LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (Half Past, Soundcheck, And The Wyld Stallyns), Plus A New Song!!

Happy Independence Day to our American readers! Before we begin today's post, just a brief acknowledgement that today marks The Sault Metal Scene's sixteenth anniversary, if you can believe it. I'm not going to get too self-indulgent about the milestone (I don't want to make our current backlog any worse), but thanks to (almost) everyone for their support and readership since 2007, and there's a lot more to come in short order! Now, today's post features LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS for the coming month and a new original song, so here's what you should know!

Shooters Downstairs Lounge's Facebook page has posted event pages for concerts taking place there through early August, and some new hard rock gigs are among them! Not counting this Friday's previously announced Bone Yard concert, the first of the new-to-us dates will see local funk/hard rock cover sextet The Wyld Stallyns return to Shooters on Saturday, July 15th for one night only! This will be quite a busy day for the Stallyns, as they'll be fresh off of their set at Rotaryfest Stage 1 earlier that same day (they are the sixth of ten bands at 5:15 PM). Hopefully they ride the momentum of that all ages festival set with a night full of fan friendly but often heavy covers at Shooters! This is a one nighter due to next Friday's show from Vancouver theatrical world rock band Stubbs & The (that is their full name), which actually isn't Shooters' only gig from a touring act in the coming weeks.

This concert takes place at 9:00 PM next Saturday (less than three hours removed from their Rotaryfest set), and it has a 19+ age limit and no cover charge. If you want to enjoy some Wyld Stallyns cover action with a longer timeframe, a cooler indoor setting, and more intimate confines, head to the Dennis Street nightclub next Saturday, whether you saw them at Clergue Park earlier or not! Visit the official Facebook event page for more details!

Next up, local classic/hard rock cover quartet Soundcheck will return to Shooters for a full weekend on Friday, July 21st & Saturday, July 22nd! No word yet on if we'll see them elsewhere this weekend or next (Soundcheck are not playing at Rotaryfest this year), but these will be Soundcheck's first gigs at this venue since a one-nighter there last month. With their country-heavy Great Northern Opry showcase gig for singer/guitarist Terry Eaton in the books, Soundcheck will lean back into their rock cover stylings later this month, and hopefully the guys deliver solid hard rocking classics for Shooters faithful later this month! Like with the Stallyns next weekend, these shows have 19+ age limits, no cover charges, and 9:00 PM start times. Be advised that Shooters are also hosting touring stand-up comedian Eric Johnston on Saturday the 22nd, who is scheduled from 8:00-10:00 PM according to that Facebook event page.

Eric's show is explicitly advertised as taking place at Shooters, not the upstairs Queen of Hearts Club, but if the times for both Eric and Soundcheck are accurate, then they'd have to be on different floors. If not, then either Eric's show ends at 9:00 PM or Soundcheck are advertised too early. We'll keep you posted if anything is 100% clarified, but visit the official Soundcheck Facebook event pages linked here & here for more details!

Lastly for the new Shooters hard rock concerts, reunited local hard rock quartet Half Past will make their long-awaited return to the stage there for one night only on Friday, August 4th! This will be Half Past's first show since announcing their revival in the fall of 2021, with the band last taking stage way back in October 2011 at The Rockstar Bar. Featuring returning members Jordan Rains, Alain Fletcher, and Arthur Lacasse alongside new drummer Johnny Amendola, it will be very interesting to hear how Half Past sound after nearly twelve years away, let alone following the dissolution of Jordan and Art's short-lived bands The Isolation Sessions and Dealing Without in 2021, but some entertaining hard rock covers should be a given! This is a one-nighter due to Sudbury adult contemporary singer Ashley Woodruff's concert at Shooters on Saturday, August 5th, which is the last of the newly confirmed Shooters events.

Like today's other new hard rock shows, Half Past are on at 9:00 PM with a 19+ age limit and no cover charge. Half Past didn't play many shows with Jordan on vocals initially (their best known singer was the late Luke LeBlanc), but he did show promise back in 2011 and in his posted covers with The Isolation Sessions, and with a decade+ of time passed, hopefully everyone is just as ready, if not moreso, to rock the stage with Half Past once again! Rare to see a local band come back after such a long time like this, especially when it's not a one-off. Visit the official Facebook event page for more details, and stay tuned for more updates!

We'll close today by throwing a bone to our readers in Sault Michigan and the Eastern Upper Peninsula (it is the Fourth of July, after all), courtesy of a new instrumental song from local classical metal band Theatre of Night's YouTube channel! Entitled "Rites of Spring" (too bad this was released on June 21st, the technical beginning of summer!), the band calls this an "epic melodic piano metal" song, and it is not tonally far off from much of their more recent instrumental material, if not seasonal to Christmas or even the season we're actually in now. The band says that you can hear this song on "all platforms", and bands should really clarify that more, as it's a near-impossible task to put your music on all streaming platforms, but you can hear this on at least Spotify and Reverbnation elsewehere. This is suitably grandiose and dramatic with strong guitar and piano work, so do check out Theatre of Night's new song below!

That's all for now, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!