The Musicians Unite Benefit Concert Preview!!

A huge assortment of local and Northern Michigan rock talent will join forces at Bird's Eye Outfitters TOMORROW NIGHT for Musicians Unite, a special benefit concert! As you may know, Project 906 guitarist Joe Jenkins' wife Mary Jo has been in a fight with breast cancer for the past year+, and this event is to raise money for her and her family to offset the cost of treatments and medically-related travel downstate. Along with tomorrow's concert action, there will be official t-shirts available for purchase, a bake sale, and a silent auction on site at Bird's Eye, so visit the official Facebook event page for complete non-musical details on what's going on and how you can help May Jo and family at this difficult time! Your headliners tomorrow are Marquette hard rock cover quartet Spun in their first local concert appearance since 2022, though bassist Bob Libick has guested locally with Exit 808 multiple times since.

It's cool to have Spun proper back on a local stage tomorrow at 10:45 PM, and hopefully they rock the house tomorrow, especially given that they're letting the opening bands use their sound system! Elmira hard rock quintet Driving Dawn will co-headline at 9:00 PM in their first ever E.U.P. concert appearance, though Exit 808 fans may know them too, as they won last year's Rock Recovery battle of the bands in Alpena. Driving Dawn's skilled modern rock sound should be welcomed by Yoopers tomorrow night as well! The aforementioned Exit 808 are the highest slotted local band at 7:30 PM, and members Amy Beach & Jackie Moon are the promoters of Musicians Unite as well. Should be a big set for them, and given how open they are to have guest and fill-in musicians, could some surprises turn up? One is definitely hinted, as young Dafter singer/guitarist Molly Escherich is listed as making "appearances" mid-set.

Whether just the band, with Molly, or with other guests, Exit 808 should leave a good impression with their double vocalist-led hard rock! Fellow local hard rock quartet Dirty Musky will take the stage at 6:00 PM with their own set of unique hard and alternative covers, and they should make some noise early in the evening, as will hard/blues rockers Project 906, who are (of course) one of the central bands tomorrow given who Mary Jo is married to. Unfortunately, the band will be playing sans singer Billy Bernier due to a previously scheduled vacation, but Exit 808 singers Amy Beach and Dillion Semasky will be guesting behind the mic with 906, returning the favour after both Joe & Dustin have sat in with Exit 808 in recent months, so look for this special set tomorrow as well! The opening local band is new alt-punk trio About: Blank (featuring Tarnished and Midnight Logic alumni), who will kick off the day's musical program at 3:00 PM.

As for the previously teased acoustic performers between the full band sets, organizers confirmed earlier today that three solo musicians will do the honours across the five breaks between bands. The aforementioned Molly Escherich (who was teased to guest with Exit 808) is slated to play unplugged music at 10:15 PM, 7:00 PM, and 4:00 PM, while veteran local folk singer/guitarist Kevin Blakeney is blocked for a mini-set at 8:30 PM, and About:Blank frontman Parker Talentino will go solo for a bit of his own at 5:30 PM. Admission is by donation tomorrow night, and while I have not seen a firmly stated age limit at Bird's Eye (which is licensed), Molly's presence alone is noted. Official event t-shirts will also be on sale. While I won't be in attendance (I was hoping to go before the tariff/trade war complicated imminent Sault Michigan trips), this is a huge concert for EUP live music fans, so don't miss it!

Alas, I can relate all too well to what the Jenkins family is going through right now, as I lost my mother (named Mary, incidentally) to ovarian cancer in October 2020. From what I have seen and read, Mary Jo's strength, courage, and devotion to her family (including her three kids) is extremely commendable, and kudos to Joe, his bandmates, and everyone else involved with Musicians Unite for putting on what will be a packed night of live music and good vibes! Visit the official Facebook event page for more details on tomorrow's benefit concert, and for a preview, here's Spun live!

That's all for now, but stay tuned for some new concert announcements on the site tomorrow! Thanks everyone!

LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (For Those About To Rock & Tym Morrison), Sault Ontario Weekend Concert Previews, And More!!

