Like in past years, Sault Online (formerly Local2) correspondent Mike Caruso was on hand to film some great quality videos of the bands that played at Clergue Park for Rotaryfest, so we're going to feature the hard rock and metal covers from this year's event in two special posts this week! Luckily, Mike filmed every single advertised band this year, which is a slight change from previous years where one or two wasn't shot (including Fusion in consecutive years, oddly.) We'll focus on videos from this past Friday (and one from Saturday afternoon) today, and cover the remainder of the Saturday videos in the second post, so let's get this rolling! We'll first acknowledge the videos that Mike shot last Thursday, and they include Crossroad covering Hank Williams' "Honky Tonk Blues", The Bob Jenkins Band playing a jazz instrumental (title unannounced, but it reminds me of a Vince Guaraldi composition), The Jaztecs covering "The Girl From Ipanema", and Coverfly covering The Mamas & The Papas' "California Dreamin'", so click each link to see those performances!
First for the hard rock videos on Friday is this cover of Aerosmith's "Back In The Saddle" by local cover quartet KT, Kyle, and The Pocket, who we only tend to see at Rotaryfest. It turns out that singer KT Antler and bassist Kyle McKey (who've recently lived in Pembroke) and drummer Ed Young (who moved to Prince Edward Island last year) all came home for the event, which is nice to see on all accounts, especially knowing their talents! This cover (also featuring Kyle's Sailor's Tongue bandmate Blake Jackson on guitar) is probably more reminiscent of KT & Kyle's brief run with the original Turner Up than the rest of The Pocket's set, but it's well performed, and KT's got a great voice! I presume this will be the closest we'll get to a Sailor's Tongue set this year too, as that band only has reunited to play the Second Stage in the early 2010s, and we know that didn't return last weekend. Nicely filmed from great angles though, so give KT, Kyle, and The Pocket's Aerosmith cover a look below!
Next up on Friday was local hard rock quartet Beaumont Avenue (formerly The Suicide Kings), and while that obvious difference paired with the lack of a guest bassist were changes from last year, their talents and chemistry remained the same! Mike filmed the guys covering Guns N' Roses' "Mr. Brownstone" at Rotaryfest, which turned out pretty well, though Mike Gaetano's vocals can be an odd tone on the verses on a first listen. Solid as expected, so check out Beaumont Avenue at Rotaryfest below!
Lastly for the hard rock covers filmed on Friday was local hard rock veterans Stiffler's Mom's rendition of Golden Earring's "Radar Love", which also got the job done in their usual fashion, with Mike Davies' guitar standing out, and Greg Simpson's vocals being a great match on this classic hard rock standard! Nice chemistry also, but after how long these guys have played together, that's a given. Check out Stiffler's Mom's Golden Earring cover below!
The other Friday performances shot include classic rockers Mustang Heart covering Adele's "Make You Feel My Love" and country favourites Thin Ice covering Blackberry Smoke's "Like I Am", so check those out via the linked titles! Among the footage Mike shot on Saturday afternoon, he filmed R&B veterans The Reptiles covering Crowbar's "Oh What A Feeling (What A Rush)", as well as a surprise cover of Neil Diamond's "Play Me" by Rotaryfest stage MC (and Q104 DJ) Jeff McNeice in between bands. I didn't know he had that in him, very solid for the genre! The first of five filmed hard rock covers on Saturday was of the new all-female rock band Domina, whose creative description in the Rotaryfest program didn't tell us much on them, so what do we know? Well, their singer is Obsession's Valerie Powley, so they have absolutely nothing to worry about vocally! Their lineup also includes Shirley Kominos (Spyder's Web) & Patricia Palarchio on guitar, Mid Life Crysis' Lori Reinholtz on bass, and Boogie Fever alum Tracey Hilderley on drums, all of which were credited under stage names in the program.
Domina's cover was of The Headpins' "Don't It Make Ya Feel", which is definitely a hard rock song, and with the vocals Valerie is putting out here, how could it not be? There was a girl power theme for sure on Saturday afternoon (we'll cover The Danger Cats in our second Rotaryfest video feature), and Domina have the talent to make some noise if this is more than a one-off gig, though I'm curious to see if they're essentially an all-female Obsession, and if not, how they'll deviate in sound. Check out Domina below!
The rest of Mike Caruso's videos from Rotaryfest will be touched on either tomorrow or on Friday, and we'll feature hard rock covers from the aforementioned Danger Cats & Obsession, plus Griphook and headliners Michael White & The White, and we'll also link you guys to the other four covers that Mike filmed on Saturday. Give everything a look above, and stay tuned for more soon! Thanks everyone!
In what is shaping up to be our biggest month since last summer on the SMS, we have lots more updates to share today concerning five local bands, including a band's new name & page, the newest video footage of a local band in action, another band's Warped Tour quest, and one more band's departure from an upcoming concert, but leading things off today is some big news from a prominent local classic hard rock band! Here's what you need to know!
Reports of Turner Up's demise have been exaggerated, and I can now confirm that they are still together! Their last lineup did break up, but founding member Robert Brown and drummer Scott McClurg are in fact moving forward under the Turner Up name, with some big changes in place! Scott confirmed the details here with me via e-mail this morning, so there's my source if nothing new shows up on their Facebook pages beforehand. Firstly, the band has parted ways with singer Krista Marshall, guitarist Len Ward, and bassist Jeff Gray. Without public word, I won't state reasons why here, but nothing hinting towards bad blood has came to me over the past few days, so take that for what you will. Best of luck to Krista, Len, and Jeff though, they're all talented performers! With that said, the band has officially added singer KT Antler and guitarist Kyle McKey to the band. KT has made some waves in recent years for her original solo work, and I can vouch that she's a very talented singer! Kyle's well known as Stillbroke's former bassist, but his resume includes everything from Sailor's Tongue to Asylum Country to Rob & Scott's old band Lois Lane, effectively giving Turner Up and Lois Lane the same lineups, minus vocals!
