And today, we hit 30 posts for the month of July! Very busy month, and we have some more exciting news today, including a VERY cool local scene-relevant short story, Kewadin Festival updates, the identity of one of the bands from there, and new material from a local band! But first, here's a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT!!!
Caveman Morrison frontman
Tym Morrison has scheduled another solo acoustic date for August 6th! Once again, he'll be rocking out at The Roosevelt Hotel for a day full of acoustic metal covers to have a drink to! Note that I said "day", not "night", because this concert starts at 4:00 PM and runs until around 8:00 PM, unlike most Tym/Caveman Morrison shows. I think this show is tied to an event of some kind, especially with the "free dinner and meat draw" plugged on
the Facebook event page, but I'm not entirely sure what the occasion is. What I do know is that if you wanna chill out with some great renditions of your favourite hard rock hits from one of the area's better known guitarists, head to The Rosie on August 6th! Check the above links for more details on this show and on Tym Morrison's musical projects!
Next up, I have found a VERY cool short story that fans of the local music scene from the 1980s will absolutely want to read! This was a completely random find on some Google searching I conducted the other day, and it's the second part of an (at least) five part short story from local concert photographer Paolo Colasacco. It's about the concerts and experiences at the old Centennial Lanes venue on Gore Street (
Nite-Life Dance Club is now in it's old location), and it really is a cool read! Paolo discusses the genre divisions of concertgoers from shows there, the environment that Centennial Lanes gave to create a "new music scene", what it was like at the concerts in terms of what people did, what the alcohol policies were, what bands you'd typically see, and just how much fun people had! A good deal of it is spent talking about that band Riggy Zomba that I mentioned in yesterday's post, and Paolo's description of their two separate fanbases is noteworthy! He also notes that metalheads tended to frequent the Eastgate Hotel way back for concerts. The grammar and spelling isn't perfect, but believe me, this is another awesome window to the past of the local scene, and you'll wanna check it out!
Paolo uploaded this portion of his Centennial Lanes story onto
The Internet Archive five years ago, and you can
click here for the download link! Note that it's a WordPerfect file, but programs like Microsoft Word can also open it. Paolo has uploaded many other files onto The Internet Archive in the past, including some concert photos and
the fifth part of the Centennial Lanes story,
click here for more of his work! Part 5 doesn't deal much with metal, mostly concerning the walk home from a punk show headlined by classic local band The Reggulars, but read it too! This is great stuff that people should be more aware of, but I wonder what happened to the other parts of the Centennial Lanes story? I'll let you guys know if I hear more!
Next up, we have some new
Kewadin Casino 25th Anniversary Summer Festival updates to share!
Kewadin's Facebook page now features tons of photos from
Bret Michaels,
Vince Neil, Three Doors Down, and
Meat Loaf's sets, and more! Good quality, but I have one major complaint about the photos: Most of them are sideways! That is a nuisance, but they're good photos,
click here to check them out!
SooNews.ca also has new Kewadin Festival-related stuff online, courtesy of a new article and video from Winging It! host Tami Fremlin! The video, which isn't embeddable, features some quality performance clips from the festival of Three Doors Down and assorted other events, as well as portions of interviews with many of the acts and performers, including members of
Clownsack and
Nixxon Dixxon, among many others! Tami asks good questions, though she has a soft voice that can be hard to hear on lower volumes. Expect to see extended versions of these interviews and pieces when the new episode of Winging It! come online on SooNews.ca. For now though, check out the video at
this location!