Things have been quite busy for me lately in terms of site updates (blame MySpace, I'll go into details this weekend), but the news keeps plugging on, as we have short notice LOCAL CONCERT ALERT for tomorrow night, previews of two metal-leaning concerts going down TONIGHT & , and a new video from a local metal project, so read on below for what you need to know! (Updated at 5:00 PM)

Have you AC/DC fans missed a local tribute concert to the hard rock legends? Well, the wait ends TOMORROW, as Toronto's own For Those About To Rock will make their first ever local stop for a night of high voltage rock n' roll at The Rockstar Bar! Apologies for the short notice, this was announced last week but slipped me by for coverage until the other day. The first AC/DC tribute show in the area since Who Made Who rocked The Canadian in February of last year, F.T.A.T.R. have their own unique and proficient take on the AC/DC sound, and they have an authentic look & setlist to go along with it, so fans will wanna check this show out on the weekend schedule! Admission will be $8 for tomorrow's show, you must be 19 to attend, and there's a 10:30 PM start time. For more details (including a contest tomorrow to win tickets to a Weezer concert in Toronto), visit the official Facebook event page!

I dig For Those About To Rock from what I've heard, and they have a close sound to the real thing, so don't miss tomorrow's show for a night full of AC/DC hits, and for a preview, here's a 2007 promo video featuring F.T.A.T.R. playing the song they're named after!

The other new show goes down TOMORROW NIGHT, as Caveman Morrison frontman Tym Morrison will return to his favourite recent concert spot (The Roadhouse Bar & Grill) on short notice! This was just announced on his solo project's Facebook group this afternoon, and it more or less replaces both his planned Docks Riverfront Grill debut (which was called off due to weather today as well, likely meaning it would have been an outdoor set), and the Roadhouse customer appreciation night set that was called off to fit the Docks show in. His acoustic metal/hard rock covers should still sound awesome, so don't miss tomorrow's late notice return to The Roadhouse on Trunk Road! This 19+ show has a likely 9:00 PM-ish start time, and there's no announced cover charge. For more details, check the above links! Hopefully Tym will make his Docks debut soon, but for now, a trip to the East End for some hard rocking unplugged covers wouldn't bad, so keep it in mind, and for a preview, here's he and ex-Half Past frontman Luke LeBlanc covering Extreme's "More Than Words" a few years back!

Next up, here's a concert preview for an already scheduled show, as TONIGHT marks local concert promoter J.D. Pearce's sixth Thursday night metal/punk show at The Roosevelt Hotel, which will be headlined by Vancouver crossover/thrash quartet The Golers! Well known from their hard touring and dark humour-infused studio material, their extreme hybrid sound should be more than welcomed to The Rosie tonight, so don't miss out on their local debut! There will be two local opening bands tomorrow as well, both of which are also making their respective Roosevelt Hotel debuts, including local old school hardcore/punk quintet Destroilet (in just their second show since 2011) and newer sludge/doom metal trio AlgomA (in their second ever live concert set), and both should be fitting openers, and fun to see live again! Admission will be $10 at the door tonight for this 9:00 PM concert, and you must be 19 to attend. For more details, visit the official Facebook event page! With plenty of diverse extreme metal/punk sounds to be had, and from three bands that aren't everyday sights locally, this will be a can't miss concert, and it's great to see all three rocking The Rosie tonight!

I hope to see you guys there, as I'm overdue for a Thursday nighter at The Roosevelt Hotel, and a review will follow tomorrow if all goes well! For a preview, here's over 6 minutes of The Golers tearing it up in Vancouver in 2010!



Finally for today, here's the latest from Bear Hunters guitarist/Suicide Kings bassist Mitch Sirie's solo project The Sorrow Fields! Though their Facebook page was curiously deleted for unknown reasons in the last few months, the project is ongoing, and Mitch revealed on their YouTube channel on Monday that he's working on a Sorrow Fields album name "Godlessness", which will be a "monument of bleakness & despair". To that end, he posted this 1:45 sample of the proposed album's title track onto YouTube, and while there's not a ton to say on it yet, it has a dark progressive/black metal feel to it, but it ends before anything too heavy is revealed early (and there's some arbitrary dead air at the end too.) Promising preview regardless, and I definitely wanna hear more, so give this sample of "Godlessness" by The Sorrow Fields a listen below!



That's all for today, but stay tuned tomorrow for our LemmaFest preview, and if all goes well, our review of TONIGHT'S Golers concert! Thanks everyone!