LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (The BAG), Weekend Concert Previews, And More!!

Before we begin today's post, I wanted to offer our deepest condolences to the family & friends of Saliva guitarist Wayne Swinny, who passed away yesterday at the age of 59 after suffering a brain hemorrhage while on tour, as per the band's social media accounts. Visit your preferred music news website for more details. Local fans will remember Wayne from his set with Saliva at Muddfest at The Dreammakers Theater at the Sault Michigan Kewadin Casino in November 2019, where they shared the stage with Puddle of Mudd, Trapt, Saving Abel, and Tantric in a huge concert for fans of 2000s hard rock and nu metal bands. Wayne was the last remaining original member of the Memphis-based Saliva, who had five top 10 singles on the Billboard Mainstream Rock charts in the early-mid 2000s, with "Always" going #1 on the Alternative Songs chart in 2002.

When I went to find videos of Saliva's local set in 2019 (mostly seen at this link), I actually stumbled across a video that I had not featured on the SMS during our coverage of the fallout from Muddfest, so we'll touch on that at post's end, as we do have a handful of weekend concert previews to look at. As for Wayne, he was a solid guitarist and a good & friendly person from all accounts, and I have a lot of fondness for Saliva both from some of their big hits (especially "Always") and their association with WWE in the 2000s, recording various wrestler and pay-per-view themes. R.I.P. Wayne!

Before we look back at Muddfest, here's some hard rock concert previews for a relatively quiet final weekend of March 2023, starting with a SHORT NOTICE LOCAL CONCERT ALERT, as Sault Ontario metal trio The BAG will return to The Esquire Club for one night only TOMORROW NIGHT! Apologies for the short notice, the band only announced this concert via their Facebook event page on Monday, though they did acknowledge that the show was on late notice there. According to The Esquire Club's concert calendar for the first quarter of 2023 (as seen here), veteran classic rock trio The Cloud Bandits were supposed to play there this weekend, but pulled out for unannounced reasons, including the advertised Saturday nighter. The BAG are not playing Saturday due to The Esquire Club's first ever three person team pool tournament, which presumably runs into normal band time.

The BAG have gotten good receptions so far with their Esquire Club dates, and hopefully there's more of the same TOMORROW with their hard rocking originals and covers! This is a 9:30 PM event with no cover charge and a 19+ age limit as usual. Visit the above links for more details, and for a preview, here's The BAG live at The Esquire Club!

Also this weekend is local funk/hard rock cover band The Wyld Stallyns' advertised return to Shooters Downstairs Lounge for one night only THIS SATURDAY NIGHT! Be advised that neither the band nor venue have visibly plugged this show on their Facebook page in the past week (not all that shocking on the Stallyns' end), but the show has been advertised since the beginning of the month on this concert calendar poster on Shooters' Facebook page. This will be The Wyld Stallyns' first show since their Searchmont gig three weeks ago, and their first stop at the Dennis Street nightclub since their "no repeat weekend" in January (no word on if they'll try something similar on Saturday). Despite the lack of recent press, hopefully Rob, Christina, Jesse, Alex, Derek, and Josh(?) have a great night of varied but often heavy covers in store for fans! This is a one nighter due to or resulting in Dorian Grey's show there tonight, as noted on the poster.

Saturday's festivities have an 8:00 PM start time as usual for Shooters, no cover charge, and a 19+ age limit. Visit the above links for more details on The Wyld Stallyns' show this weekend, and here they are live!

Let's close with that newly discovered Muddfest video that I teased when discussing Saliva guitarist Wayne Swinny's passing above, as a 6 minute video of the three topline bands on November 1st, 2019 (ie. not Saving Abel and Tantric) was uploaded to the YouTube channel of DJ Bizick of Super Sounds By Bizick fame (catch him hosting college nights at Shooters on Thursdays) on November 9th of that year. Why did this get missed for over three years? My only theory is that it was unlisted for a time and when he made it public, it was too old to come up early in my 2020s searches for Kewadin videos on YouTube, as "Kewadin" is a regular search inquiry there. DJ Bizick primarily posts videos on hockey cards & slot machines on his channel, but at Muddfest, he filmed (in performance order) California alt-hard rock quartet Trapt playing their biggest hit "Headstrong", Saliva playing "Click Click Boom", ...

...and headlining Kansas City alternative/post grunge quartet Puddle of Mudd playing both "Psycho" and "She Hates Me". None are full songs, but you get a decent sampling of established hits from all three bands! DJ Bizick was not close to the stage but he did zoom in for Puddle of Mudd, and his sightlines were good, helped by decent audio on his camera, so fans should be into these! Honestly, Saliva sound the best of the three bands here, helped by Bobby Amaru's vocals holding up better than his tourmates, so give DJ Bizick's Muddfest video a look below, and apologies again for this being so belated to be featured on here!

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