HeadFirst Concert Review, Plus The Latest Mikey & His Uke Cover Videos!!

I hope everyone is having a good Family and/or Presidents' Day! This post leans more to readers who have Family Day off, specifically via a surprise Sault Ontario concert review and an ambitious new punk cover project, so here's what you should know!

For my first concert review of 2024, I went to see local hard rock quartet HeadFirst's solo headlining debut at Shooters Downstairs Lounge on Saturday night, also the first time that I've seen everyone except drummer Anthony Boudreau in concert. We saw the band's first two sets, in which HeadFirst covered multiple songs by Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Tragically Hip, along with songs by the likes of The Band, The Cranberries, Pink Floyd, Green Day, and... The Flobots? I did get the sense from the set contents that HeadFirst were backloading their heavier/metal-leaning songs for the end of the night, perhaps to appeal to a wider audience when things were busier early on. While pictured instrument roles were largely unchanged from their promotional materials, singer Red Jettison showed his multi-instrumental skills by playing guitar, bass, and keyboard on select songs, with bassist Claire Jeffrey took over lead vocals on three tracks.

Performance-wise, HeadFirst impressed with a strong talent base, with Raine Rancourt's lead guitar work & Liam Dinsmore's rhythm playing showing a lot of promise, and Anthony's drumming was as solid as fans should expect from his 2010s metal bands. As a pure frontman, Red exuded stage presence when he was just singing and not playing an instrument, which is instantly welcomed and will definitely help set HeadFirst apart locally! Much of that was negated when he was playing an instrument though. The rest of the band could be more animated too, but Raine & Anthony aside, they're new to me in local bands, so that should improve in time. On the songs with Claire singing lead, she did showcase a good voice, but I do think that they could pick songs better suited to her range, especially not The 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up", which I find to be exceedingly overplayed by local bands, even ironically.

Overall, HeadFirst have a strong talent base and old school-leaning set to attract an audience, and I know the best is yet to come from them, so be sure to see them live to see what they bring to the table, including this weekend at Jay's and back at Shooters on June 1st! While an official band photographer got some much better/closer pictures of them on Saturday for their Facebook page, you can check out mine at this link or via our Facebook page (I hate being that guy in everyone's road). I also got a video of HeadFirst covering The Arctic Monkeys' "Do I Wanna Know?", so check that out for yourselves below!

Next up, it's been a while (4+ months!) since we've seen new content from local punk supergroup project Mikey & His Uke, but there may be a good reason for that in progress. As you may know, February 1st of this year marked the 30th anniversary of the release of Green Day's breakthrough studio album "Dookie", which founder Mikey Hawdon has noted as being a highly influential release that was his gateway into not just punk music, but towards playing and writing music of his own. To honour "Dookie" and Green Day for the anniversary, Mikey plans to record and release all-star covers of every single song on this album, which will add up to fourteen covers when all is said and done (fifteen if Mikey & crew decide to tackle the bonus song "All By Myself"). Each song is being released in order of the album's track listing to the project's YouTube channel, and three have made their way there at press time, spaced 7-8 days apart each.

Given the circumstances of this being a wider project covering the same album by the same three-piece band, each of the songs (so far?) has the same three instrumentalists. Mikey is on guitar and (initially as always) ukelele here alongside Buck-O-Nine bassist Andy Plafoot and ex-Goldfinger drummer Darren Pfeiffer, both no strangers to Mikey & His Uke. Each of the "Dookie" covers will feature a guest singer, and on the first three songs (the deep cuts "Burnout", "Having A Blast", and "Chump"), the respective vocalists are Loved Ones/Falcon alum Dave Hause, Pulley singer Scott Radinsky, and Ataris frontman Kris Roe. The "Burnout" video is mostly in black & white, albeit with some post-production filters, with Darren wearing a Soo Greyhounds jersey for his footage (nice touch!) On "Having A Blast", things are in colour, and Scott is filmed singing in multiple unique locales and angles.

"Chump" is also in colour and is moreso a straightforward remotely performance clip. In all three, watch for nods to Green Day, plus more hockey jerseys from Darren, and a newly shot outro/Patreon plug at the end of each, featuring Mikey and his baby daughter. As a fan, I think my favourite of these is "Having A Blast" (it helps that I was already a Pulley fan), but all three are tightly performed covers that Green Day and Mikey & His Uke fans won't want to miss! If the release pattern of 7-8 days between videos continues, then look for "Longview" later this week, and look for the rest of "Dookie" to crop up into early May, but give "Burnout" and the rest (so far) a watch above and below!

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