Here's a new news post to check out on this rainy Monday evening, and it includes notes on two bands moved out of our active links, a mid-week concert preview, and leading off, a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT for next week, so let's get things rolling!
Local classic metal trio The Nostalgic Band will return to Jay's Piston Broke Pub for one night only on Friday, September 22nd! Announced a few days after their recent array of fall-winter gigs that we covered on the SMS this past Friday, this will be Tym, Dutch, and Chet's first show at the former Reggie's West in almost a month, and it should prove to be another quality opportunity to take in their old school metal and hard rock covers, so don't miss out! No word on why they're not playing on Saturday the 23rd. It is also worth noting that The Nostalgic Band will give a kick at the can at being jam night hosts at Reggie's Place this Thursday, as per this Facebook event page, with a presumably similar format as the Soundcheck-hosted jam nights at Jay's where audience members are encouraged to perform on stage, with or without the house band. The guys certainly have the chops & setlist ready!
Remember that we don't treat jam nights as "concerts" due to their unpredictability by design, but if you like such events as a spectator or possible participant, keep this Thursday's festivities in mind! As for next Friday's show at Jay's, expect a 9:30 PM start time, 19+ age limit, and no cover charge. Visit the official Facebook event page for more details!
Next up, here's our preview of a special Tuesday night concert TOMORROW NIGHT, as St. Albert, Alberta hard rock band Sparrow Blue will make their local debut at Soo Blaster! This fast rising sextet have been turning heads with their classic rock-inspired yet hard edged original sound that they dub "real thick rock n' roll", and they should leave a strong first impression among local fans tomorrow, so don't bypass Sparrow Blue whatsoever! Local support will come by way of hard/alternative rock quintet Handsome Sandwich and their good friends in indie/alternative quartet Man Feelings (they opened for each other's album release concerts, after all), and it will be good to see them share the stage again! Sponsored by Session Cannabis, this 19+ show has an advertised 7:00 PM start time running until 11:30 PM, which will hopefully be amenable to those of you with work or school on Wednesday!
Tickets are $10 in advance (plus tax/processing fees) at this link, with the door price jumping to $15. This should be a fun concert for hard and alternative rock fans, with the three bands on offer delivering a little something for most tastes, so definitely visit the official Facebook event page and the above links for more details, and here's Sparrow Blue live!
Also today, we have two local hard rock bands to move to our inactive band links, the first being veteran local hard rock/ska punk band Tripod The Dog. While their public silence online since reuniting may be explained by their lack of an updated online page (their Facebook group was ran by ex-guitarist Greg Beharriel), the band has not publically surfaced in any form since playing in The Esquire Club's Buckets, Bands, and Birds matinee concert series in May 2022. They were scheduled to return to that venue for two weekends last fall (note the G poking out of the tape on this schedule), but they quietly dropped out of those bookings. After a successful local run from the 1990s-2008 and a well received reunion set at Rotaryfest Stage 1 in 2018, frontman Mark Oliverio fully brought back Tripod The Dog on the weekend cover band circuit with a Rockstar Bar gig in April 2019, primarily playing there & at The Esquire Club.
The pandemic ate up a good chunk of their three years back, and Tripod weren't seen most weeks anyway, but it was nice to have them back on weekends when they had gigs, and hopefully we haven't heard the outright last from Mark and the Amendolas, let alone their many prior members!
Finally, the other band moved to our inactive links is young local hard rock band Sylo, better previously known as Raincourt. We have not heard any public updates from Sylo since they opened for Vanity First at a gig in Harmony Beach last July, with Sylo proper never having their own dedicated online presence beyond renaming their YouTube channel. In their original run as Raincourt since the fall of 2021, they were well publicized with two studio original songs, gigs at White Pines Collegiate and last year's Go Skateboarding Day, and this lengthy interview with original guitarist/namesake Raine Rancourt on The Boar's Nest with Don Lewis, but once Raine left the band at some point in June or July 2022, their social media presence dried up. Note that frontman Elijah Russell released a solo acoustic album named "The Late Great Eli Russell" on major streaming services last month, which turned out well for its genre!
I don't know what happened to Raincourt/Sylo after such a promising few months, possibly accentuated if you went to White Pines and saw them in both this band & The Pine Tones, and while losing Raine was a blow for fans, I was curious to see how Sylo would progress as a group. Raincourt's two original songs were promisingly heavy and didn't indicate that teenagers wrote them, so give them and their live videos a watch/listen above, and hopefully we hear more from Elijah, Raine, Owen, and Jakob soon! That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news on the site soon! Thanks everyone!
Before we begin today's post, I wanted to apologize for missing Sault Michigan hard rock cover quartet Rhythm & Brews' return to The Rapids Lounge at the Soo's Kewadin Casino branchthis past Friday & Saturday in our weekend concert previews.Three weeks removed from their last shows at The Rapids Lounge, these were not announced on the band's Facebook page, and I only heard about them via members' personal Facebook pages after the fact. I am 100% positive that they were not advertised for this past weekend on Kewadin's entertainment page, so they may truly have been short notice, but apologies regardless! I'd have covered them had they gotten any public advance notice, but hopefully they were hits!
