LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (Tym Morrison) & A Farewell To MySpace Band Links On The SMS!!

Today's post is devoted to two topics: LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (one on SHORT NOTICE) from one musician over the coming months, and a big change to our defunct local band links on the site, so here's what you should know on this Saturday morning!

Local classic/hard rock singer/guitarist Tym Morrison will return to Misty's Fifties for matinee concerts TODAY and every two weeks into June! Apologies for the short notice on TODAY'S concert, we only heard about it earlier today via Tym sharing a Facebook event page covering the dates earlier this week. Of course, Tym debuted at the 658 Second Line West bar/restaurant back in December, and played sporadically there ever since, though a planned Wednesday nighter on Valentine's Day was quietly cancelled for unannounced reasons. Clearly, that wasn't a bad sign for Tym's relationship with Misty's, as he'll be back for more acoustic hard and classic rock favourites TODAY at 4:00 PM and then on these Saturdays to come: March 2nd, 16th, and 30th, April 13th & 27th, May 11th & 25th, and June 8th & 22nd. All of these shows are presumed 19+ events with no cover.

For the record, two of these gigs could tie in to holiday plans, as the March 16th show is the day before St. Patrick's Day (as it's a Sunday this year, many nightclubs may have events on the 16th instead), while the March 30th show is on the Easter long weekend. Tym is no stranger to weekly or bi-weekly events at the same venue like this, so don't miss out on all of the unplugged action starting TODAY at 4:00! Visit the above links for more details, and here's Tym live last year!

Next up, in advance of a big change that I'm making to the band links on the SMS, I'm starting by making a big one for an opposite reason. Since the SMS began in 2007, a big source for band pages for research and linking purposes was MySpace, as anyone around the local music scene in the 2000s will be well aware, but it (for all intents & purposes) died a slow and painful death starting with its forced redesign in 2010, which deleted all blog posts & biographies from accounts. I kept certain bands linked from MySpace on the basis of their hosted music/videos and pictures for history and information, if not necessity, as MySpace may still have been this band's fullest/only presence online. Eventually, a botched server migration forced all music on hosted accounts to be unplayable, and photos hosted there have slowly winnowed away too, leaving just captions with nothing viewable. Even the MySpace home page seems to have not been updated since 2022.

MySpace was very important to the SMS originally, and a lot of internet-using readers from the 2000s will have fond memories of it for personal use and for band pages, but unless intentionally looking up old bands, current usage of it died in 2010 and just got worse and worse (Destroilet did try to work around the 2010 redesign but they were a rare exception), with then-current and new bands looking to Facebook and elsewhere for their social media promotion. Quite frankly, linking old local bands via MySpace pages in 2023 is nearly useless, so I've decided to remove the remaining bands from our links that are only here because they didn't have surviving pages elsewhere and I clung to MySpace for this long. As such, these local bands are no longer linked on the SMS: 2wo Man Baand, A Fall From Innocence, Bring The Fallen, Despised Eyes, Foothill Road, Free Beer, Infrastrate, The Last Warrior Of Rock, Nebraska Arms, The Pisstanks, Renderware, ...

...Route 69, Smeltzer, and Stealing Kisses. From Sault Michigan & the E.U.P., I have also deleted 7/47, Absolute, Analog Deficiency, Clownsack, Condemned, Hands Of Betrayal, Lower S.E.S., Nixxon Dixxon, The Pick-Me-Ups, Shift, and Twisted Manikin. Just to be clear, some of these bands did have activity into the 2010s on now-deleted social media accounts or without launching new ones (i.e. Clownsack's 2011 CD "Funny Farm", Bring The Fallen's 2013 reunion concert & EP, Free Beer's return as Sarah's Valley, and Foothill Road's pandemic-era original song), but unless I have missed something, none of these bands have an extant social media presence elsewhere that has content worth linking to in 2024 for research/historical purposes. If I find something that I forgot about or didn't see before, or if one of these bands decides to reunite, I will absolutely re-link the band(s) in question.

Still, deleting these pages cleans up our links a good amount, and we'll fill them back up in no time, so stay tuned for more on that in the near future! That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site next week! Thanks everyone!

