It’s high noon on a nearly cloudless August day, and a father and son are on their PWC, making their way through a lush, narrow inlet at the edge of Baptiste Lake, near Bancroft, Ont. They slow down as they pass the marina and raise their hands to block out the sun, trying to catch a glimpse of an unassuming boathouse and the hubbub happening on top of it. The duo linger for a few minutes, watching a steady stream of people working on a large deck atop the structure: there are giant speakers to set up, a small cache of instruments to ferry up the stairs, amps to carefully manoeuvre.
The PWC riders know what day it is, as do the other cottagers along this edge of Baptiste Lake. Every August long weekend for the last decade, save for a brief pandemic hiatus, the deck above the Phillips family cottage boathouse transforms into a stage for an annual concert. The father and son pause for a moment, give a thumbs up, then drive away. They’ll be back tonight, along with some 85 boats that will fill up the bay to catch the show. There will be rock. There will be dancing. There will be joyful whoops and exuberant boat horns and children doing coordinated dance routines in the water. But for now, there’s work to do.
Perhaps you have experience with the cottage as a connector. A place to gather family members who don’t gather often, not as much as they used to anyway. Over the past decade now, the August long weekend has become a kind of sacred reunion at the Phillips cottage. But it’s not for a grandparent’s birthday or a religious celebration. The Phillipses are tethered by the show they will put on tonight.
The annual concert is a tradition brought to life by Sam Phillips, the de facto leader of the family band. Sam, 31, plays guitar, and right now, I’m sure he’s wishing the writer trailing him around the cottage would make himself useful by picking up a mic stand or something (I do not). “We’re going to bring the equipment upstairs then have some lunch,” he tells me, hoofing two large guitar cases down some steep rocky stones, then up the stairs to the boathouse deck. It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock‘n’roll.
Don’t give too much thought to the band name, Sam warns me. The Phillips crew certainly didn’t. They outsourced the job to an online word generator and came up with Undefined Heroes. Good enough. The name isn’t the point anyway. The point is family: Undefined Heroes is made up of siblings Sam and Carly, their father, Ben, who owns this cottage, and their three cousins, siblings Jackson, Jaycee, and Callahan.
Over the course of a year, the cousins might pop down to the cottage three times—maybe four in a good year. And while Sam and Carly see each other about once a month, the two sets of siblings don’t get to spend much time all together. They’re spread out across cities and responsibilities. But this is the magic of the cottage that gathers families: it becomes a lighthouse, a shared reference point for all.
For the Phillips family, though, this concert has also become something of the glue that binds the cousins together all year.
Preparations for tonight’s show began in January. Months before the show, the band circulates a Google Doc and adds songs to it, trying to arrive at a setlist of covers that will please everybody and rock the crowd. “The song we play every year is Bryan Adams’ ‘Summer of ‘69,’ ” drummer Jackson, 25, tells me. Ben, 61, can’t wait for me to see what happens when they play it. “People get on top of their pontoon boats and start dancing,” he says. “It gets pretty wild!”
All members of Undefined Heroes vote on the songs and let democracy take its course. But there’s an added dimension: each member brings a new song to the group every year. And as anyone who has tried to compromise on a road trip playlist might know, it’s no easy task to pull together a setlist when you have clashing musical tastes. It is hard enough for me and Jaycee, the 24-year-old keyboardist, to convince Jackson to put on Taylor Swift for a few minutes while he polishes his cymbals. Imagine the hiccups in trying to harmonize an epic 29-song, two-hour-plus setlist?
Lead guitarist Callahan, 22, admits that the range of musical picks also means they’re expanding each other’s tastes. “One song that surprised me this year is ‘Family Band’ by the Tragically Hip,” he says. In his defense, that song surprises everybody: it’s a lesser-known Hip cut, from 2006’s World Container, and just when you thought you’ve heard the classics, “Family Band” sneaks up to become a favourite. Callahan wasn’t familiar with it until it got added to the setlist. “I listen to the Hip, but I’m not a huge Hip fan. We played it as a band during run-throughs, and I was like, ‘This is gonna be a lot of fun!’ ” There is something expansive about playing these songs together. Jackson adds that “you can listen to songs and have your own opinion of them, but then when we get together as a band and play them, you find a whole new love for the songs.”
