By Emma Kapotes (@emmakapotes on Instagram and Twitter, also find her on YouTube)
Festival season is in full effect and I’m lucky to have already traveled to 2 incredible festivals: EDC Las Vegas and Ever After. This past weekend I got the opportunity to travel to Canada to attend my first bass music festival. Ever After music festival is located in Kitchener, Ontario (about a 50 minute drive from Toronto) that hosts 3 stages, a water park and campgrounds. This festival is primarily bass/dubstep focused, however, each day the second main stage hosted a different style: drum n bass, house, and special back to back performances. There were a lot of firsts for me at this festival that I can’t wait to share with you!
To back up a bit, I first became familiar with Ever After when they dropped their lineup announcement on Instagram. With impressive names like Excision, Illenium, Kill the Snails, Malaa, Chris Lake, Green Velvet, Zomboy, Sullivan King, G Jones, Gentleman’s Club (just to name a few!), I instantly knew I had to attend. I quickly booked a hotel in a nearby town, got a flight to Toronto from New York and invited my good friend Emily to join me for the weekend. One of the most intriguing things for me about this festival was that I’d get to see so many bass artists for the first time (I’m a huge house/techno fan, but I’m also an equal opportunist).
June 7th rolled around and Emily and I checked into our hotel, hopped on the shuttle line that Ever After offered and made our way to the festival. The weather was BEAUTIFUL and before even stepping into the festival we had already made some friends on the bus. I’ve always heard Canadians are the nicest people and I can confirm after this weekend that that is 100% accurate.
We made our way through the festival grounds noticing a ton of photo ops, inflatable games and art installations, carnival rides, food vendors and fans decked out in their best festival wear along the way. The first thing you’ll notice is the two main stages are separate by a pretty massive hill. The entrance to the festival, water park, and secondary stage are all located at the top of the hill. As you walk down, you make your way through their “enchanted forest” which was the most shaded area and was also packed with games and a kandi station. You then walk through a grassy area that was the main hub of the festival. This included lockers, bathrooms, bars, more photo ops, a deodorant station (amazing!) and a ton of vendors to shop at.
Friday was by far the most chill day for Emily and I. Emily had purchased a VIP ticket and I had a media pass to cover the event for my YouTube channel (bit.ly/emmakapotes) so we were mainly just exploring new artists and hanging out in the VIP section at main stage. The VIP experience was pretty nice – they offered sectioned off areas at both stages, private trailer bathrooms, a water refill station, bar, glitter salon, complimentary massages and tents for some shade. It never felt too crowded, but in general we felt we had plenty of room to walk around and even get up close to the stages throughout the whole weekend.
My set highlights from Friday were Gentleman’s Club, Feed Me, Kill the Snails and Noisia. I also got to host a meet up with my friend The Festival Finesser where we got to see a ton of our subscribers, trade kandi and take pictures together. I can’t stress enough how many friends I made this weekend and how kind and polite people were. Day one had already solidified that Ever After would be one of my favorite festivals I had ever attended. We left the festival when it closed at 11 o’clock and were back at our hotel within 30 minutes – perfect way to end the night.
Saturday rolled around and Emily and I were PUMPED. Excision was headlining this night (Emily’s favorite) and the second stage was going to host all house music artists – my favorite! We started our day seeing BIJOU who had a super high energy set. I shuffled my ass off during his set! Next up was Wax Motif and Chocolate Puma, both of whom I’ve seen before and love. Two things I loved about this stage were the super loud sound system and the grassy hill. You could either dance on the pavement in front of the stage, or choose to go relax on the grass and have the perfect view.
We then headed over to main stage to see Peekaboo for the first time. So many wubs – I would see him again in a heartbeat! We stayed to see Funtcase and then made our way back over to the house stage to see Justin Martin, Chris Lake and Green Velvet close out the day. Those sets back to back were house heaven. I actually got the opportunity to meet BIJOU, Wax Motif AND Chris Lake and my entire life was made. Seriously I was fangirling so hard. Last up for the day was Zomboy and Excision. The amount of Excision fans that were at Ever After was incredible! You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing an X on someones shirt and man did he deliver with his set. It was the perfect way to end our super hectic day!
Waking up Sunday was a tiny bit rough for me. I may or may not have had too many ciders on Saturday (not sorry), but I was ready to spend one last day at Ever After because my boy Illenium was closing out the festival. Emily and I got the festival on the earlier side to catch GG Magree and to my surprise, she ended up being our favorite set of the weekend! She threw down and also played so many classics (hello Knife Party). She was the best way to start our day.
Sunday ended up being hot AF. I for sure underestimated the weather all weekend and standing outside all day in the beating sun is exhausting! Nevertheless, we went on to see Dirt Monkey b2b SubDocta, SvddenDeath, Skism b2b Trampa, Andy C, Riot Ten b2b Sullivan King, Malaa and finally Illenium. The one thing I’ll say is I’m happy I stepped out of my bubble to experience some artists I wouldn’t typically check out. Although some of it still sounds like noise to me, I did really enjoy a lot of the heavier sets (especially SvddenDeath!) Malaa and Illenium were just the cherries on top of a beautiful weekend. I was decked out in my Illenium jersey and perler and sang my heart out to all of his songs. So. Many. Feels.
All in all, this festival truly surprised me. I thought that this festival being on the smaller side and having a lot of people I’m not too familiar with would make me not enjoy it as much, but I felt the opposite. I loved how relaxed we felt all weekend. We never felt rushed, had an easy time getting to and from the festival and the weather couldn’t have been better. The sets we saw were so dope. I came out of this weekend having an appreciation for a ton of new artists which is exciting for me because I’ve been attending EDM shows for over 8 years. Lastly, I loved the people at this festival. It was an all ages event, but everyone was super respectful and well behaved. I met so many cool people that I really hope to run into again in the future. I would highly recommend checking out Ever After next year. If you’ve never attended a festival before, this would definitely be a great introduction to them!
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