Christina Leigh only got her busking permit last week. Talk about good timing! As she opened her guitar case Wednesday morning for what she thought would be an average day of strumming in Ottawa's ByWard Market, she had no clue her fifteen minutes of fame was about to come a’knockin’ by way of a cardboard sign, Twitter, and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.
Before then, the recently turned 24-year-old was just a gal who loved classic rock and busting out her favourite tunes whenever and wherever she could. As a kid she was always listening to the radio, discovering bands like The Beatles and Queen when her parents cranked up the volume. It was fellow Canuck Alanis Morisette, however, that Leigh says was the first artist she really fell in love with. She knew all the words to “You Oughta Know” when she was 4!
“I was always interested in music,” says Leigh. “I got my first guitar for my 14th birthday and wound up playing open mics and school coffee houses. Eventually I started playing solo sets as an opening act. I also wound up starting an acoustic project with my best friend Darlene.”
This would turn into their band PINE. Leigh would jump between that project and her solo work and, like most musicians just starting out, she’d often play for whatever change people would toss into her guitar case. Last winter she hammered out a busking plan. It was time to get that permit. She planned on a setlist that would be a full front to back performance of Alanis’s Jagged Little Pill, but when the Foo Fighters were announced to headline RBC Bluesfest she changed her plans.
“My dad and uncle took me to see them when I was 13 and it was an incredibly influential concert for me,” explains Leigh, citing her father as getting her into the band by playing them regularly around the house. “They were more appealing to me as a little kid than Nirvana was and I thought ‘Monkey Wrench’ was hilarious.”
Though she’d been playing around the market for over two years, Tuesday was her only her third time with an official permit. “Saving $$ for Foo Fighters tickets” read her original busking sign. Having received those tix as a birthday gift from her mother, Leigh next half-jokingly wrote on her piece of cardboard “DAVE GROHL PLS NOTICE ME”.
“It was just a fun idea and I figured, hey, it could happen but never thought it would,” Leigh says.
She figured somebody who worked for the festival would send Grohl the photo and he’d get a laugh out of it. Earlier in the day she actually tried to tweet a shot of the sign but accidentally wrote a fake account, dashing hopes that the alt-rocker would know she even existed let alone make a cameo at her show. Still, she trudged on down to the Market, set up her sign and amp, and plugged in her guitar.
Before she started playing a shadow fell over her. It was followed by playful giggling. Unable to hide the shock in his voice, Leigh’s boyfriend Brett told her to look. The young busker glanced up maybe suspecting somebody chuckling at her sign but “there’s Dave and his daughter Violet smiling and laughing! Apparently Violet had pointed me out and they’d been there for about 30 seconds waiting for me to notice them!”
Really, there’s only one reaction for a once in a lifetime moment like this.
“Oh my fucking God!!!!” shouted Leigh into her mic. Heads turned and suddenly a crowd formed around them. “Everyone’s phones came out including Dave’s!”
What was more surprising to Leigh was that Grohl wanted a photo with her. She quickly tried to get her mic stand and sign into frame, understandably fumbling with the equipment in her nervousness. The veteran rocker quickly helped her fix it.
“Every rockstar knows how to wrangle a crappy mic stand,” says Leigh, who would pose for a photo taken on Grohl's phone. Still trying to grasp what was happening, she realized she hadn’t taken one on her own phone. Who would believe her? She called out to him as he was walking away, hoping he’d turn around.
“He came back! I hugged him and told him I was super excited to see him at Bluesfest and that it was my third time. He introduced me to his daughter!” relays a still elated Leigh.
“He told me how funny it was to bump into me like this and we took the selfie on my phone and he went along on his way. He was super nice about not wanting to talk much, but you could tell he was just trying walk around with his daughter and everyone was really understanding of that. I was lucky they stopped for me!”
As soon as they were gone Leigh crouched down at her amp, face in her hands, and yelled “What was that!” It had all be so surreal and she considered packing up and calling it a day but you can’t meet Dave Grohl and not rock out after that. She played her full set!
Being social savy, however, the busker first made the photo her profile picture, Tweeted it out and sent a copy to CTV. Reps from the station quickly showed up to ask her what had happened echoing what her friends were posting on Twitter and Facebook.
“What?”
“Please explain!”
It would be another hour before she could get back online when she would see her tweet was currently sitting at over 2,000 likes. A video she later posted of her encounter would shoot up past 25,000 views and each time she opens her phone things just get more and more insane.
That night, still on her high from meeting Grohl, Leigh rocked with the Foos and 30,000 others at Bluesfest as people online and around her talked about her unbelievable experience. She wasn’t checking her phone, though. This was the fucking Foos! Social media could wait out three solid hours of rock and roll.
“The show was incredible! They put on one of the best rock concerts out there, and I’ve been to a lot of concerts.”
When asked who she’d like to summon next with her busking superpowers, Leigh pauses for a moment and, guitar in hand, says that she already has her Alanis cover set ready to go!
As for her newfound fame in cyberland?
“The best thing about going viral is that I can post about eating raw veggie dogs at 2:30am while Brett is asleep and he probably won’t see it.”