So this officially makes Turner Up a quartet, with Robert moving to bass, though I should note that there will be a lot more instrument flexibility in this lineup than we're used to. Robert and Kyle can both play bass and guitar, while KT, Scott, and Kyle all have singing chops, so make note of that when you go see them next! Speaking of which, all of their prior dates (booked during their last lineup's run) are intact as scheduled, so your first chance to see Turner Up V4.0 will be NEXT WEEKEND on April 1st and 2nd at The Nicolet Tavern (they had this weekend off already prior to the lineup changes.) There is one exception though, as their planned weekend set at The Canadian Nightclub next month has been moved up two weeks from April 22nd-23rd to April 8th-9th. Aside from that, the only differences will be the band's lineup, so check our concert listings on your left for more! So remember, Turner Up have NOT BROKEN UP, but their look and sound will be different next time you see them! Thanks again to Scott for the news, and apologies for any past misinformation. I do my best to make sure things sound correct, but sometimes, multiple sources will have conflicting views on the same topic. I'll work to improve on that!
Next up, here's the latest lineup news for April 9th's massive Sewer Swampstravaganja all ages concert at The Oddfellows Hall! Firstly, here's some good news and bad news. The bad news is that Bring The Fallen have officially dropped out of this concert, which has long been rumoured. The good news is they're not breaking up, as frontman Josh Stephney confirmed on the Facebook event page's wall that they were "taking a break" while they write some new material. At least they're not breaking up, despite the rumours that didn't sound all that promising. Still, if it's true that they're merely laying low to write some new stuff, I can't wait to hear it! With that said, they haven't been replaced on the lineup, and at least at present, the organizers are going with just 11 bands, with a new concert start time of 3:45 PM. As such, the lineup's been amended again, so here's what's changed! Five of the bands were been bumped up one slot on the bill to reflect the new start time, though a couple got better promotions than others. Shit Liver got moved from 5:15 PM to 6:45 PM, while Frightlight catapulted from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM! The start times for Sativa Rose, The Bear Hunters, and RedD Monkey are unchanged, and only one band, Late & Loud, got pushed back in the order (from 6:45 PM to 6:00 PM.) For full current details on this show, click here!
Thirdly today, here's the latest news from local hard rock trio Browbeat, or should I say, Browbeat 101! Yes, they have altered their name by adding "101" to the end (allusion to Rock 101, maybe?) to avoid confusion with the defunct Italian metal band of the same name. I honestly wouldn't think it's a big deal when the other Browbeat is broken up, but at least this way, members won't sue or complain if they catch wind of the local Browbeat! With that said, the newly rechristened Browbeat 101 have launched a brand new MySpace page following the deletion of their old pages, which you can now check out at this location! It's pretty sparse at present, but updates are forthcoming, including audio recordings featuring the full current lineup, so stay tuned for that, and more! I still don't think they needed to delete all their pages, but this isn't a new concept for Browbeat 101 or for their past names, so I'm used to it! Stay tuned for updates!
Finally for today is some more new Woods of Ypres video footage! Two videos from Saturday's concert in Halifax at Coconut Grove were posted on YouTube this past weekend, and you can check them out at YouTube user ImpaledBman's channel! The same user posted videos of the band from a concert in Halifax from May 23rd, 2009 as well, the link above will point you in the right direction to check those out as well! The new videos are of Woods of Ypres playing their songs "Your Ontario Town Is A Burial Ground" and "A Meeting Place & Time", and they're actually of very good audio quality! Everything's clear, these are some of the best sounding live videos I've seen so far from the current Woods of Ypres tour! The videos are dark, and heavily centered on Joel Violette and Shane Madden due to the filmer's placement, but it's more of a natural lighting. Don't judge the image on the video below before watching, that's auto-brightened by YouTube and it won't look that distorted when watching it. Good stuff, check out the video of "A Meeting Place & Time" below, and get more at the above links!
That's all for now, but I have more news to share very soon, and yes, our next CD review will be up by the end of the week ("Against The Seasons" is the leading candidate!) Thanks everyone!
The other Friday performances shot include classic rockers Mustang Heart covering Adele's "Make You Feel My Love" and country favourites Thin Ice covering Blackberry Smoke's "Like I Am", so check those out via the linked titles! Among the footage Mike shot on Saturday afternoon, he filmed R&B veterans The Reptiles covering Crowbar's "Oh What A Feeling (What A Rush)", as well as a surprise cover of Neil Diamond's "Play Me" by Rotaryfest stage MC (and Q104 DJ) Jeff McNeice in between bands. I didn't know he had that in him, very solid for the genre! The first of five filmed hard rock covers on Saturday was of the new all-female rock band Domina, whose creative description in the Rotaryfest program didn't tell us much on them, so what do we know? Well, their singer is Obsession's Valerie Powley, so they have absolutely nothing to worry about vocally! Their lineup also includes Shirley Kominos (Spyder's Web) & Patricia Palarchio on guitar, Mid Life Crysis' Lori Reinholtz on bass, and Boogie Fever alum Tracey Hilderley on drums, all of which were credited under stage names in the program.