Yet, while the tastes might vary, there’s a couple of touchpoints that everyone can agree on: rock royalty Foo Fighters and punk legends Green Day. And it all started with Sam.
When he was 10, Sam’s parents took him to one of the biggest shows in Canada’s history—the Rolling Stones headlining what became known as SARSStock in 2003. “These legends were on stage, and the whole crowd was going wild, it was unreal,” Sam tells me. The family was inspired. A few months later, Sam started playing guitar; a year after that, Carly picked up piano, and then after that, started vocal lessons. Eventually, Ben joined. “I got tired of taking them to the music lessons all the time,” says Ben. “I thought, Well I want to start playing guitar too! ”
But while Sam and Carly mostly toured their talents on the family marshmallow roasting circuit, in 2009, Sam arrived at another transformative moment. He went to a Green Day concert and brought along a sign with a guitar drawn on it. Beside the guitar, it read “ME + GUITAR = Jesus of Suburbia,” referring to the band’s nine-minute epic. Well, lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, noticed. “Can you really play?” Armstrong asked. Sam signalled that he could. Bet. “Okay, get your ass up here kid, let’s go.”
Sam hopped on stage with his musical heroes, and it may have only lasted a few minutes, but the impression on the family was permanent. Carly, 28, picked up the bass. “Carly cycled through piano, vocals, and bass guitar, so we’ve always just done stuff together,” Sam tells me.
A short while after, Jackson saw how much his cousins were enjoying themselves and decided to join in the fun. (Jackson’s parents noticed that he was constantly tapping on surfaces and suggested he channel that energy into drums.) Guitar? Check. Bass? Check. Drums? Check. Those are the magic ingredients. I declare thee a rock’n’roll band.
Callahan and Jaycee, at the time only 11 and 13, watched as their brother and their cousins and their uncle put on the first concert in 2013. “We didn’t know what to expect,” Sam recalls. “I can’t remember who had the idea, but we put a sign up on the boathouse advertising the concert and that seemed to do the trick.” Not that the weather cooperated. “It was so windy, and all the equipment was falling over,” says Sam. “But we had the perfect break in the clouds, and we played, and amazingly, people came out.” About 40 boats dropped anchor in the bay.
“One of the most difficult things in planning the concerts is accounting for the weather,” says Sam Phillips, the guitarist and backup vocalist of Undefined Heroes, a six-member family band that includes his cousin Callahan (above). “There’s no roof over us when we perform, so if there’s rain, we kind of have to cancel it in the interest of preserving our equipment. Somehow, though, it’s always worked out.”
Sam and Carly’s mom, Joan, tells me about the band’s most dedicated fan. “There’s a woman who comes up to one of the cottages next door, and for the first concert she came out on a kayak, and since then she’s been dubbed Kayak Girl.” Does she come every year? “I think since we started doing this show, she’s missed only one concert,” says Ben. (And she had the poor excuse of having a baby.)
Not long after the first concert, Callahan and Jaycee joined the band—Jaycee on keyboard, and Callahan on lead guitar. “Before Cal was in the band, I could play guitar pretty well, but I really struggled with solos,” says Sam. “But then this guy comes out of nowhere and expands our repertoire.” Cal’s solo skills will come in handy later when they hit Queen’s iconic “Hammer to Fall” (Carly’s submission to the concert this year). Sam is beaming with pride. “He’s like, ‘Any solo, no problem.’ ” Quietly, Callahan objects. “Well,” he hesitates. “I wouldn’t say no problem.”
It’s late afternoon, and the band is getting ready to soundcheck. Sam is hunched over, trying to figure out why one of the speakers isn’t working, while Jaycee is carefully setting up her binder of music sheets. Jackson and Callahan are debating who gets the most nervous before showtime. “I think it’s probably me,” Callahan confesses. Jackson considers this answer for a moment, then points out that it might be Jaycee. Callahan immediately agrees.
