New Videos From Mikey Hawdon & Tym Morrison, Plus More Updates!!

Today's news post is video-heavy, but we do have some assorted recent updates to wrap things up with. We'll start with the two newest solo vocal/ukelele cover videos from local punk musician Mikey Hawdon's YouTube channel, as his daily quarantunes have hit their 97th installment! In fact, both of the two new installments have a local relevance, including yesterday's cover of Jimmy Martin's "Ain't Nobody Gonna Miss Me When I'm Gone", which was inspired by hearing the song live in Nashville when he and his mom vacationed there two years ago. The rendition features three of Mikey's Tidal Records colleagues, including Jay Case on the banjo, Frank Deresti on the bass, and his old Rising Tide bandmate Sheldon Jaaskelainen on the fiddle. Nice rendition with poignant lyrics, so give that a listen above! Embedded below is today's quarantune, where Mikey covers U2's "With Or Without You" with members of 1990s local punk band The Spigots!

The cover choice is fitting, as Mikey saw The Spigots in his first ever local concert back in 1993 at The Windsor Park Hotel, and "With Or Without You" was a staple of Spigots setlists. Mikey is on ukelele, guitar, and drums for this cover, alongside Spigots alumni Trevor Hartless on vocals and Frank Guidoccio on bass. The Spigots are well before my time, but this is a solid yet loose cover, albeit with a very repetitive chorus, and it must have been a thrill to revisit the dawn of Mikey's local punk fandom here! Give this quarantune a watch below, and look for more tomorrow!



Next up, local hard rock singer/guitarist Tym Morrison live-streamed his 22nd at-home concert on his YouTube channel on Thursday, so let's do another full recap on the SMS! You may notice that I skipped over Tuesday's show, which Tym did attempt to start, but he doesn't get to play any songs due to technical difficulties. No, the video feed wasn't glitchy, but he was clearly having problems hearing the guitar and his setup on his end, and he attempted to fix it for 17 minutes before giving up on the stream. At home, we could hear his guitar, but Tym will know better than I if things aren't working right. This is the third straight Tuesday stream of Tym's to be abbreviated due to technical difficulties, which is a very odd coincidence, but hopefully next Tuesday's isn't cursed! He did resolve the issues in time for Thursday's live-stream (embedded below), though "Starting Soon" card aside, it falls 15 minute shy of 2 hours.

In order, Tym starts by covering The Beatles' "Golden Slumbers" & Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)", before playing an instrumental composition. Afterwards, Tym tackles Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" (which the feed abruptly cuts off), Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", Supertramp's "The Logical Song", Jim Croce's "Time In A Bottle", Phil Collins' "One More Night", 10cc's "I'm Not In Love", Tom Petty's "Yer So Bad", another instrumental, Phil Collins' "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)", Richard Marx's "Hold On To The Nights", his Spanish guitar instrumental, and an original song named "The Reason Why", with lots of anecdotes about it's composition and how he recorded it in high school, though it's not on his CD. Tym's set closes with Gary Wright's "Dream Weaver", Billy Joel's "You May Be Right", and Pink Floyd's "Another Brick In The Wall", before thanking everyone and apologizing for Tuesday's show.

Strong set overall, and Tym performed to his usual standards despite the obviously warm temperatures! His story about "The Reason Why" and working with ex-Phatstick frontman Jason Taillefer was nice too, especially if you followed Tym's original career. However, if you're not instrumentally inclined, you may not appreciate the three vocal-less songs here, and Tym just did the Richard Marx & Billy Joel songs this past Thursday. Give the whole show a watch below, and fingers crossed Tuesday's live-stream is glitch free!



Finally, here's three assorted shorter news items from the last while, and as usual, these are in alphabetical order by artist or event name:

• Mikey's Inner City Surfers bandmate Dustin Jones sent an acoustic cover of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colours" to SooToday for this article on Monday, which is tied into Pride Week festivities and for something the whole community can enjoy. Nicely done rendition for a great cause, so give it a look above! The video host SooToday used here does not allow external embedding. 
• Sault Michigan classic/hard rock cover quartet Highway 63 have announced that they are cancelling their planned Rudyard Days event and all other upcoming dates "until further notice" due to a (non-COVID) health issue with one of their members, as per their Facebook page on Wednesday. The band had no shows left in our calendar as it was, but I believe Rudyard Days was the community gathering/concert that Highway 63 had discussed in April, to be held once the shutdowns ended. Hopefully we see Highway 63 back on stage in some way, shape, or form down the line!
• It goes without saying at this point, but the Northern Vibe Festival in nearby Ophir, Ontario will not take place as scheduled next month due to the coronavirus outbreak, as per their Facebook page earlier this week. The Northern Vibe Festival only features heavier and punk bands sporadically, but their diverse entertainment on the old Hempfest grounds is always a great time, and hopefully they can return better than ever in 2021!

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