A New Mike Haggith Full-Set Concert Video, Bullet Train's New Song, And More!!

On this rainy Monday night, let's dive into some new videos from recent months, including a new original song/lyric video, a brief clip from a big touring headliner in the spring, and leading off, a high quality concert video from this summer, so here's what you should know!

The full multi-camera video of local/Barrie alt-hard rock musician Mike Haggith's set at this year's Northern Vibe Festival was posted to his YouTube channel yesterday! Like last year when he and The Big Finish Band rocked the Forest Stage on Poplardale Road in nearby Ophir, Mike had a single-camera live stream posted after the fact, while enlisting Justine Chalykoff of Chalykoff Studios to professionally film the entire set with multiple high quality cameras. While the final 2023 video wasn't uploaded to YouTube until May, the turnaround to get this year's full multi-cam video was only 2 months, which is great for fans of Mike's! Still no word on if the interview shot with Chalykoff Studios last year will ever be released though. Note that I won't go into a detailed blow-by-blow of the new Northern Vibe video, as I already did that when recapping the single-camera 2024 live stream in this post from September.

Just as a reminder, this was The Big Finish Band's first show with Elly McWatters on guitar for every song (Mike just sang here), and their all-original set only had three songs held over from Northern Vibe 2023. For extra minutia about the set, see the September post linked above, but Mike and crew played the debuting "Brand New Day", "Back Away Slowly", "An Act Of Strength", Mike's newer originals "I Really Hope This Gets To You" and "No Love", "Hot & Cold", "From The 55th Parallel", "Carousel", "The Nature Of The Times", "All The Best", and "Twist Of Fate" this year. Justine used even more cameras to capture Mike, Chris, Elly, Matt, and Brandan rocking out on the outdoor stage than last year, even utilizing a drumcam for the occasion, plus more fade transitions and mirror effects than before, so kudos for the extra work to spruce up the already solid performance footage here!

Your next chance to see Mike & The Big Finish Band will be this Friday when they play a half-time set at this year's The Soo's Got Talent semifinals (preview forthcoming), so whether you want a teaser of what to expect at Soo Blaster on Friday or just want to relive the action at Northern Vibe 2024, give their multi-camera full-set video a watch below!

Next up, local hard rock trio Bullet Train released their fourth original single "Wayside" to their YouTube channel as a lyric video on Wednesday! The song had previously had its exclusive premiere in the rotation of Unity X Radio, a Canadian internet radio station that has been playing Bullet Train's prior singles already. The band's longest song yet, "Wayside" continues with its inspiration on their take of current events, with social justice and recent protests coming under their microscope here. I won't go into specifics on all of that, but fans of Cory's prior local bands won't be thrown off by the hard rock sound here, if more complex and layered throughout, so give Bullet Train's new song a listen below!

Finally for today, here's a video from the Matthew Good concert at The Machine Shop in April that totally slipped us by at the time! This was filmed by Mike Blair for 705Live Sound Co.'s Facebook page, as 705Live were manning the soundboards on that night, and he had quite a neat spot from the balcony at this point of the concert, so you get a nice overhead view of The Machine Shop's interior layout and the sizable crowd (at least until Mike zoomed in!). The video features part of the bridge of the Matthew Good Band staple "Hello Time Bomb", and while there's not much to hear in the 19 seconds-long runtime, it's a neat watch, so check it out below!

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

LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (Agnosticism), Vanity First Updates, And New Videos!!

Let's tackle some recent news and notes from Sault Ontario on this rainy Sunday morning, including some new videos, recent updates on an album release, and leading off, here's a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT!

Local folk punk/emo solo project Agnosticism will return to the stage with a headlining date at The Distraction on Saturday, May 25th! Led by young & prolific local guitarist Mikhal Muto, Agnosticism (whose only social media account is on Instagram) haven't played live that much in recent months, possibly owing to Mikhal's busy schedule in at least three other bands, but I believe this will be their first public show since releasing their new EP "A Letter Of Resignation" on major streaming services, so you could call this the de facto release party! That EP will be reviewed on the SMS this month, for the record. Mikhal will be joined here by two other solo artists, including 2022 Soo's Got Talent finalist and The Floor Between Us frontman Colin Gasparelli (who opened for Jackal Blood here in February) and Mikhal's Vanity First bandmate Andrew Beggs, who is credited as "Andrew Keith" for this concert. 

