The smoke from dying morning fires was made silver by the afternoon sunlight slanting through the red pine trees, leaving the air around the Jam Lands stage feeling peopled by ghosts — they seemed to hang in the air like linen on a clothesline. And when Chris Oday sauntered up onto the stage, alone and armed with his guitar, they seemed to tremble and stir as if with anticipation. "This is my first festival," said the Mississauga-based singer. Hopefully the first of many, the audience thought after his set. Charming, charismatic and oh-so sweet, Oday turned festival goers into immediate fans as he put on an unforgettable show studded with covers he made indelibly his own, and original songs that spoke to a budding talent with an easy knack for rhapsodizing love.
His covers included tracks from a varied group of his favourite musicians: everyone from Anderson .Paak, Leon Bridges, Childish Gambino and Britney Spears, all filtered through his strong, honeyed voice and carried upon the gentle plucking of his electric guitar. But it was his original tracks that melted hearts. Oday, so far, has only one track out in the world, which is why he was surprised when Highlands contacted him to play the festival. "Please have me back," he said with a cheeky grin.
One of the original tracks he performed is called "For You," a song, he said, was the first one he wrote about his partner, who was "the girl in the glasses" sitting across from him in the audience. It was borne of a bet, Oday said — his partner said she would go out with him if he got 50,000 followers on TikTok, so he recorded and posted a bit of "For You," and though it didn't garner him too many followers, the video did go viral, and the rest, as they say, is history. "These moments feel like what dreams are made of," he sang on the track, a sleepy smile on his face and a vibrant joy spilling out of his guitar. He didn't have a full band, but that didn't stop him from incorporating the sound of a trumpet and saxophone, mimicking their sounds himself with immense skill.
"I'm not good at putting feelings to words," he said before introducing "Gaia's Song," which is "another song about the same person," his partner. "It's a strange trait for a songwriter," Oday conceded, laughing at himself before starting the song. He forgot his own words mid-way through and had to begin again. The crowd cheered and applauded supportively. "I'm going to forget the words every time if you guys are like that," he said, before delivering a love song so beautiful, so worthy of being canonized, that it was impossible not to shed a tear.
It was equally impossible not to become enamoured of him, so charming and magnetic he was as he cracked jokes at his own expense and bantered with the audience, asking them about their favourite shows when he needed to tune up his guitar. "There are bees on stage," he said at one point. "So if I do any jerks, it's not an artistic choice." Watching him play, it felt like watching a lifelong friend achieve their dream. An expression of pride commingled with love stretched across the audience's face watching Chris Oday play his first festival. Afterwars, people searched for a wifi signal so they could follow him on Instagram.