Defunct Local Band Profile Series: Nixxon Dixxon

It's now time for our penultimate Defunct Local Band Profile of 2021, as we continue our monthly spotlights of defunct/inactive local metal, hard rock, or punk acts from our band links in order to spotlight their run, material, and accomplishments for modern day readers! This month's randomly selected band was quite a notable group from Sault Michigan over a decade back, so here's what you should know on them!

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Nixxon Dixxon

Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

Genre: Hard Rock

Lineup:

Brandon Carr (Rhythm & Brews), vocals
Chris Hubbard (415E), guitar
Kyle Beaumont (The London Gentlemen, Splitshot), bass
Jake Lalonde (Miller Holler, The Lifeline), drums

Audio/Video: Nixxon Dixxon never released a studio album, but they did have a few original songs that were performed live in 2009 & 2010, like "One Shot Woman", "High Life" and what sounded at the time like "Life All Around". On their old MySpace page, the band said that they sounded like "the pumping eighties that we all love", but their setlist did reach into more modern hard rock covers rather than going all '80s (though given Chris' love of Van Halen, they easily could have!) A handful of live videos from the second half of their run can be watched on YouTube, mainly via users myangels1266 and rubbs001's channels, but here's Nixxon Dixxon playing two originals at the Kiss Battle of the Bands in Sault Ontario in 2009!

Info/Analysis: Launching their MySpace page in October 2006, Nixxon Dixxon were active when their members were just teenagers, but they definitely transcended their age to become one of the most prominent E.U.P. hard rock bands of the late 2000s. Self-described as playing "rock & roll music for the American working man", information on their early run is hard to get from public sources nowadays (partly because their primary social media account was on MySpace), but they were often seen at regional nightclubs & festivals, and many casual fans took notice when they were tapped as the late-notice openers for Bret Michaels' Kewadin Casino concert in March 2008. Nixxon Dixxon became one of the very few E.U.P. bands to play in Sault Ontario post-9/11 when they competed in the Kiss Battle of the Bands at the former Canadian Nightclub in December 2009, making it all the way to the finals!

Despite a big 2010 including sets opening for Pop Evil at The Dreammaker's Theater and for Vince Neil & Bret Michaels again at Kewadin Casino 25th Anniversary Festival, Nixxon Dixxon disbanded that August following gigs at the former Golanka's Bar, with Jake moving out of state for college, but members would later perform together in Splitshot, Trail's End, The London Gentlemen, and presently, Rhythm & Brews. Nixxon Dixxon were a very solid band with good chemistry and a fun live sound, and every band member stood out on his own merits! I wish they'd stayed together longer, at least to release an album, but everyone has done promising music since, so check out their later projects to see what they've been up to!

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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! Next month, we'll end the year back in Sault Ontario with a double profile, as the first randomly selected band we picked doesn't have a lot of surviving information outside of their videos, so I randomly picked one more with similarly minimal information to round things out. Unless more is uncovered, we'll be looking at early 2010s metal project ApocalyptiCDistroyeR and a short lived contemporary hard rock band, namely RXN. Look for these on or around December 10th, and for more news soon! Thanks everyone!

YouTube Channel Profile Series: rubbs001's Channel

It's now time for this month's YouTube Channel Profile, posted a day early to make room for weekend concert previews, especially given the returning Northern Vibe Festival. This monthly feature series looks at 1-3 randomly selected YouTube channels from our subscriptions, in order to spotlight them and their public content for potential viewers and subscribers, and as usual, channels must have at least half of their public videos devoted to local metal, hard rock, or punk artists/concerts. Our channel pick for this month lets us take a trip over a decade back to one of the biggest hard rock bands to come out of the E.U.P. (and their singer solo), so here's what you should know!

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rubbs001's channel (http://youtube.com/rubbs001)

Owner: A relative or close friend of former Nixxon Dixxon/current Rhythm & Brews singer Brandon Carr (the channel is focused around him but the descriptions lead me to believe he didn't run it)

Channel Timeline: Launched on December 18th, 2006; Videos uploaded from March 19th, 2009 until April 2nd, 2011

Channel Summary: All of the videos on rubbos001's channel star Sault Michigan hard rock singer Brandon Carr in some fashion, mostly via videos from concerts at The Northern Pines Lounge at the St. Ignace Kewadin Casino by his most prominent band, late-2000s hard rock quartet Nixxon Dixxon. Other videos include a comical lip sync of Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself", a solo acoustic cover of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face", Brandon performing "Dentist!" in Sault High's 2010 production of Little Shop Of Horrors, and two takes of him singing at that year's International Idol competition.
 
