvey on vocals, Meg Fretwell and Romi Lawrence on guitars, Em Smith on bass and Nick Williams behind the drums. Their set, featuring “Gok Wan,” “Girl Band Starter Pack,” “The Ick,” “Who’s Got My Lighter?” and “Pockets,” was funny, furious and gloriously chaotic — the kind of performance that made you wonder whether the stage itself might survive the evening. David James Allen brought a more intimate blend of cosmic country, folk and soul to the Busker Series, appearing twice during the evening, while Amigo the Devil, the darkly entertaining alter ego of Danny Kiranos, provided a wonderfully twisted counterpoint on the Westside Stage with “Stray Dog,” “Murder at the Bingo Hall,” “Dahmer Does Hollywood,” “Cocaine and Abel,” “Hell and You” and “Once Upon a Time at Texaco Pt. 1.”
Then, at 7:20 p.m., the Sex Pistols arrived carrying an extraordinary amount of musical history — and proceeded to play it very loudly. Original members Steve Jones on guitar, Paul Cook on drums and Glen Matlock on bass were joined by Frank Carter on vocals, and together they tore through “Holidays in the Sun,” “Seventeen,” “Pretty Vacant,” “New York,” “Bodies,” “Liar,” “God Save the Queen,” “No Feelings,” “Problems” and, finally, “Anarchy in the U.K.” Carter isn’t Johnny Rotten, and he doesn’t pretend to be. Instead, he attacked the material with his own muscular, modern punk energy, while Jones, Cook and Matlock supplied the machinery that made these songs revolutionary in the first place. The audience responded accordingly, with a mosh pit forming and the temperature rising as the band turned the TD Stage into a sweaty, noisy reminder of just how confrontational punk could be. For roughly an hour, CityFolk stopped being polite. It was loud, unruly and wonderfully ridiculous — exactly what punk should feel like.
And then, at 9 p.m., Alice Cooper arrived to make sure nobody went home quietly. At 78, Cooper doesn’t simply perform a concert; he stages an event. Backed by Ryan Roxie and Tommy Henriksen on guitars, Chuck Garric on bass, Glen Sobel on drums and replacing Nita Strauss while on maternity leave was Anna Cara, the 22 year old guitar phenom from Newcastle, England. Cooper transformed the TD Stage into his own theatre of the macabre. The music alone was enough: “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” “Billion Dollar Babies,” “I’m Eighteen,” “Feed My Frankenstein,” “Hey Stoopid,” “Poison,” “Brutal Planet,” “School’s Out” and the encore, “Under My Wheels.” But this is Alice Cooper, so naturally there were masked figures, fake violence, fake blood, a guillotine and a spectacularly creepy resurrection during “School’s Out.” He even threw Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” into the mix. It was part rock concert, part horror movie and part theatrical fever dream and somehow it all made perfect sense.
Then, almost as quickly as it had begun, CityFolk 2026 was over. After years beneath the familiar Lansdowne Park skyline, the festival was forced to find a new home because of the ongoing Lansdowne construction, leaving the Great Lawn behind and moving down Riverside Drive. The RA Centre gave CityFolk roughly 30 percent more usable space, plenty of room to wander between stages, food, drinks and performances, while the spacious tented Westside Stage added another dimension to the festival experience. Organizers plan to return for at least three more years, although whether the RA Centre becomes CityFolk’s permanent home remains to be seen. After five days of music, crowds, surprises and the usual glorious festival chaos, however, it already felt like more than a temporary address. It felt like the beginning of a new chapter and what better way to open that chapter than with the Sex Pistols screaming “Anarchy in the U.K.” and Alice Cooper sending everyone home with “Under My Wheels”? Not exactly a quiet Sunday night, but then again, quiet has never really been Alice Cooper’s thing. See you next year.
