Featured Photo: Feura (left) performs on the Main Stage on day three of Gussapolooza 2026. Photo by Joe Taylor.

Aug. 23—Cookstown, ON. Sunday at Gussapolooza began under grey drizzly skies, with the campsite still carrying the evidence of Saturday’s downpour. Yet the final day also brought a quiet renewal: acoustic sets at the café stage to start the morning, artists and vendors helping one another recover, and last discoveries before the sun returned. After two full days of hopping between stages and chasing sound after sound, the closing stretch offered a chance to take stock of the music and community.

Morning after the Storm

My sleeping bag kept me mostly dry over the night, which I don’t think had any more extreme downpours. That said, it was far less comfortable Saturday night, with a pillow soaked halfway through by morning. I probably shouldn’t complain too much. What’s a little wetness at my toes when someone else said they felt like they’d “slept in a swamp”? That was literally my nightmare and would have been my breaking point. Accordingly with the less pleasant night of sleep however, I only got moving around 10am.

The morning began drizzly, but getting ready for the last day of the festival to the sounds of Edi Callier performing a set at the Morning Café stage did wonders for my mood. Especially since I only caught the closing number of his first set on Friday. After a day of downpour after downpour, mud, and general dampness, hearing him felt like a gift as I woke up and became human . His voice paired with the simple instruments at the Café stage was like auditory sunshine.

Gussapolooza also showed off its community ethos again that morning. After our booth tent collapsed overnight, we ended up operating out of the Sidehill Studios booth for part of the day. This kept us going and made the whole festival feel even more like a shared effort than a row of separate vendors and crews.

Afternoon

By early afternoon, the day’s first standout for me was The Greenhouse Collective. This Hamilton-based hip-hop and pop group brought a funky and jazzy swagger to the Barn Stage. What grabbed my attention first was their set, which included a wonderfully inventive take on Gorillaz’s “Feel Good Inc.” Rather than simply covering the song, they reshaped it. Giving a jazzier sense of form, they let the arrangement breathe. This made room for saxophone flourishes and original rap verses. The result felt playful, confident, and mischievous.— the kind of reinterpretation that reminds you how flexible a song can be in the right hands.

At 2pm, the main stage was taken over by Feura. A longtime friend of Blast Toronto, they were the winner of last year’s Battle of the Bands. She brought their aggressive and unapologetic queer energy back to the main stage this year to an excited crowd, and I am only disappointed I missed his performance last year. Also taking the main stage on Sunday were Peterborough-based Burning Bridges, who brought their alternative rock sound to Cookstown, who we caught a bit of before running to the Barn Stage for Lotsy.

Blast Toronto’s first visit to Lotsyland

Lotsy delivered an energetic set that made a strong case for her as a rising live performer. Her voice had real range, and her sound sat somewhere between rock and pop-punk, with a synth-heavy edge that gave the songs extra gloss and bite. She had a style that was as if she was trying to get on the classic era of 80s/90s MTV (or, MuchMusic).

What I liked most was the writing: energetic and angry, but still playful, with just enough poetry in the phrasing to keep it from feeling one-note. She had the kind of star power that makes a set feel bigger than the stage it’s on. Several tracks also used recorded interludes and small sound effects to build the storytelling, which I always appreciate. The doorbell detail in “Money Pit” was a great example of that. She closed with “Dirty Habit,” a slower song that built gradually into a strong finish. That kind of dramatic closer can be a real advantage when the performer knows how to pace the energy, and she absolutely did.

Of course once we had seen what we planned on being the last performance for us, the sun had come out. We stayed long enough to catch the Young Scones and enjoy the improved weather, but everyone was properly zonked by then. Maybe one day we’ll stay to the very end. Still, it felt like the right end to the weekend: tired and damp, but ultimately buoyed by the music and the people around us.

Gussapolooza 2026 may have been dampened by the rain, but the weather wasn’t enough to kill the spirit of the festival. If anything, it showed sides of the community that I hadn’t seen before–from our campsite neighbours helping with the tarps before the rain, to the other creators at the convention stepping in to help protect our stuff when our canopy collapsed. Up there in Cookstown, the music is only part of the draw, and I can’t wait to go back.

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