It's been almost three weeks since we last posted a recap post from last month's Rotaryfest, and I haven't touched on nearly anything from Stage 2 yet, let alone the closing Stage 1 band, so let's make up for lost time before we enter another month! We left off on Saturday, July 20th before the last band, and for the ninth time in ten years, the last musicians at Clergue Park were a local band rather than the touring Stage 1 attraction. Classic/hard rock cover quartet Double Down got the honours in their sophomore year, and they were filmed a lot! Interestingly, it's their original Facebook page (the one formatted like a personal account that they largely stopped using after their guitarist switch) where videos were being shared last month, rather than their newer band-formatted page. Possibly because of the privacy settings on such pages, none of these videos are embeddable externally, so click the song names linked below to see each video.
Attendee Michael Alexander was the first to upload videos in a batch post the day after, getting horizontal(!) videos of them playing "Green Eyed Girl" (which might be an original, but at any rate, it's not the Sugarloaf song like I mistook it for in the past), Honeymoon Suite's "New Girl Now", and Thin Lizzy's "The Boys Are Back In Town" and "Jailbreak", with new guitarist Beej Syrette handling lead vocals on the Thin Lizzy covers and his cousin Joel singing on the other two. Filmed close to the stage at a slightly skewed angle closer to bassist Brad Stephen, these have good audio, if what inconsistent lighting depending on where Michael was standing combined with the stage effects. Still, fans of Double Down's will like the performances on offer here! Also filming at Rotaryfest was attendee Wanda Wanda, who filmed them covering the Thin Lizzy version of "Whiskey In The Jar", again with Beej on lead vocals.
Wanda was in a similar location to Michael, but alas, this was shot vertically. The lighting is a tad overexposed, and if this clip had to be vertical, I'd have at least centered the band in frame rather than capturing so much of the upper stage, but it's a strong cover for fans of the Thin Lizzy (and Metallica) versions of this Irish standard, and you can tell that Beej is a big fan of theirs! The other two known public videos from Double Down's closing set were live-streamed by attendee Vicky Smith, who filmed them from the opposite side of the stage (if at a much sharper vantage point), though alas, also vertically. Vicky shot the guys covering Simple Minds' "(Don't You) Forget About Me" (with Joel singing), as well as a different angle of their "New Girl Now" cover. Vicky's videos are the most distant from the stage, but the lighting is more level and the audio holds up nicely, so fans should get a kick out of these!
No word on if Double Down themselves had official cameras rolling for their set like they had last year, but these fan-shot videos capture a fun slice of their set, if an unembeddable slice, so click the song names above to hear the Syrettes, Brad, and Ric in action, and yes, we will have some new concert dates of theirs on the SMS soon! Barring some very belated videos or news coverage to come, that wraps up Stage 1 at Rotaryfest 2024 for what has been publically made available, but what about the Friday blues and originals-leaning Saturday lineups on Stage 2 beside the Art Gallery of Algoma? From the former, I haven't seen any public videos (granted, most of the bands on the Friday Night Blues lineup don't have social media pages), but you can see a bunch of photos from Friday on the Sault Blues Society's Facebook page. However, we have a video from the very first band on Stage 2's Saturday lineup to share, and an embeddable one, at that!
The first non-"Shorts" video to ever be uploaded to their YouTube channel (believe it or not), this features hard rock quintet HeadFirst playing their new original "Little Darling" from their debut EP "Head Trauma", which had its pre-release party launch here. The filmer sure made the rounds to get some quality shots of HeadFirst in action from near & far, and while I'll hold comment on the song pending our review of "Head Trauma" (stay tuned by month's end), the performance is lively with good audio quality, and Red is sure putting his energetic stage presence to good use! Give it a watch below, and don't miss HeadFirst at the ARCH Run at Jay's on Saturday!
That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!
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