“I think my taste is the odd one out,” Jaycee tells me. She listens to country music and a lot of Taylor Swift. “I actually didn’t bring a recommendation this year,” she admits. She didn’t want to force her taste on the gang. Carly is having none of Jaycee’s reticence. “We’re working on that for future years,” she says. I get the sense that there is a history here, about a cousin talking to a younger cousin about claiming her space, expressing her preferences. About how the band could be just the vehicle for Jaycee to do that. I do not probe further.
Callahan is the quietest in the band and the youngest. While Ben cites the Beatles as his biggest influence, and Sam, Carly, and Jackson bond over Green Day, Callahan’s references are a little closer to home. “I guess I would say my influences are Billy Talent and…him,” he shyly points at Sam. For nearly half his life, Callahan has been either seeing his cousin play guitar or joining him on this makeshift boathouse stage. “I grew up watching him,” he says. Sam lifts his hand to his heart in gratitude, looking deeply moved.
Okay, fine, I don’t lug heavy instruments up the stairs, and I am not much help in setting up the stage. So, Sam and Ben devise the perfect job for me: soundcheck audience. I hop in a boat with a relative of the Phillips family, and we motor a good distance into the water, then turn to face the boathouse. I notice that the natural curve of the bay mimics an amphitheatre. Cold drink in hand, I am pleased to be shouting such instructions as “MORE BASS!” and “TOO MUCH LEAD GUITAR!” I am no sound engineer, but I’m a devout fan of live music—that’s the best expertise I can offer. When I report that the keyboard needs to be louder, Jaycee shoots back, “Honestly, it’s fine to keep it low so no one can hear me.”
It wouldn’t be a rock show without rock star rituals, would it? Shortly before showtime, Joan hands Ben a fresh shirt. “I get him a new one every year for the show,” she says. It’s a shirt with an elaborate sunflower design. It reads “Seek the Sunshine.” Meanwhile, the rest of the crew is in their own pre-show shirt rituals: Jackson changes from a Billy Talent shirt to a black Blink-182 shirt. Callahan chooses a Billy Talent tee, while Jaycee opts for a Foo Fighters tee.
Then I notice something I hadn’t before: the cottage is bursting with people. In fact, it has been filling up for hours, I just hadn’t taken it in because of my time with the band. But a cottage that gathers people has a way of accumulating without you noticing. It transforms into a crowded table with an ever-expanding capacity. Come on in, pull up a chair, of course there’s space, we’ll make room.
Here, we have an uncle on barbecue duty, grilling 20? 30? No, 50 burgers. One thousand hot dogs? That seems right. There, a neighbour is setting up chairs all along the side of the deck, taking great care not to set seats up where they’ll obstruct the view of the band later.
Carly has invited a number of friends for the show, and they are here to show exuberant support. But right now, the amount of stimuli is overwhelming, so they are taking a chill moment inside the cottage, lounging with a book or quietly scrolling on phones. Three have come prepared with noise-reduction earplugs. (“It just makes any loud situation tolerable and calms your brain a bit,” one of them tells me.) We commiserate about the unlikelihood of Taylor Swift being on the setlist tonight. One tells me they tried to influence the setlist and get a Taylor song added, but to no avail. The setlist remained only a negotiation between the Phillips family, not open to outside influence. (“It’s their special cousin time together,” Carly’s friends concede).
Outside, the boats are trickling in. There are 20 boats in the bay before showtime—a handful of bowriders, each with parents and young children on board. Two or three kayaks are pulling up next to a pair of cabin cruisers that have just dropped anchor. The bay is filling up with the sounds of laughter and splashing and children jumping into the water. The band has already made their escape from the cottage to the deck, where they share a last-minute fortifying huddle. Alright, now it’s time. I pick out a spot near the deck stairs, a strategic choice: I know myself well enough to know I’m going to need some room to dance.
After a theatrical opening involving a pre-recorded punk version of the theme of The Simpsons, Jackson propels the band into a blistering rendition of “In View” by the Tragically Hip. And the thing about “In View” is, it’s not easy to sing. It’s a moment for belting, a demand to be noticed. Carly rises to the occasion, and the boat horns blare in approval. Sure enough, before the first chorus, Kayak Girl paddles over, waving her arms wildly.