No word on if Andrew's solo set will essentially be a one man unplugged Vanity First set or if he'll employ a different sound, but come down to The Distraction on East Street to find out! This Memorial Day weekend concert has an early 6:00 PM start time, no age limit, and admission set at "$5 or pay what you can". This should be a good time for fans of folk punk and acoustic stylings, so visit the official Facebook event page for more details!

Next up, and speaking of Vanity First, let's cover some recent updates from Andrew and Mikhal's local punk band! For those of you who haven't bought their new album "Identity Crisis" on CD or vinyl, the guys posted the back cover of it on their Facebook page on April 25th, so you can glean some more information on the album that way. They credited "Studio 702" as where the album was recorded, and you can see the complete writing and singing credits as well. Notably, Mikhal was the producer of the album, and sang lead on "Off With The Heads", "When I Fall", and "Playboy Magazine", the latter of which being the only song co-written by drummer Keeghan McAllister. Of course, that album was launched at their release party at Soo Blaster on April 20th, and they continued posting content from that show to Facebook after the fact, including lots more black & white photos by Honest Job's Drew Armstrong.

Vanity welcomed a guest guitarist for at least part of their set on 4/20, namely Carmen Muto (second from the left), who is either Mikhal's brother or cousin, I am not 100% sure which. If you want to see how he factors in, both of the videos posted from the concert feature Carmen, and both are covers, including a (sadly) vertical clip of them covering NOFX's "Linoleum", and as embedded below, a shorter but horizontal clip of them covering "Suicide" by Choking Victim. Everyone sounds good on these covers, which did seem to go over well with assembled fans, and while Carmen was stiff up there, his guitar work did help fill things out! Before we move on entirely, Vanity First also posted a "Reel" on Friday featuring in-studio performance footage of them playing "Off With Their Heads" from the new album, and heavily filtered with strobing lights (an interesting choice given that the band has confirmed that Andrew is epileptic).

I don't like "Reels", as readers will be well aware, but the video is neat looking, and I hope that a horizontal/non-"Reel" version exists to capture the whole song, especially if Vanity First intend it to be a formal music video! In any event, I can't embed it here, so watch it (and more) above, give their live Choking Victim cover a watch below, and stay tuned for more from Vanity First when it rolls in!

We'll close today with a new video of local/Barrie alternative/hard rock musician Mike Haggith's set at last year's Northern Vibe Festival in Ophir, courtesy of his Facebook page on Wednesday! While a full live-stream of Mike & crew's set was filmed at the festival last year, this is pro-shot, multi-camera footage that was filmed by Justine Chalykoff of local filmmaking company Chalykoff Studios, who reportedly filmed Mike's whole set thusly. At the time, Mike promised that "a proper full-length video" was coming, not to mention a teaser clip of an interview that Mike and his solo band recorded with Justine, but neither has made its way online in full yet. At least we have one song from the concert proper from what Chalykoff Studios shot, and hopefully we'll get more from it and the interview (even with the bassist switch) in due course! Justine filmed Mike playing his and drummer Brandan Glew's old band The Din's song "Missing", which was their sixth of eleven songs that day.

No less than five cameras (four stationary, including the camera from the live-stream) filmed the guys in action last year, so you get a lot of great looks at the band and Forest Stage setup, especially notable given how the off-the-grid nature of Northern Vibe doesn't lend itself to plentiful video content compared to something like Rotaryfest. Note that the credits list Elly McWatters as a backing vocalist, but that appears to be a remnant of the full Chalykoff Studios video to come(?), as she only joined Mike for the last two originals. Excellent video, so give it a watch below, and hopefully there's more to come before Mike returns to Northern Vibe in July!

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