There’s been a huge hole in the annual festival lineup in Vankleek Hill since Beau’s Brewery shut down its Octoberfest concert series because of Covid-19 and then being bought up by a cold unfeeling Toronto-based mega-corporation bent on destroying humanity one stale beer at a time.

From 2009 until 2019, the now-defunct Beau’s Oktoberfest would bring 20,000 [here] music lovers to our little town for a weekend featuring bands such as DOA, The New Pornographers, Shad, Sloan, Joel Plaskett Emergency, Radio Radio, Neon Dreams, K-OS, and 54-40 [here]. So, losing that number of visitors as well as the quality of concerts really frigging sucked.

…the weekend party also used to collect cash for local charities as well, raising more than $800,000 over those years [here].

So, yeah, losing all of that was definitely noticed. Fortunately, a few of those people who noticed recently got together and figured ‘hey, where the hell did that thing go?’ and ‘hey, why the hell can’t that thing happen again?’ and are now trying to resurrect the whole scene from scratch.

Gryffin Productions [Instagram], a local event and concert promotion company run by Patrick Miller, together with Ottawa-based sponsor ‘Beyond the Pale Brewing Company’ [home] — a brewery whose beer is definitely not stale, decided to find out what happens when you bring a tonne of great bands back to Vankleek Hill under the ‘Oktoberfest’ banner. And it went pretty well for a first time — it was definitely a lot of fun… like, a lot of fun.

Held at the Windsor Tavern [Instagram] in downtown Vankleek Hill, the ‘2026 Vankleek Hill Oktoberfest’ had thirteen bands — Silent Swarm [Instagram], Positive Charge [Instagram], Tucana [Instagram], Vivisected [Instagram], Tony Rust & The Mudhorses [BandCamp], The New Hires [Instagram], Josh & The Dirty Rags [YouTube], The Silver Hawks [Facebook], Miranda Smith & Keaton, Mindful Drones [Instagram], Penny Dreadful [Instagram], Yvon Leroux [home], and North et Noir [home], plus lots of great local restaurants provided food and, of course, there was lots of beer and activities to entertain the hundreds of locals who came out.

…anyway, just click on the first photo to get the carousel going — I probably should have made two posts, because there are a lot of photos, but I trust you to have the patience and coolness level to know your limits. Also, the photos are in reverse order, and I have no idea how to fix that. So, I don’t know, maybe start at the bottom and work your way up..?

As always, comments are welcome and now they’re absolutely free to make and, if you’re lucky, some AI firm based in Palo Alto will not only use your comment to train its newest model but your collection of words could be the ones that finally put AI into God Mode.