“Two things I’ve noticed,” Sam addresses the boats as the audience roars in appreciation of the band’s third song of the afternoon, a lovely version of Foo Fighters’ tender anthem “Learn To Fly.” “We suck less, and I’ve gotten balder and balder!” Cheers erupt. We’re up to 35 boats now. I notice a kayak pulling two ring floaties behind it, hurriedly streaming in. “Who has been to an Undefined Heroes concert before?” Sam shouts. The boat horns squawk in unison. And we’re off.
By this time, my view from the Phillips deck is a feast. The sun hangs low in the sky, ducking behind the treeline of a tiny island across the water. In front of the band, the bay is in full-blown festival mode. Run and tell all of the angels. I spot a mom swaying while cradling her infant. There’s a good chance this is the baby’s first concert. I see a group of kids performing a coordinated dance that concludes with them leaping into the water. On stage, Jackson and Callahan smile at each other. I am trying to keep count of the boats and the kayaks and the floaties, but I lose count at 82, and I love this song, so I do not note if it is Carly or Sam singing right now because it feels like we are all shouting, “Fly along with me, I can’t quite make it alone.”
Sam says the band worries every year about attendance. With no ticket sales, they have no way of knowing who plans to show up.
But, sure enough, each year, the bay swells with enthusiastic concert-boaters. “It’s the most fulfilling feeling,” says Sam. “And then we can finally start having fun.”
The rest of the evening unfolds in tableaux: a trio of kids holding hands and jumping into the lake to thrash along to the Phillips family version of the All-American Rejects’ “Dirty Little Secret”; the family that attached a motor to their giant floating dock and pulled in to the festivities to the astonishment of the crowd; the couple slow dancing to a cover of “Run to You.”
Through it all, the band is generous and funny. Carly’s singing echoes through the bay. Sam teases the audience,
“Who wants to be in our family band?” Amid cheers, he clarifies: “The only criteria is your last name has to be Phillips!”
There are no exceptions here, lest you think he’s kidding—Sam turns to his band and warns, “If you change your last name, it sucks to be you,”then launches into the Tragically Hip’s “Family Band.”
Sam takes his serious moments too. “Everybody listen, this is important to us. We support trans people, we support LGBTQ+ people, and we support Pride!” The boats honk in agreement. “This song is called ‘Pride,’ ” he tells us. It’s the “Pride” you think it is, and we’re all shouting, “What more in the name of love!”
None of us want this evening to end. That’s perhaps why the encore lasts 20 minutes and includes a version of Green Day’s other nine-minute epic “Homecoming” and ends with a euphoric take on Foo Fighters’ “Best of You.” Hang on, we are about two-and-a-half hours into the show, and these last few boats will not leave, they want more, still honking in gratitude. One more? Sam decides yes, it’ll be one more: “Know Your Enemy.” Of course, it’s Green Day.
After one ecstatic post-show hug, the band gets to work quickly dismantling everything. What is going on? Where is the big exhale? The well-earned rest? “We would never consider leaving equipment set up overnight,” says Sam. It turns out that responsibly throwing a concert at your cottage means acknowledging the reality of cottage life. (The morning dew, for one thing.)
Near the boathouse, Jaycee, Jackson, and Callahan aren’t too busy with disassembling the equipment because they’re caught up talking to a woman in a kayak. There is exhilaration in their voices. Joan solves the mystery for me: the kayaker is their high school music teacher, who had driven a good distance that day—from Lindsay, Ont.—to be here, then paddled over from the marina. “I’m so proud of you,” I hear the teacher say. “What are you up to now?”
“I’m an accountant now,” Jaycee says, and hearing that feels like an intrusion. A jolt of reality that, outside of this weekend, everyone involved in the band has a whole life to return to.
It dawns on me that for one day, this concert suspends all the other ways the Phillipses might define themselves. That it hasn’t even occurred to me to ask what the band members do for a living because today, they play music. Tomorrow, there will be emails and dentist visits and taxes and cell phone bills and all the other non-rockstar nonsense, but it doesn’t belong to today. Maybe for this weekend only, there are no jobs and no outside world, really—there’s just this band and this family and this music. And for today, that’s more than enough.
Cottage Life contributor Elamin Abdelmahmoud hosts CBC Radio’s arts, pop culture, and entertainment show, Commotion.