New Video Uploads From Three Local Solo Musicians!!

We're back after a couple of quiet days with a new post devoted to recent videos from local solo musicians, and we'll start with local punk musician Mikey Hawdon's conclusion of his 100 days worth of quarantune videos on his YouTube channel! If you didn't catch the references in his descriptions on Facebook and YouTube, the daily videos of "Mikey & His Uke" ended yesterday with video #100, but he is not hanging up the ukelele, just dropping to a wider release schedule so he can work on new installments without a rushed deadline (and this is presumably easier with day jobs resuming too). As for the last three daily videos, Sunday's is of Blink-182's "Dammit" with guest musicians, while Monday's is of Goldfinger's "Wayne Gretzky" (fittingly as video #99) with that band's drummer Darren Pfeiffer on hand drums and his best full hockey equipment. Embedded below is video #100, a cover of Pennywise's "Bro Hymn" with a lot of special guests!

Like last week's cover of Operation Ivy's "Unity", this cover (Mikey's longest one yet) drops the ukelele pretense very early, and it has Mikey on lead vocals alongside members of Pennywise, The Offspring, Anti-Flag, Pulley, Good Riddance, and No Big Deal, plus Darren again, George Stroumboulopoulos (seriously), and lots of familiar faces providing the chorus "Whoas", including Mikey's old Lion Ride/Detroit bandmate Brenton Ellis (now of Slumshine.) Fittingly stacked closer to the series under it's original scheduling, and it's great to see how much it has grown over three past 3 months, so check out 'Bro Hymn" below, and see much more above!

Next up, Bridge Heads/ex-Haggith frontman Curtis McKenzie has thrown his hat into the live-streamed concert arena with an hour-long performance video on his Facebook page on Monday! Over three months after hyping a Twitch live-stream that never came, Curt began by making sure everything was in working order with his setup, and introduced his set by noting that he was open to taking questions (primarily about his music career) and requests from viewers. His set began with a cover of Weezer's "In The Garage", before mentioning his renewed promotion of his music and past band pages (he even reactivated PaperClip Productions' Facebook page!) Curtis next covers The Stone Temple Pilots' "Interstate Love Song", before discussing the current status of The Bridge Heads, who only played live once before the pandemic hit and guitarist Daniel Horton moved out of town for work reasons. Curt noted that The Bridge Heads are currently planning to proceed as a trio.

While he would ostensibly be their lead singer and guitarist short term, Curtis is open to focusing on one or the other should they bring on a fourth band member. Sounds like an adaptable plan, and hopefully we see Dan back on a local stage down the road! Curt covers Collective Soul's "December", Three Days Grace's "Wake Up", and Alice In Chains' "No Excuses" next, before reiterating his current music plans, which are primarily around The Bridge Heads rather than fully resuming his solo project (he noted earlier in the video that this live-stream was more to get updated content out there.) The set resumes with covers of Lifehouse's "Hanging By A Moment", Weezer's "My Name Is Jonas", and NOFX's "Bob", before Curtis reflects on his work with the band Haggith, running through a brief Cliffs Notes version of their history. He plays their original song "Clifton Hill" from their "Deuce" album, as well as the untitled bonus track at the album's end.

Curt moves back into covers to close, including The Stone Temple Pilots' "Plush", and two System of a Down songs ("Lonely Day" & "Toxicity"), as dedicated to his 2015-2017 hard rock band Eclipse. Overall, this was a fun set with lots of strong performances, but you can tell Curt is new to a live-streamed set like this, and a sequel should be smoother for between-song banter. Also, the flashing stage lighting is very distracting for an hour-long video, and I would scrap it or at least slow it down next time. Give Curt's whole live-stream a watch below!

Finally, fellow local hard rock solo musician Tym Morrison live-streamed his 23rd at-home concert on his YouTube channel yesterday! After an unusually long 10 minute wait past the "Starting Soon" screen, the show begins, but viewers will notice that the visuals are choppy once again, which won't bode well if you're expecting a 2 hour set. Tym starts by covering Richard Marx's "Now & Forever", Air Supply's "Here I Am (Just When I Thought I Was Over You)", and Frozen Ghost's "Dream Come True", after which Tym starts acknowledging the video issues. He plays an instrumental song next, followed by Berlin's "Take My Breath Away" and Roxette's "It Must Have Been Love", but Tym spends the rest of the runtime attempting to fix the video before bailing on the stream after just over a half hour. This is the fourth straight Tuesday night show from Tym to be cut short due to technical difficulties, alas.

The audio quality was just fine, and Tym sounded as solid as ever, but the laggy video issues were never in doubt. I do like that yesterday's covers (Roxette aside) were all debuting in his live-streamed series, as far as I can recall, and hopefully tomorrow's show goes off without a hitch! Thursdays seem to have a better success rate. Give yesterday's a watch below!



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