Why You Should Watch: This is definitely worth a watch for fans of Brandon's local music work, especially during Nixxon Dixxon's late-era peak, and you also get a good look at what he was up to artistically beyond the band at the turn of the 2010s! However, there are other sources for full-band & better quality Nixxon Dixxon videos of this era, like YouTube user myangels1266's channel. Also, note that no videos are featured here from Nixxon Dixxon's pre-2009 activities, despite the 2006 launch date.

 Our Recommended Videos To Check Out:

 

155 pop evil: With one exception, all of rubbs001's Nixxon Dixxon videos are of acoustic performances at The Northern Pines Lounge, with Brandon performing alongside bassist Kyle Beaumont (later of The London Gentlemen and Trail's End) on acoustic guitar. One is of Brandon & Kyle covering Seether's "Broken", Daughtry's "Going Home", and Puddle of Mudd's "Drift & Die" (the latter with Jake on drums) in March 2009, while a June 2010 set yielded videos of Shinedown's "The Crow & The Butterfly" (uploaded twice), Godsmack's "Touché", and in this channel's most popular hard rock video, Pop Evil's "100 In A 55". Dark lighting on the 2009 clip isn't helpful, but Brandon and Kyle are a good unplugged match on these rock radio covers, and Brandon's strong melodic voice gets a lot of good use throughout!

Blood Pollution: The only video of Nixxon Dixxon performing a full electric song with the whole band here is also from the June 2010 St. Ignace show, where they covered Steel Dragon's "Blood Pollution" from the movie Rock Star. Also featuring 415E/Rhythm & Brews guitarist Chris Hubbard and London Gentlemen alum Jake LaLonde (now of the Nashville country rock band Miller Holler), it's nice seeing Nixxon Dixxon again, even if the video is a little grainy, and seeing as they disbanded a couple of months later, it's even nicer to have this online! Very talented young group, they deserved more!

 

Simpleman: In June 2010, Brandon was one of 29 local singers who competed in the third annual International Idol vocal talent competition at The Soo Theatre, with the winner of the 14-and-over division getting to open for Meat Loaf on the closing night at Kewadin Casino's 25th Anniversary Summer Festival the following month. Brandon lost to local singer Kellan Perron (read more about the winners at this link), though Nixxon Dixxon played that day on the second stage anyway, as well as on the main stage on night #1. Uploaded twice to rubbs001's channel at different lengths, Brandon was filmed covering Shinedown's version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man", with Brandon matching the vocal tone of the cover, if not Brent Smith's range. Solidly done and well filmed for the time, and hopefully we'll hear more from Brandon musically soon with one band or another!

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I hope you guys liked this month's YouTube Channel Profile! Next month in this series, our random selection has given us a doozy of a channel to spotlight, namely Mike Haggith Music, the official channel for the prolific local alt-rock musician, which has a LOT of ground to cover from the past decade, so look for this on or around September 26th, and for weekend concert previews on the site next! Thanks everyone!

LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (The Pixo Control), Plus New Videos!!

Here's another news post to open a new week, so what can you find within? New videos from two very different recent concerts, and first, LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS for a rising young band's next three shows, all with some big developments attached, so here's what you should know!

Local alternative/hard rock trio The Pixo Control will indeed play a CD release concert in honour of their debut album "Probably Not" on Saturday, December 12th... two of them, in fact! The band announced on their Facebook page last night that they'll headline two separate concerts at LopLops Lounge that day, the first being an ALL AGES afternoon gig and the latter being a nighttime 19+ show, so fans of all ages will be able to check the guys out and be the first to get a copy of their first CD! Notably, these will be The Pixo Control's first concerts since The Emergency Festival in August, and consequently, just their second & third with new drummer Matthew Thibert (no word as of yet on if he recorded tracks for the album.) Support will come via post-punk quartet Gnaeus (fresh off of their Devil's Night concert at LopLops) and glam/punk trio Caroline Divine (in their first announced concert since July), and both are great fits, so don't miss them on the 12th!