Yes, there's also some new YouTube videos from the festival, though none are of the metal/hard rock performers. YouTube user
tishialee uploaded two videos from Meat Loaf's set onto
her channel, user
pltreasures has a Meat Loaf video and two Three Doors Down clips, user
daliellepeters has a parking lot video that shows the festival atmosphere and tents, and user
Kylerawesome has a video of his band performing at the festival, named
Attaca. Judging by their apparent ages and the stage setup, it looks like these guys were one of the "Rock Camp" youth groups that performed on the third stage on July 22nd and/or 23rd. And my assumption that the youth groups were from
Shift guitarist Joey Beairl's
Guitar Studio was a correct one, as you can see the upper half of the Guitar Studio logo in a banner on the far left of the stage in the Attaca video. These kids do have talent, so check out the video, but don't expect metal, as they cover The Ramones, The White Stripes, and Green Day in the clip. Click all of the above links for the newest Kewadin Festival footage!
Finally today, one more Kewadin Festival-related note. Remember the local band
Elipzis that played at the festival on the Saturday as one of the Meat Loaf supporting bands? Well, I now know what's up with this band, and yes, they are SMS-coverable! The band consists of frontwoman Rachel Kiger, guitarist Chris Webster from the inactive Muskegon hard rock band
Kilacel, bassist Ryan Harrison (former
Riot! By Night frontman, more on that in a second), and drummer Bob "Orb Hearthstone" Helsten, who you'll best recognize as
Integrated System of Machines' original frontman! They only just launched
a MySpace page on July 13th, and it doesn't mention Sault Ste. Marie at all, which probably explains why it's taken me so long to find out details on this band. Musically, they list influences ranging from Stuck Mojo, Fates Warning, and Iced Earth (I heavily approve!) to The Police and Johnny Cash! Interesting, especially with a female singer, that'll give the band a different flavour! Looks like these guys have a lot of promise, I now have them in the SMS band links, and I'll definitely try to update you guys on their upcoming shows and events from here on out!
Thanks to Ryan Harrison and the anonymous commenter on
my June 29th post for some of the above information, as well as the above links! I have some cool stuff coming up on some of the bands and outfits related to Elipzis members in the next while, but I want to quickly add that yes, Ryan Harrison is no longer in Riot! By Night.
Their MySpace page hasn't been recently updated at all, but I have heard rumours that
Absolute, the band that most of Riot! By Night was in immediately beforehand, may be reuniting. I'll keep you posted if there's any truth to that, but it sucks that Riot! By Night may have ended, cause they sounded very promising and I heard nothing but good things about their shows!
That's all for today, my next post will (in all likelihood) be my next local metal CD review! Remember, it's an album from a band that I've already reviewed an album for, so get speculating! Stay tuned for that, and more, in the coming days!
I'd like to offer our deepest condolences to the family and friends of veteran local musician Dale Corcoran, who passed away on Sunday at the age of 59. His obituary is now up on SooToday, where it does not give details on services, but a "special musical gathering will take place at a later date", and in lieu of flowers, his family would appreciate memorial donations to a charity of your choice. Dale is survived by his wife Clare and his brother Phillip among other extended family, and he was predeceased by his daughter Krista-Lin. A native of Sackville, New Brunswick who was raised in the Soo, Dale will be familiar to local music fans of the 1980s from his work in hard rock/metal bands like Riggy Zomba, Vandyl, Dirty World, and Uncle Fester, along with later country-leaning bands like Tommy Gun, The Southern Guns, and The Hillbilly Heartbreakers, who evolved into what is today Tex Riviera & The Ride.
Dale also performed in Victim out of Sudbury, had a run as an Elvis Presley impersonator, and later worked and performed across Canada and internationally, later settling in Norwich, England with his wife. He most recently performed with the British pop rock band Paper Lace, who had a #1 single in 1974 with "The Night Chicago Died", and he toured with them in Australia in 2024. Dale's run in the local scene ended when I was still years away from following local bands, but he was a very talented musician and kind person by all accounts, and his far-flung music career has led to strong tributes here and afar from those who knew and worked with him. Understandably, media from his local band work is limited today, but his old Dirty World/Southern Guns bandmate Glen Thomas has posted a handful of videos on YouTube, including this C.C.R. cover by Dirty World.
