A New Local Hard Rock Band, Spades GT Updates, And More!!

Here's a new news post on this Tuesday night, which features a recently revived solo project and some recent updates & teasers from an established act, but first, here's what you should know about a brand new addition to our band links!

We have a new local hard rock band to add to our active Sault Ontario band links, namely Far From Fine! This name will be unfamiliar, but you may have seen them live already, as this band debuted at Toystock at The Grand Gardens North in November under the name Ravencore. A reason for the name change wasn't announced, but on their new Facebook page, Far From Fine acknowledged that they were initially waiting to launch it in conjunction with their planned debut album (which was teased in this SooToday article on their Toystock set), but opted to get this up in advance of the summer concert season for promotional sake. Effectively, Far From Fine are successors to the 2012-2016 hard rock band The Suicide Kings (a.k.a. Beaumont Avenue), with singer Mike Gaetano and current Handsome Sandwich guitarist Mitch Sirie reunited as such. Mike also handles rhythm guitar and keyboard in this project.

The rhythm section features former Gnaeus bassist Matt Fronzi and former Brutally Fatal/Revolution frontman Austin "Mickey" McCrae on drums. Uniquely, each band member has an image on Facebook featuring a brief question & answer section (how Angelfire or Tripod of them!), which reveals details about their setlist, planned original songs, and favourite local bands, though Austin didn't give an answer on the latter query. Their covers do skew towards a more varied range of bands than The Suicide Kings played, with Everclear, Good Charlotte, and Blackstreet cited, while they are known to have covered Weezer at Toystock. Originals named "Relapse", "This Way Again", and "Poison In My Mind" are cited as individual favourites of the band so far, though Matt couldn't name one over the rest. The lyrics for "Relapse" and another original song named "Broken" have been posted as images on the band's Facebook page as well.

No media samples or planned concert dates are posted yet, but given that they already played live as Ravencore, got local news coverage out of it (especially with Mike's son Gavin guesting on drums), and that they already have at least four original songs ready, then these are all good signs for Far From Fine in 2023! I have no idea if the guys have actually been recording their originals in studio already or if they're still writing and rehearsing them, but thye're on the right foot, so visit the above links for more on Ravencore Far From Fine, and if you know where to look, a couple of videos from Toystock are floating around on personal Facebook accounts!

Next up, here's the latest from local/Barrie crossover thrash quintet Spades GT's Facebook page! True to their pattern of one "Reel" per day of each band member, that series closed on Sunday with a "Reel" of guitarist Jay "Redbeard" Sarrazin playing at an unidentified concert. A fine guitar solo, just a shame that I can't embed it here! Again, this is Facebook's fault, not the band's. The "Reels" did keep coming though, with another one posted yesterday featuring singer J.D. Pearce and both guitarists rocking out mid-song, and today seeing another one, this time obviously cribbed from the "Hands" video that Jake Disman filmed at the Road To Lockdown Fest in Toronto on April 7th. Earlier today, the guys did tease that a "big announcement" will be made on their Facebook page at 7:00 PM tomorrow, allegedly "the first of many this spring", though I have no definitive word on what they're getting at yet, or if it'd even be locally relevant as opposed to something for the GTA.

Remember that they were recording their new album in Toronto earlier this year, while J.D. is likely back as curator for The Northern Vibe Festival's band-centric Forest Stage in August, so another Jack Spades homecoming set would likely follow in Ophir once again (festival organizers revealed the DJ-centric River Stage lineup yesterday, with the band announcement "coming soon"). In any event, we'll keep you guys posted on the latest news and notes from Spades GT when it comes in!

We'll close today with a surprise revival of a local grunge/alternative solo project, namely Kush Wood! The subject of our Defunct Local Band Profile just last month, project leader Kristien Woodcock posted on their Facebook page for the first time in over two years on April 10th, and has two new acoustic cover videos to show for it, one being a "Reel" of him covering Matthew Good's "Symbolistic White Walls". Sounds good while it lasts, but of course, the limitations of "Reels" are noted. The other video is cross-posted from Kush Wood's Instagram page, and while videos from there are not the cleanest thing to embed on the SMS, at least you can do it, unlike TikTok videos (not to mention "Reels"!). This sees Kristien covering Stone Sour's "Through Glass", and while neither of these videos are overly long, it's good to see him back at it with some strongly played & sung renditions! Give these a look, and Kush Wood are back in our active links!

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That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and updates on the site soon! Thanks everyone!