Here's the latest from local alternative hard rock quintet Handsome Sandwich, so what have they been up to as of late? Well, they're on the road right now for two shows in Southern Ontario, which started when they returned to Ottawa on Thursday night for a show alongside Ottawa pop punk band Holly Acres as part of The Overflow Brewing Company's "Indie Series"! That concert was plugged by Holly Acres in this "Reel" and by Handsome Sandwich in this short & vertical video (thankfully not a "Reel") on their Facebook page featuring the whole band outside of the brewery. They haven't posted on their Facebook page since, but hopefully that concert was a hit for all involved! The other (and better hyped) tour date this weekend will see the Sandwich head to Cookstown in Simcoe County tomorrow afternoon to open for Kill/Death Radio on Stage 1 at this year's Gussapalooza Music Festival, which should be a big one for them!
Only one other band at Gussapalooza tomorrow (past Go North Music Festival performers Propter Hawk) are familiar to me from past local dates, but they're playing on Stage 2. To promote tomorrow's concert, an unidentified band member was interviewed by Jenna Melanson of the music website Canadian Beats (who have heavily been promoting Gussapalooza), and you can read the full interview at this link. There, the band member talked about their music so far, how they sound (picture a mix of Paramore, The Foo Fighters, and Limp Bizkit?!), getting picked to play this festival, and their upcoming new material. While they have since clarified on Facebook that their seven new studio songs will be released as an EP, this interview again points out that "we are leaning toward a release of singles", implying that they could just post them individually on streaming services. Hopefully they are collected as an EP for convenience and mp3 downloads' sake!
Good interview, if with a lot of hypotheticals and unknowns given the Gussapalooza expectations angle of many questions, so check it out above! If you're wondering why Handsome Sandwich went three days between these shows, it's because Brandon & Johnny's folk/bluegrass side project The Golden Scoundrels joined them on tour, and they were booked for the Black & Bluegrass festival in North Gower (outside of Ottawa) tonight, where they played alongside past Whisky Barrel headliners Bastards & The Buzzards, among others. Nice to see the Scoundrels spreading their wings, and hopefully that show went well for all involved too! Now to a pair of new live videos from Handsome Sandwich's set at last month's Northern Vibe Festival in Ophir (definitely not the final one based on their Facebook page's latest updates!), and the first one uploaded from their Forest Stage set was a video of them playing their newer song "Change A Bit", so what can you see there?
Filmed by attendee Adam Willis and posted to Facebook on the Monday after Northern Vibe, this 65 second clip was shot from beside the Forest Stage, with a unique (if sadly vertical) vantage point of Taylor, Jesse, Brandon, Rafael, and Johnny rocking out, including some views pointing towards the night-obscured audience (and a nice bonfire!). I wish this was the full song and shot horizontally, but the audio quality and unique views sell it, so check out Handsome Sandwich changing a bit below!
Note as well that, in the description for the above video, they noted that "we have been lucky to play (at Northern Vibe) every year since we became a band". They're counting "since we became a band" as when Taylor joined in 2021, as I don't believe they played at Northern Vibe from 2017-2019 during their pre-pandemic run as a genre-less cover trio, but Poplardale Road has been a reliable end-of-summer locale for them since their relaunch! The other video from Ophir was officially uploaded to the band's YouTube channel, and while it was also shot by Adam, this is both the full song and in horizontal landscape orientation! The video has the band playing "Partyfuel" (officially all one word), and the song features Wyld Stallyns saxophonist Josh Norling, who previously played on "No Entry" on the band's debut album "Deconstructed". Note that, in the video description, Josh and ex-guitarist Mitch Sirie share in the writing credits.
This would seemingly be a strong hint that Josh will guest on this song on their upcoming EP, but I haven't seen that in firm writing anywhere. The "Partyfuel" video starts off with Adam filming from the lawn in front of the Forest Stage, but he makes the rounds to both sides of the stage and even on stage while the band & Josh are rocking out. The video quality is great, and you get some excellent angles of the Forest Stage that we don't normally see from publically uploaded Northern Vibe videos, so kudos to Adam for getting some excellent footage! I'll hold comment on the song pending our review of the EP (assuming it's not solely released as seven individual singles), but check out "Partyfuel" for yourselves below!
That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!
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