Let's catch up on some Sault Ontario odds and ends on this Tuesday night, including a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT, promotion for another upcoming show, and some other updates, but leading off, here's a long overdue addition to our band links & full coverage!
We have a new-ish band to add to our Sault Ontario band links, and they are the no-longer-online-pageless The Spaceship Opening! Despite debuting on stage in September 2024, they only launched a social media presence (their new Facebook page) over the weekend. Described in promotion for past gigs as "east end rock & roll" and "space rock", The Spaceship Opening are a two-man-band featuring former Redundant/Fitswitch bassist Andrew MacDonald alongside A.S.D.P. drummer Ralph Barber, and in videos publically shared so far, neither sings at all. Over the past 18 months, you may recall seeing The Spaceship Opening sharing the stage with touring acts like The Space Wizards and Greg Rekus & The Inside Job, while they also opened for Mike Haggith's "Under A Moonlit Sky" show last fall, and most recently played at the "Not A Leap Year Party" concert in "Mellow D's Basement" on Saturday, alongside other public and private events.
Two videos are on their Facebook page, one being this short and black-and-white clip from an unspecified venue, while embedded below is four minutes of them playing at the still-closed Distraction last year, and while this one is in colour, it was shot vertically. Unless you've seen them live already, their early descriptors didn't give their sound away, and they have way more of an AlgomA-esque sludge/doom essence than I would have assumed. If you were expecting The Spaceship Opening to be similar to Andrew's past local bands, you may be surprised! Distorted and low (if not all that spacey), I can see why they've attracted fans with their minimalist rock compositions so far, so check things out from them above and below!
Next up, here's that LOCAL CONCERT ALERT, as North Bay country/hard rock musician Cory Marks will return to The Canadian Bushplane Heritage Center on Thursday, June 11th! The fourth time in as many years that Cory has performed a local date, this appears to be a full band show with a proper promotional push, unlike his most recent local gig (also at the Bushplane Museum), when he headlined the Hope Air Day charity event this past June with a solo acoustic performance that we didn't hear about until it was short notice. The Bushplane Museum is hyping this up by saying that "for the first time ever, we’re turning the hangar into a full-blown concert venue", and while multiple shows have taken place there in the past, they've tended to be all-local or supplemental to other events. Hopefully this show is a huge hit for Cory and the venue alike, so that more similarly scaled concerts can be considered!
No word on possible openers, but Silent 9 opened at Cory's Machine Shop shows in 2023 and 2024, and Matthew James opened last year's unplugged Hope Air Day concert. Doors open for this "hangar party" at 5:00 PM, there is no announced age limit, and tickets run for $40 (up fro $35 from Cory's last full-band show here) at this link, and $100 VIP passes are also available. Cory's hard rock and country crossover sound continues to garner fans and chart success, and fingers crossed that his fourth local concert is a smash this summer! Visit the above links for more details!
Also today, here's the first Facebook update from local progressive metal band Convergence in almost three months! Well, that's discounting "Stories", you may have seen one where "Johnny Cash" endorsed them, but they did not opt to separately upload that "Story" as its own video. The video below from Sunday features guitarist Jake Valois hyping their first show of the year, when they will be among the openers for Nashville death metal band Demon King and other touring groups at Soo Blaster on March 24th (three weeks from today!). Amusingly, Jake puts footage of the mobile video game Subway Surfers in an inset picture-in-picture window to try and discourage people from scrolling away, assuming you're watching the video on a vertical cell phone orientation, which may explain the captions. As the show is all ages, Jake suggests that the whole family come out to "Soo Blasters", even your grandma!
Tickets are on sale through the band for $15, and if you message him to get yours, he will make sure he gets it to you, so how simple is that? It's good to see some new shareable content from Convergence, and with their planned new album still in the works, hopefully 2026 proves to be a stacked year for them! Check out the new video below, and stay tuned for more from them!
Finally for today, here's three assorted shorter news items from the last while, and as usual, these are in alphabetical order by artist or venue name:
- We don't cover open mic/jam nights as "concerts" here due to their in-built unpredictability, and even if the host crosses our radar, there's no guarantee that they'll perform if it's busy. That said, I did at least want to mention that local party metal trio The Apocalypse Afterparty are actually hosting Piecing It Together Shows' weekly jam night tonight at their seasonal pop-up locale at 331-A Wellington Street West, as per their Facebook page. The former Dryer Fire haven't booked formal concerts with SMS-amenable acts over their winter season, but hopefully Paul, Amanda, and Mikhal have a good turnout for tonight's open mic night!
- Winnipeg folk punk musician Greg Rekus (who fronted The Inside Job here twice in the past two years) has been added as a surprise opener for The BAG's album release party at Soo Blaster on April 18th, as per Underground Events SSM's Facebook page last week. This may seem odd for a metal concert with a local headliner, but promoter Mikhal Muto is an ardent folk punk fan, so I assume this was just good timing to get Greg a local booking when he'd be coming through on a spring tour run. Plus, this show already has a diverse lineup, as Mikhal's new ska punk band A.S.D.P. are also opening. Hopefully Greg sets things off on the right foot next month!
- In their own poster for new local Pearl Jam tribute band Even Flow's concert there on March 27th, Soo Blaster alternately list the venue name for the show as "SooBlaster / Blaster Power" and "Blaster Power House". I don't know if this is portending anything about a name change for the building/stage, but the Queen Street East entertainment complex has recently opened bowling lanes, laser tag, and arcade upgrades. Of course, the concert stage there had been branded as the Soo Lounge since opening in 2019, but if anything is clarified further, we'll let you know!
That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the SMS in due course! Thanks everyone!
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