Sault Michigan Weekend Concert Previews And A Note On Our Band Links!!

As promised, here are the previews of this weekend's hard rock concerts in Sault Michigan! With such a high amount of concerts on both sides of the border this weekend in such a short span, I had to do it like this to keep things even and give the bands across the river the proper amount of attention. At the end, we have a housecleaning note concerning our band links as it amounts to the "active statuses" of bands we cover. Now, to the previews!!

Marquette hard rockers Nudge are returning to The Satisfied Frog in Sault Michigan this weekend! They'll be there tomorrow night & Saturday night in their first local concert stops since their two consecutive weekends at The Frog in June to deliver two great nights of hard rock and metal covers! The band haven't been promoting these shows as vigorously as their last few local shows, but they're definitely on, so take note of them (as well as frontman Danzo McCracken's acoustic solo set TONIGHT!) Both Nudge shows will start at 10:00 PM, you must be 21 to enter, and there's no announced cover charge. Check the above links for more details! Nudge should deliver some great tunes this weekend, as they are a very talented and hard rocking quartet who always leave an impression locally! Head to The Frog this weekend for the shows, and for a preview, here's Nudge covering System of a Down's "Violent Pornography" circa November 2008!



Also this weekend in Sault Michigan is the live debut of new local hard rockers NoXcape! The quintet featuring former Absolute bandmates Ben Huyck on guitar, bassist Bill Spence, and drummer Justin Lawless, plus singer Nick Landreville and Krosswalk guitarist Joey Beairl will head down to Dan's Place in nearby Rudyard for their debut show on Saturday night! I've heard promising things about the full lineup, and judging by their past bands, they should do great in their first concert! It looks to have a 10:00 PM-ish start time and a 21+ age limit, with no announced cover charge. Check the above links for more details! Always good to see a new band pop up, and hopefully NoXcape can go as far as possible! For a preview, check out some original demos featuring just Nick and Ben from their MK-Ultra days at this location! Very late 1990s vibe with this stuff, hopefully they keep this vibe going with NoXcape! Check them out in Rudyard on Saturday!

And finally for the weekend concert previews, Kinross hard rock trio Banned will make their first ever 21+ concert appearance this Saturday at The Sundown Lounge in Pickford! I'm not familiar with this bar in any way, but their address is 18664 S M 129, and I heard it's a nice establishment, so remember that if you go see Banned this weekend! The new and diverse group will have a solid slate of classic and hard rock covers for their fans at this show, and they proved to be entertaining and talented at their debut last month, so don't miss them! The show has a 9:30 PM start time, and there's no announced cover charge. Check the above link for more details! Should be fun, hopefully they do great in Pickford this weekend! For a preview, here's Banned covering Bad Company and The Red Hot Chili Peppers in Rudyard last month!



And finally, here's a note concerning our band links on the SMS. As part of our page redesign last month, we started segmenting bands in the twin Saults by whether they're active or inactive/defunct by placing them in separate sections. In case you weren't sure, my criteria for if a band is "inactive" is if they either officially declare they've broken up (i.e. State of Misery), most of the band forms a new band in lieu of the older group (i.e. Out Of The Mouth Of Babes), or if a band goes one complete year without a visible sign of activity (i.e. Detroit.) As such, our band links have been basically accurate since the re-sorting, but this month, we're going to start moving a few bands to the inactive band links due to, well, inactivity. Three bands (by my count) will have been inactive for a whole year this month, and the first one we'll likely move to the inactive links will be The Issues, the punk/metal project from a few current members of Winkstinger. The last sign of activity from them that I can verify is a song upload to their Facebook page on August 5th of last year, and with nothing since, we'll likely classify them as "inactive" starting tomorrow. They're a very entertaining band though, give them a listen at this location!

The other two bands I have on "inactivity watch" for this month are from Sault Michigan, but we'll approach them as they come. I'm doing this to keep our band links relevant to the current state of the scene, so you guys know exactly which bands are active & alive and which bands are not, but are still worth checking out. That's all for today, but stay tuned tonight or early tomorrow for a HUGE post featuring an awesome LOCAL CONCERT ALERT, big news concerning a local band's next albums (how does SIX new albums sound?), and much more! Thanks everyone!