LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (HeadFirst & Oz), A New Interview, And More!!

Here's a new news post on this Wednesday morning, which features some new-ish videos, details on a new interview tat a local band conducted with a brand new outlet, and leading off, LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS on both sides of the border, so here's what you should know!

Iron Mountain, Michigan classic/hard rock cover quintet Oz will make their local concert debuts on Friday, March 1st and Saturday, March 2nd when they hit The Rapids Lounge at the Sault Ste. Marie Kewadin Casino! While new to our coverage, Oz have been rocking venues in the western and central Upper Peninsula (and northern Wisconsin) since 2012, and deliver a wide ranging, crowd pleasing array of classic rock covers that include a healthy dose of heavier songs that should keep hard rock fans engaged. Be sure to check Oz out, they have no shortage of videos online from their gigs! As usual for Rapids Lounge gigs, these are 21+ affairs with 9:00 PM start times and no cover charge. Time will tell if Oz become favourite recurring bands at the Soo Kewadin like Peril, Scarkazm, and Fyrbird, but be sure to check the official Facebook event page for more on their local debuts next month!

Next up, let's head north to Sault Ontario for the latest from newer local hard rock quintet HeadFirst, who have confirmed new dates at Jay's Piston Broke Pub on Friday, March 29th & Saturday, March 30th, as well as Saturday nighters at Shooters Downstairs Lounge on June 1st & August 17th! These concerts are 9:30 PM, 19+ gigs with no cover, as usual, but they actually weren't announced by the band or either venue at press time, rather in an interview that HeadFirst took part in with a new local blog last month! This was for Who's Who In The Soo, a new local interview site launched by Sarah Vikken, who you may recognize as the former marketing & communications director of the Sault Area Arts Council, as a jewelry and craft maker with Vixxen Studios, and from her semifinal run as a singer in The Soo's Got Talent in 2022, among other artistic pursuits.

This blog is intended to cover "the stories of the people of Sault Ste. Marie" and will likely not focus solely on musicians, but HeadFirst are indeed first for Sarah's first long-form article, which went up on February 1st!Formatted like a news or magazine article, this interview was conducted with the full band, and Sarah goes into some surprising detail that other local band interviews don't! The article goes into how HeadFirst met (it helps that singer Red Jettison and bassist Claire Jeffrey are actually stepsiblings), their musical backgrounds (drummer Anthony Boudreau's old metal band Exploring Detritus is briefly mentioned here), their individual and band-wide musical influences, what the members would change about Sault Ste. Marie, and what their future plans are. Notably, HeadFirst revealed that AC/DC, The Tragically Hip, and Bachman-Turner Overdrive influence their sound, with a Rolling Stones-influenced attitude, which all pairs well with their set.

The band plans to put out original music "once we get a following", and they hope to release a music video "in the next few months". Sarah also filmed HeadFirst playing their original song "The Walk" as the first video for the Who's Who In The Soo YouTube channel, and surprisingly, this marks the first public video of the band that is shot horizontally and features them playing a full song. This bluesy hard rocker is played proficiently and with ease by this fast-rising quintet, with Red introducing everyone midway through, so give it a look below, and kudos to Sarah for a solid and revealing first interview that you can read at this link, and see above for more on HeadFirst's upcoming Shooters & Jay's gigs!

Finally for today, let's take a trip 23 years back in time for a newly uploaded video of local/Toronto indie/punk band Treble Charger live, in arguably their most seen television performance ever! On March 4th, 2001, the band was in Hamilton at Copps Coliseum (now the FirstOntario Centre) for that year's Juno Awards (hosted by Rick Mercer), where they were nominated for Best Single and Best Rock Album. Treble Charger lost both awards to Nelly Furtado and The Tragically Hip respectively, but they got their moment in the sun, as they played their Juno-nominated single "American Psycho" on stage! In the Junos' last year on CBC before a 16 year run on CTV, a national audience got to see Treble Charger at the "Wide Awake Bored"-era peak of their popularity, and it's neat to finally see this pop up on YouTube! The visuals are fuzzy given the VCR quality, but the song is faithfully performed with good energy as you'd hope!

Despite getting at least one Juno nomination out of all of their albums except "nc-17", Greig, Bill, Rosie, and Morris/Trevor were never able to to snag a Juno of their own. Perhaps if the album that Treble Charger had started working on in the late 2010s ever gets finished, we could see how it does commercially and with critics, let alone at the Junos. Thanks to YouTube user Scorpionsblackout 82 for posting this last month, and give it a watch for yourself below!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for weekend concert previews on the site next! Thanks everyone!