More Facebook Videos From Solo Musicians & Familiar Bands!!

As we continue keeping the SMS updated regularly during the pandemic, here's another post devoted just to videos, starting with another live-streamed concert from Thursday, courtesy of Bone Yard/Bearded Lounge frontman Greg Simpson! This was streamed on his promotion company (Choose) Maxx Entertainment's Facebook page, and was shot in Greg's smoke room, nicely decked out in drum heads and posters from his prior events. Despite his current bands focusing on country covers, his acoustic set on Thursday was much more in line with his classic/hard rock work with Stiffer's Mom and That's Chester, so if you miss those bands, this video will have extra resonance. In performance order, Greg covered Kris Kristofferson's "Me & Bobby McGee", Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite", Bob Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door", Black Label Society's "Spoke In The Wheel", Kid Rock's "All Summer Long", ...

...The Tragically Hip's "Fiddler's Green", Cinderella's "Shelter Me", Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here", The 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up", The Hip's "Wheat Kings", Ray LaMontagne's "Jolene", The Band's "The Weight", and Mike Posner's "I Took A Pill In Ibiza". This live-stream seemed to go over well, as Greg is planning an encore for this Thursday night, and the video proper is a fun watch with lot of familiar and well done covers! Greg's rough-edged, to-the-point delivery and strong musical knowledge helps, and he has good rapport with his wife Kerry (off camera), so fans of Greg's prolific band work will definitely want to see this request-heavy set below!



Next up, here's a second acoustic solo performance by Northwest frontman Wayne Watkins, as uploaded to the band's Facebook page this morning, and it's a cover of "Sunshine Blues" by folk musician Bahamas. This song has extra personal meaning for Wayne, as he would rock his newborn daughters to sleep with it. As such, it's a departure from what you'd expect from Northwest, but this whole pandemic is a departure, let's be honest. Wayne puts solid emotion into this well played cover, so give it a look below!



Also today, here's a short new video from southern hard rock quintet Fort Creek's Facebook page last week, and while they'd be prepping for their formal concert debut on Friday in a sane world, we instead get a slow & ominous look at their studio, complete with eerie background music. The title even alludes to isolation making it feel like "a Walking Dead movie set." You do get an interesting look at their space here, and I hope they can get back to work there at some point soon, but give it a look below!

Finally for today, I might as well cover two short videos that I've been sitting on for way too long now, and with local hard rock & punk content naturally slowing down, this will help in that regard. Back in the summer of 2017, local alt-punk/genre-hating trio Handsome Sandwich posted two short non-musical videos on their Facebook page for humorous/teaser purposes, and I intentionally held off on covering them because I figured they would put up something more substantial, and I'd tie those two in with it then. Almost three years later, they have followed those videos with just three Facebook posts and zero new videos, and the 2 clips I mentioned have been sitting in my draft folders ever since, so let's finally give them their due. The June 2017 video is a 4 second clip of drummer Johnny Belanger showing how he practices drumming (spoiler: by rapidly whacking a cut of meat with a meat tenderizer.) Amusing sight gag, but it's over quick.

The other video from July 2017 runs for just 8 seconds, and it features Johnny dramatically whispering to the camera that "something is happening" while Jesse & James inspect gear in the background. Given the optics, was anything happening back then? Well, they did open for Vaultry at The Canadian the next night, but the video would seem to hint more towards a studio project. In any event, Handsome Sandwich updates became very sporadic for much of the late 2010s, including not posting on Facebook at all last year, so who knows how far the guys got into "something". Give these videos a look, at last, above & below, and stay tuned for updates!



That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site soon! Thanks veryone!