YouTube Channel Profile Series: Mike Haggith Music

Let's get this month's YouTube Channel Profile up before midnight to make room for some more posts before September ends! This month's installment looks at up to 3 YouTube channels whose content is at least half devoted to local metal, hard rock, and/or punk artists & concerts, and as usual, the channels are all randomly selected from our YouTube subscriptions! This month's choice is packed with content of a very prolific local rock musician who will be familiar to many readers from his studio output and concert frequency in the mid-late 2010s, so here's what you should know!

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Mike Haggith Music (http://youtube.com/mikehaggithofficial)

Owner: Local alternative/hard rock musician Mike Haggith, known locally as a solo musician and from his multi-instrumental work in bands like Haggith, The Din, and The Strange Coyotes, as well as various other projects in his current homebase of Thompson, Manitoba and his hometown of Windsor, Ontario

Channel Timeline: Launched on May 14th, 2013; Videos posted from that day until June 2020

Channel Summary: The official YouTube channel for Mike Haggith, I believe this replaced a prior channel of his upon it's creation. As of this writing, it hosts 142 videos, the vast majority being of songs from Mike's solo album catalog, including full album postings from both his Windsor and local eras, either of him solo or with the early acid jam versions of Mike Haggith & The Din. Less than 20 (so far) are of proper videos, mostly of live concert and at-home recordings (both audio and video takes)
 
Why You Should Watch: If you are at all a fan of Mike's vast solo discography (or miss The Din's freewheeling origins), this channel is a must watch source of his 2010s output! While the channel is extensive for fans, it doesn't even scratch the surface of the 40+ solo albums in his discography, but many of his older Windsor-era albums aren't publically available anymore, which may be for the best given Mike's musical development since. Major bands featuring Mike as a drummer or not on lead vocals are not featured here either, but they're easy to find elsewhere on Youtube and the internet. Also, note that Mike has teased that new content will return to this channel after a year+ break (coinciding with relative quietness for his public music activity), including a CD review series, but that has not began as of this writing.

 Our Recommended Videos To Check Out:

 

Mike Haggith- Live at the Outback, 01 December 2010: Early in his local career, Mike played a handful of gigs at Sault College's then-campus nightclub/venue The Outback during the 2010-2011 school year, and this re-upload from December 2010 features him playing three original songs from his album "Suspended Animation", including "Nightmare On Reed Street", "As Memories Fade Away", and "I Love You Anyways". Like his purely solo gigs in the Soo usually went, this show features Mike on vocals & electric guitar, while using backing tracks in lieu of a full band. While Mike has grown as a musician in the 11 years since, it's interesting to see how his original songs were shaping up in a live setting before he found his real breakthrough in local bands, though be advised of mixed video & audio quality. Two more Outback performances from this era (of his songs "Trinity" & "Hot Summer Sun") were also re-uploaded in 2013.

 

 

Mike Haggith and The Din- The Dog (Live at PaperClip Productions): Over a fifth of Mike's videos feature his band The Din before they dropped "Mike Haggith &" from their name and became a power pop/hard rock trio in the spring of 2015. Not long before then, they were an acid jam collective known for long, trippy songs, and even as late as February 2015, that was still their modus operandi, as seen in this 12 minutes long jam session recording of their original "The Dog" at their studio PaperClip Productions. Here, Mike & The Din are represented by the 2014-2015 lineup of their sister grunge band Haggith in switched roles, with drummer Mike on vocals & guitar, singer Curtis McKenzie on bass, guitarist Daniel Horton on drums, and bassist Jordan Leach as a guest guitarist. While much rougher and free-wheeling than The Din became, the old school, psychedelic nature is very welcomed, especially as there really is a dog present during this performance!

 

 

Mike Haggith- The Nature of the Times (Official Music Video): By far the most viewed video on Mike's channel is his music video for "The Nature of The Times", the lead single for his forthcoming studio album "Bridges", which was his first recorded album in Thompson, but has been delayed for over two years for varying personal, artistic, and technical reasons (yes, it is still coming out). Uploaded in January 2019, this video was filmed by Dag Deschambeault of Natural Aspects Promotions, and features Mike performing outside in and around Thompson & local landmarks during the 2018-19 winter season (even being kicked out of a building at one point, presumably in jest). Nicely shot video for this laid back acoustic rocker, and Dag got some great nature shots in the background to boot, especially when snow is falling! Stay tuned for updates on the "Bridges" release!

 

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I hope you guys liked this month's YouTube Channel Profile! This series will return around October 26th when we look at two channels due to the first only having limited content, so a single video channel was added to fill things out. Next month, we'll look at the YouTube channels of users 1968vanderploeg (featuring a few videos of defunct local hard rock band Browbeat) and of defunct local blues/hard rock band Electric Church (featuring one live concert video), so look for them next month, and for more news and notes on the site soon! Thanks everyone!