Rock For Dimes Concert Preview, Inclufing The Battle Of The Bands' Cancellation!!

With a surprisingly busy weekend for concerts on the horizon (unusually so for November), we've broken this weekend's concert previews into three posts: One for Sault Ontario, one for Sault Michigan and potential late notice confirmations, and this first post all about a notable charity concert taking place at a somewhat unfamiliar venue tomorrow night! However, one of two planned shows for the same cause was cancelled yesterday, so read on below for that and all of the details regarding this show!

A special charity concert will take place TOMORROW as part of the second annual Rock For Dimes charity event in Sault Ste. Marie! Moving from The Grand Gardens in March of last year to The Delta Waterfront Hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn) at at 208 St Mary's River Drive, this is the local branch of the national Rock For Dimes concert events to raise money for the March of Dimes' charitable work in improving the health of (expecting) mothers and their children, which is a very worthwhile cause! Now, the event was supposed to feature two linked concerts tomorrow, including a headlining lineup of adult bands and a youth battle of the bands at 5:00 PM, but the battle was confirmed to be cancelled via promoter Dennis Ullman on the Facebook event page. The news follows scheduled performers The Pixo Control's exit due to frontman Michael Mikus having a health scare (source here) and a slow public search to find a full lineup of four competing youth bands, as there was only two ever confirmed publically.

This would have been the first local battle of the bands since last year's Viva La Battle, and likely the only Sault Ontario battle of 2014, but at least the later adult bands are still on! Michael will be just fine after what happened, so look for The Pixo Control at Sault Band-O-Rama next week! As a result, the only remaining youth band will open tomorrow's show, which now starts at 7:30 PM, while there will also be presentations, draws, and auctions bookending and in between the bands during both halves of the day. With the changes, there will be 7 bands (up from just two last year) lined up to play tomorrow night, with the existing non-battle acts including local punk trio Redundant (who played at last year's Rock For Dimes), returning local classic/hard rock cover quintet The Thrill Junkies (who last took the stage 10 months ago), newer alternative/jazz rock quartet Mannapool, local country/rock cover trio Mourning Wood, local grunge quartet Haggith, and local funk/alternative rock favourites The Elements, and that's a solid lineup on it's own, even if each band has only half hour long sets!

With the cancellation of the battle of the bands, the opening set at 7:30 PM (originally planned to be the first place encore set) goes to The Damon King Band, so I guess they're the de facto battle winners? I don't know a whole lot on them, but they're definitely a high school aged band, and they may be one and the same as the band Damon and Anthony Boudreau were looking for band members for on the Musicians Wanted Facebook group in September. We'll find out more tomorrow! Note that you could also see this as a preview of next Friday's Sault Band-O-Rama at The Primavera Hall, as all of these bands (save for Mannapool and The Damon King Band) are either playing or have members promoting that event, so keep that angle in mind! Public timeslots have mostly not been posted for the adult concert, but each band was slotted at having 25 minutes (thanks to Redundant drummer Rick White for the info), and a jam session is slated for 11:30 PM to close the show.

Admission tomorrow will be $15 for adults and $5 and a non-perishable food donation for "youth" attendees, while tickets bought for the cancelled battle of the bands will indeed be honoured at the door. If you don't want to buy at the door, you can order tickets online as well at this link, and this show is definitely ALL AGES. For more details, visit the above links and the Facebook event page! Though it is disappointing that we lost the battle of the bands, this is still an intriguing event, and greatly expanded from last year! It'll also be neat to have a concert with hard rock and punk bands at the former Holiday Inn again, which some of you may remember as the host of Bon Soo's old battles of the bands. I definitely plan to come out for Rock For Dimes, as it's got a lot of entertaining bands for a great cause, and for a preview, here's Redundant live at last year's Rock For Dimes!



That's all for now, but stay tuned for more Sault Ontario weekend concert previews later today! Thanks everyone!