Northern Superior's Latest Songs & A Six-Pack Concert, Show Cancellations, And More!!

On this 55th straight day of SMS posts, we have new videos to check out from some familiar veteran faces, but let's lead off with some more updates to our concert calendar, albeit negative ones as usual. We'll start in Michigan, where Kewadin Casino announced on their Facebook page yesterday that their branches will all remain closed through the end of the month, with June 1st tentatively slated to be their re-opening date. As such, this wipes out the final May concerts we listed in the E.U.P., namely the May 29th weekend shows from Peril in the Soo and Highway 63 in St. Ignace. In Sault Ontario, nothing that we currently have listed has been visibly cancelled by the bands or promoters on social media, but I am reluctantly delisting the Anti-Queens concert at The Rockstar Bar on May 23rd, as everything around it this month has been called off, and many of The Anti-Queens later concert dates are getting postponed or cancelled elsewhere.

For full disclosure, the local show has not been publically cancelled by the band, promoter, or venue, but the likelihood of this concert and no others in May taking place seems slim-to-none, and there are definitely more cancellations and postponements ahead. If I happen to be wrong, I will redact this, but these are funny times that we're living in right now.

Next up, Northern Superior Brewing Co.'s sixth weekly "Songs & A Six-Pack" live-stream concert took place last night, and this week's host was Bone Yard frontman and (Choose) Maxx Entertainment head Greg Simpson! For the record, last week's show was headlined by country musician Brendan Hodgson, so genre fans will definitely want to check that one out at this link. Simultaneously, Greg's performance is the de facto sequel to his "Songs From The Smoke Room" live-stream last month, with it's planned follow-up on April 8th cancelled on short notice due to his father-in-law being in the hospital, which he acknowledged in last night's video, but thankfully, he is doing better now. Of course, it's great to see Greg back in the smoke room for more covers, albeit with Northern Superior advertising and plugs thrown in! Like last month, this set is more reflective of Greg's past work in classic/hard rock bands.

The 82 minute video starts with his slowed down acoustic cover of Kiss' "Rock & Roll All Nite", before moving to renditions of Kris Kristofferson's "Me & Bobby McGee", Black Label Society's "Spoke In The Wheel", Kid Rock's "All Summer Long", Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", The Tragically Hip's "Fiddler's Green", Cinderella's "Shelter Me", Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", The 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up", Ray LaMontagne's "Jolene", The Band's "The Weight", Jamey Johnson's "High Cost of Living", The Barenaked Ladies' "The Old Apartment", Prince & The Revolution's "Purple Rain", The Five Man Electric Band's "Signs", and Guns N' Roses' "Used To Love Her". If you get deja vu from Greg's live-stream last month, then I cannot blame you whatsoever, as only two songs from that set ("Wheat Kings" & "I Took A Pill In Ibiza") were not reprised last night, and only the last five covers were brand new.

That all said, this is still an entertaining concert set, and Greg injects a lot of these songs with good energy and optimism, complete with more entertaining banter with his wife Kerry, helping out off-camera once again. Hopefully there's more on the horizon from Greg, but give his "Songs & A Six-Pack From The Smoke Room" a watch below!

Finally, here's a newly shared video of Greg's old classic/hard rock cover band That's Chester, albeit before he joined the group! This comes from Rotaryfest's main stage at Clergue Park in July 2006, and was uploaded onto drummer Ric Datson's YouTube channel on Tuesday. This features That's Chester with their original frontman Richard Fullerton (now of the Ottawa-based Led Zeppelin tribute band Mothership), and the video opens with an amusing intro by MC/local radio DJ James Warner-Smith where the guys get introduced as the "next" band in an increasingly silly list of musicians, and we even hear their early stage names too (all have "Chester" in them). Musically speaking, you can see Ritch, Eugene, Gabe, Aubrey, and Ric cover a number of different songs, though these were edited into a clip montage in post-production, so no full songs are presented. Fans will hear Sammy Hagar, The Tragically Hip, and AC/DC songs, among others.

I wish the song fragments were at least longer, and the editing quality gives me the impression that this isn't a brand new video, but it's nice to hear the original That's Chester lineup at their height before Richard left! Everyone sounds good, so fans of theirs would be well served to give this video a watch, and visit Ric's YouTube channel for more archive video uploads of his!



That's all for today, but stay tuned for this month's Defunct Local Band Profile on the site tomorrow! Thanks everyone!