No word yet though on if the openers are playing both shows, or if each band has one each, but we'll treat them as playing both unless said otherwise. Presented by label Tidal Records, each show has a $10 cover charge (it's not clear whether that includes a copy of "Probably Not" or if that's separate from entry), the all ages show is at 2:00 PM, and the 19+ show is at 9:00 PM, both on December 12th. For more details, visit the above links! This is an ambitious idea to play two release shows in the same day, but hopefully The Pixo Control have a successful launch(es) of their debut CD, and we'll keep you posted as extra updates roll in!

Next up, we have another new Pixo Control concert to mention, as they'll apparently be opening for Saskatoon blues rock favourites The Sheepdogs at The Machine Shop at Mill Square on Tuesday, February 9th! While not announced via other sources as of this writing, The Pixo Control's Facebook page indicated that they'd be opening for The Sheepdogs on Saturday. The second February gig in as many years to feature the guys as an opening band (joining this year's Treble Charger concert), this is another huge showcase for Michael, Steve, and Matthew, and hopefully they can make some new fans in February! If you're not familiar with them, The Sheepdogs are well known from hit singles like "Feeling Good" & "The Way It Is" from their platinum self-titled album, and have made lots of fans with their roots & southern rock-influenced originals, so there should be a very solid audience for their Soo debut! Also, the show is definitely on February 9th, SooToday's advertising accidentally has it listed for the 8th.

An 8:00 PM start time is listed for this 19+ concert, and tickets are available for $30 & $35 ($25 early bird tickets are sold out) at this link, so visit the above links for full current details! While The Sheepdogs aren't a "heavy" band, they're very talented and have a great fanbase, and they should rock the house on February 9th (and it's nice to see a big non-country show at The Machine Shop, hopefully there's more to come!) Stay tuned again for updates as we hear them on this and The Pixo Control's release shows!

We'll close today with new videos, including a look at Shot In The Dark Productions' production of The Who's Tommy at The Machine Shop earlier this month, featuring local classic/hard rock quintet That's Chester as the house band! Uploaded by drummer Ric Datson to his YouTube channel yesterday, this is of That's Chester and the cast of Tommy performing The Who's "Pinball Wizard" during one night of the production (which one isn't specified), and it gives a nice five-camera look at arguably the most famous song from Tommy! Greg Simpson does his best Elton John for the rendition, complete with the cast acting and singing in turn, and while everything looks and sounds good, Greg's vocals are very muffled (and note that there's a 31 second intro before the video actually starts.) Excellent crowd, and good details for the set and acting (yes, that is a real pinball machine being lowered in), so hopefully we see more live stage musical productions like this in the future, and yes, more That's Chester concerts! Give everything a look below!



Finally for today, here's a new video find of the aforementioned Caroline Divine from their Rotaryfest afterparty concert at LopLops Lounge on July 18th! Apologies for missing it for this long, it slipped us by in prior Facebook scans. Filmed by attendee Katie Huckson and shared on the band's Facebook page the next day, this is an incomplete video of Brendan, Devin, and Anthony playing one of their originals (title unclear, possibly "Looking For A Fight".) Solid audio and energy to be had from this promising young band in their most recent concert, albeit with dark lighting, so check it out below, and don't miss them back at LopLops on December 12th!


 
That's all for today, but stay tuned for much more news and updates this week! Thanks everyone!

Ten Kings Updates, Plus Lots Of Recent Assorted News!!

Believe it or not, this is our first full news post at the SMS without concert previews attached in almost two weeks, but hopefully the news will pick up in short order! Today, we're touching on a number of shorter assorted recent notes, but first, here's a pair of new Sault Michigan video finds, including some updates on a recently dissolved band, so here's what you should know! (Updated on Sunday at 11:08 PM)

Here's the latest on the now-inactive local hard rock quartet Ten Kings, so what should you know on them now? While it's still not public what happened to them, it looks like singer Brandon Carr made use of their St. Ignace Kewadin Casino bookings for this weekend by playing both last night & tonight with half of fellow local hard rockers 415E (guitarist Chris Hubbard and bassist Mitch Goetz), as well as ex-Absolute drummer Justin Lawless. Our sources are personal Facebook posts by Brandon & Chris yesterday. No word on if this is an official new band or not, and if they'd still skew hard rock if they were, but Chris did jokingly muse on if they should call themselves Nixxon Dixxon (his and Brandon's old local band) or Two Weeks Notice (presumably referencing the time they had to get ready following Ten Kings' dissolution.) Whether this is just a one-off group, a Nixxon Dixxon revival, or something brand new, we'll keep an eye on things, and hopefully this weekend's concerts went well!

