Our Recap Of Mike Haggith's April 2022 Live-Stream!!

After an almost four week delay, let's look at local/Thompson, Manitoba alt-hard rock musician Mike Haggith's monthly live-streamed concert from April 2022 this afternoon! No word on if he's doing one this month or not, for the record, but last month's didn't occur until the 27th, so there is still time in theory. Technical issues meant that the live-stream did not air on Facebook despite best efforts, leaving it exclusive to Mike's YouTube channel. The 2 hours & 20 minutes+ live-stream begins with Mike acknowledging the Facebook issues, while also mentioning his upgrade in audio equipment, presumably to undo all of the dreaded halts and pops that had been prevalent in his live-streams since starting to use StreamYard. For the first time since Mike began interviewing outside musicians, last month's guest was not from Sault Ste. Marie, rather Nick Howell, a blues/folk musician from Waubaushene in Central Ontario's Simcoe County.

Admittedly, Saultite interest in this episode may be weakened, especially as I don't think Nick has played shows here, but he is a very talented musician whose recommendations of releasing solo albums through Kunaki's manufacture-on-demand process heavily influenced Mike's Thompson-era albums, so don't quickly bypass him on residence alone! After a lot of assorted loose conversation, the interview proper begins about 7 minutes in with Nick discussing where he comes from, their collective experiences releasing albums with Kunaki and dialing in the audio/packaging quality, and Nick's upcoming solo album. This runs until 28 minutes in when we get our first performance, Nick doing a new original song named "A Night To Remember". Mercifully, the audio hang-ups of Mike's prior StreamYard-infused live-streams are definitely improved here, and Nick has a Thom Yorke-ish quality to his singing that I didn't expect!

After some tuning, Mike played his first song next (on his 12 string guitar, no less), namely "MorningStar", which begins about 40:45 in. Again, Mike's audio upgrades have definitely helped on his end of the video too, so no webcam halts or pops! Still not sure what changed to force those when he started using StreamYard. More discussion follows about their experiences releasing albums through Kunaki, Nick's unique "Rock Odyssey" offered through his website (seriously, give this a look), both Mike and Nick's own experiences making their websites, Mike's then-not-yet-released Steeltown Sessions video, Nick's artwork for his studio album "Traveler", and Mike's own experiences with designing album covers. Nick performs his original song "In Love With The Bottle" at about 1:04:30, with Mike following with his new song "Twist of Fate" from his next album.

That leads off the second half of the live-stream at about 1:13:00, and the between song banter afterwards is shorter, looser, and more musical before Nick returns to play "Swift Turtle: at 1:22:40.  More of the same is next, plus discussion about unique plans to play with backing tracks in live concerts, with Mike playing another yet-unreleased original next at 1:33:25, namely "I've Seen It Before". After plugging and promoting the Your Music Live and You Rock! shows that Mike has often submitted songs for (I know I'm very behind on both), as well as Mike's aims to take his indie label MorningStar Records to the next level, Nick discusses his summer plans and the idea of maybe doing live-streams of his own, along with more "Inside Baseball" talk about their albums. The music returns next with Nick playing his original song "Angry Moon" at about 1:52:30, with Mike fittingly playing "Take Back The Moon" at 2:00:30 to close his musical portion of the stream.

Sadly, the planned mandatory cover from the share contest was not played due to the winner not being present and the lack of a Facebook stream like they usually watched via, so that will be held over for next time (as such, no new share contest was held either). The last 17 minutes is mostly devoted to casual conversation and final promotion, but Nick does close by playing one more original song ("Late Nights, Early Mornings") at 2:13:40. While Nick was new to me going in, he is a very talented and genre-transcendent musician who you should give a listen, and Mike and him has a fun rapport, so check out the whole live-stream for yourself below!

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