Monday, October 25, 2021

Our Recap Of Mike Haggith's Newest Live-Streamed Concert!!

Continuing our busy final week of October 2021, let's focus in on prolific local/Thompson, Manitoba alternative/hard rock musician Mike Haggith's long awaited first live-streamed concert in over a year! Taking place live at 7:00 PM last night on Mike's Facebook page, this follows his fourteen #LockdownLive shows from March-August 2020 (plus the occasional live post-show), which primarily occurred weekly during the first pandemic lockdown, but Mike is planning to do his relaunched live-stream series on a monthly basis. In fact, Mike has already scheduled his next live-stream for Saturday, November 13th at 7:30 PM EST, complete with his old bandmate (and comment section all-star) Brandan Glew joining in to discuss The Din's run and recent posthumous activity, so keep that in mind! As for yesterday's live-stream, it runs for 85 minutes, but trust me, Mike has went longer!

Mike starts by acknowledging how much fun the #LockdownLive shows were, and while he didn't 100% explain why he stopped doing live-streams for a year, he did acknowledge that this was kind of a pilot for the relaunch, and to show he's serious, he has a new microphone and a new 12 string guitar! For convenience, I'll timestamp the rough start times for performed songs, a'la my Metal Morpheus recaps, and yes, I will be doing more of those this week! His first performed song is a cover of The Killers' "When You Were Young" (3:10), which Mike follows by outlining how he got this guitar, and then he plays "Over Indecision" (8:35) from his upcoming studio album "Bridges". Next, Mike plugs the Facebook contest he held to give away a pre-release test pressing of "Bridges" on vinyl, with the winner to be announced later in the broadcast, though he warned us that it wouldn't sound as optimal as the final copies.

He also shows off the vinyl sleeve and record proper, so we know what to expect if you order that rather than a CD! Mike did address the very delayed release for the album, primarily chalking it up to the slow mixing process and getting it sounding perfect, and he plans to release it near the end of 2021, though updates are forthcoming. We next get two more performances of songs from "Bridges", including "The Nature Of The Times" (19:20) and "An Act Of Strength" (25:50), though during the bridge of the former, he plugs the share contest for this week, with the viewer who gets the most engaged Facebook share of the live-stream getting the right to pick a cover song that he has to play next week. After plugging his daily "Morning Jam" posts on Facebook, Mike asks for suggestions of artists to spotlight there, and promotes his still-to-debut album review series on his YouTube channel.

Next up, Mike plays "MorningStar" (34:30) from his newest album "If Ever Comes The Day", before discussing his guitar capos. The second half of the live-stream kicks off with the debut of a brand new original song named "Twist of Fate" (41:55), albeit slowed down from the planned electric studio version, and true to recent form, the song is very personal lyrically. He follows that with another new song "To Be With You" (52:50), which has aired on The Borderline Radio and previously been seen in performance videos, but is not posted online otherwise. After teasing his first planned album reviews for his soon-to-launch YouTube series in November, Mike covers "Alice" (59:15) by the New Jersey indie act Project Atlantic, as this song is on "Ghost Stories", an album Mike is planning to do a video review of. Passing the one hour mark, Mike draws for the winner of the "Bridges" test vinyl next...

...before playing one more brand new song entitled "I've Seen It Before" (1:06:25). Next, Mike shows off a CD copy of "Bridges" and hypes up the physical and audio quality, before playing one last song from that album, namely "Come On Home" (1:15:05). The live-stream closes with Mike discussing plans for the next episode and the idea of having regular guest musicians, with Jeremy Hannah planned for a future installment, while the winner of the share contest will likely be announced in a Facebook post as opposed to a post-show video. Entertaining live-stream overall, and a nice return to a highlight of last spring's lockdown, though some of the looser, more free-wheeling sensibilities weren't as prevalent, with less of an amusing array of viewer comments.

With Glew coming on as a guest next month, that should help, but with lots of album news and new songs, don't miss this live-stream at the above links, and stay tuned for the next one in just under three weeks! That's all for today, but stay tuned for this month's YouTube Channel Profile next!

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