Now, let's pause our Rotaryfest fallout briefly to look at some other recent news updates, starting with LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS, one on SHORT NOTICE, as Sault Ontario hard rock singer/guitarist Tym Morrison will bring his acoustic solo act to Jay's Piston Broke Pub for the first time THIS WEDNESDAY NIGHT! Apologies for the short notice, the venue only announced that Tym was playing on WEDNESDAY via their Facebook page earlier today. Starting on July 5th, the former Reggie's West began hosting "matinee" concerts at 6:00 PM on both Mondays & Wednesdays to coincide with chicken wing nights, with a different acoustic-leaning performer playing on these evenings to coincide with the promotion (if you are so inclined, wings at Jay's are 85¢ each). In fact, this series started on Wednesday the 5th with Bone Yard frontman Greg Simpson in his first unplugged solo gig since the pandemic began!
I do apologize for missing that on here too, which would have been fun for Bone Yard fans, but this conceit of mid-week evening concerts during Jay's wing nights is very new to me. Country veteran Leslie Cook has owned Mondays so far, while last Wednesday had Soundcheck's Cameron Oliver in a joint country set with Matt Tarantini. THIS WEDNESDAY will see Tym rock out on a familiar night if you recall his Mike Case Stage shows last summer. Hopefully this is a good, if late notice, primer for The Nostalgic Band's debut there next weekend! Expect a 19+ age limit and no cover charge for this 6:00 PM affair. See above for more details, and here's Tym live!
Next up, here's a new show with plenty of advance notice, as St. Albert, Alberta hard rock sextet Sparrow Blue will make their local concert debut on Tuesday, September 12th when they rock Soo Blaster! Sparrow Blue's classic rock-inspired brand of "real thick rock 'n roll" has helped them cross genre lines and attract some strong notices to date, and with their obvious talents, they should turn heads in a couple of months! Local support will come by way of two bands who are certainly no strangers to each other in 2023, namely indie rock quartet Man Feelings and hard/alternative rock quintet Handsome Sandwich, and their devoted fanbases should hopefully come out for this one despite the somewhat unfortunate Tuesday night scheduling! This stop on Sparrow Blue's Outta The Nest Tour has $10 advance tickets at this link and a $15 door charge, while a 7:00 PM start time is advertised, and expect a 19+ age limit. See above for more details!
Let's leap back to Sault Michigan now for some new videos from local blues/hard rock quartet Project 906's show at Snow's Bar & Grill in nearby Cedarville from this past Saturday! These were filmed by a venue staffer and live-streamed to the bar's Facebook page, and while they did the same for Tarnished on Friday night, we're saving those for this weekend's concert previews. The videos confirm that Brian Duford (who guested with 906 when they last played in Cedarville) was back behind the drumkit on Saturday, though if it was due to another conflicting Fake Chow gig for Jason VanLuven, then that band did not publically plug it on their Facebook page. The videos feature Project 906 & Brian covering Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble's "Pride & Joy" and, as embedded below, The Allman Brothers Band's "Soulshine". Sadly, these are both vertically shot, but at least everyone is in frame for the duration!
Everyone sounds good on these covers that do more justice to the blues rock side of Project 906's cover range (at least neither of these is "What If" again!), and vertical aspect ratio aside, the quality is really strong for the video proper. Check these out above & below, and stay tuned for more concert videos from Snow's later this week!
We'll close today with a Sault Ontario video that has slipped us by in our recent coverage of local concert videos shot for Christopher Paci's YouTube channel, mainly because it was uploaded as a "Shorts" video and therefore wasn't lumped with the rest. This comes from the Dayglo Abortions/Random Killing concert at Soo Blaster in May, with Chris posting this brief vertical clip of attendees moshing during Random Killing's co-headlining set. Mosh pits are best experienced in widescreen, but it is fun seeing so many punk fans making noise in the pit for such a big show, and hopefully everyone survived intact! Check it out for yourselves below!
That's all for now, but we'll resume our fallout from Rotaryfest on the site next! Thanks everyone!
Local classic metal trio The Nostalgic Band will return to Jay's Piston Broke Pub for one night only on Friday, September 22nd! Announced a few days after their recent array of fall-winter gigs that we covered on the SMS this past Friday, this will be Tym, Dutch, and Chet's first show at the former Reggie's West in almost a month, and it should prove to be another quality opportunity to take in their old school metal and hard rock covers, so don't miss out! No word on why they're not playing on Saturday the 23rd. It is also worth noting that The Nostalgic Band will give a kick at the can at being jam night hosts at Reggie's Place this Thursday, as per this Facebook event page, with a presumably similar format as the Soundcheck-hosted jam nights at Jay's where audience members are encouraged to perform on stage, with or without the house band. The guys certainly have the chops & setlist ready!