As for Ten Kings, we had embedded a YouTube video of them covering Stevie Wonder's "Superstition" at The Northern Pines Lounge in St. Ignace in August here that was still online when this post went up, but the band member that controlled the account took their YouTube channel down as well yesterday. I wish bands wouldn't erase their existence from the internet like this when they break up, as there are fans that still like and enjoy their material, even if something bad happened behind the scenes, but it is what it is. Hopefully their breakup was amicable, and best of luck again!

Next up, here's a new solo video from ex-Ten Kings guitarist Joe Jenkins' YouTube channel! Uploaded last week, this is of Joe's musical discovery when stacking his guitar pedals, and he definitely seems to like what this produced! Also, this is unique from his past videos that we've shared here, as he talks to the camera about his gear and the pedals' effects on his playing. You get some solid instrumental playing too, so give it a look below!



Finally for today, here's six assorted shorter news items from the last while, and as usual, these are in alphabetical order by band, album, company, or venue name:

• Former local concert venue Club Princess (a.k.a. The Princess Theatre) has had it's iconic arrow sign taken down amidst ongoing renovations by new owner Marc Muto (yes, the former Lion Ride drummer), who bought the Gore Street location and is planning to reopen it in the future in some form. The sign was removed due to safety concerns and that it was showing it's age, but it will be put in storage towards a possible restoration and return to the building. It's nice to hear that the Princess is being revived, and hopefully the sign returns down the road! Click here for more details!
• According to a post on Mike Haggith & The Din's Facebook page on Thursday,  the band shared the stage with funk/hard rock quartet The Elements (an apparent late addition) and DJ Seith during that night's Jason Michaud fundraiser at The Marconi Hall, without crediting the publically listed Redundant, Project 421, and Eclypse. No word on if those bands dropped out or not, but remember, official event advertising oddly didn't credit the full lineup. Nice of The Elements to rock this benefit too, and hopefully lots was raised to help Jason out!
• The recap article and photos from SooToday's Donna Hopper's coverage of last month's "Fed Up!" split CD release party at The Algonquin Pub can at last been seen at this link! Featuring brief remarks from Jack Spades frontman J.D. Pearce & Destroilet singer Mike Hull, the article recaps the show and CD, and reiterates plans to release the split in other formats, while the photos (all in black & white) include 7 from headliners The Ripcordz' set & five each of the local bands, including a guest return from the departed Brent Ellis during Destroilet's set. Despite the delay, Donna got some great shots again, so see everything above!
• Local classic metal quintet Project 421 will replace Destroilet on the lineup for the Sabrina Pelchat memorial concert at The Rednecks Saloon on Friday, as per updates to the official Facebook event page yesterday. A reason for Destroilet's exit wasn't announced, but hopefully nothing bad happened, and Project 421 will fit in nicely in their return to the former Nicolet Tavern! Stay tuned for more on this show next week!
• We have moved local grindcore/experimental duo This Is Your Band On Drugs to our inactive band links due to a year's inactivity. The Blood Shed Productions project has not made a public update since being advertised to play at last October's Devil's Night concert at The Oddfellows Hall, which they dropped out of after being on hiatus since last spring due to work commitments. T.I.Y.B.O.D. were an entertaining and creative band in their genre, complete with a demo CD, and hopefully Chase & Nick revive them in the future!
• As you may have seen, there was not a Friday the 13th new music event from Sault Michigan independent metal label Werehold Records yesterday, breaking a streak of six straight Friday the 13th events dating to April 2012. Label owner Jason Mills said in a personal conversation that it was due to many artists on the label having "downtime" as of late, and he didn't want to post new songs from just his own projects. Hopefully things pick back up come the next Friday the 13th in May!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for more on the site in the coming week! Thanks everyone!