Saturday, June 28, 2014

More Heart Concert Fallout, A Band Breakup, And Much More!!

Before we get too deep into this post, I'll send a special good luck to the guys in AlgomA, Bad Back, The Bear Hunters, Crucify The Whore, and Shit Liver as they all rock the Touch of Death Metal & Punk Festival in Cochrane this weekend! Knock it out of the park, and make the Soo proud! Today, we have new local ties from a recent local news article, a band breakup to note, and a new interview featuring a prolific local artist, but first, here's some more fallout from a major recent hard rock show!

We'll begin with some more fallout from last weekend's Heart/Jason Bonham concert at The Essar Center, including an interview with The Sault Star's Jeffery Ougler that was published on their website (and presumably in the newspaper proper) last Wednesday! Apologies for being so late with this, I only just found the article the other day. Entitled "Straight From The Heart", the interview is with Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson, and while it's largely based around the contents of Nancy and sister/lead singer Ann Wilson's new autobiography "Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll", she does talk about the current tour and working with Jason Bonham too. Solid read, if not too focused on the local date, so read it at this link or in last week's paper (though note that you'll have to watch a 15 second advertisement for access to it online, which is new to me for Sault Star articles.) Lastly for the known Heart fallout are some new concert videos, so what should you know on them?

These are 9 new Heart videos from YouTube user hbogie123, who only had 4 up on their Youtube channel when our original post was written up (it was auto-posted during the Anciients show, and the last of these videos went up yesterday.) All incomplete, the new videos include Heart playing their originals "These Dreams", "Alone", "Magic Man" (in parts linked here & here), and "Crazy On You" (also in 2 parts, here & here), plus covers of Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore" & "Four Sticks", but embedded below is one of the longer videos, of Heart covering "No Quarter". Like before, these videos have a good quality and angle from close to the stage, so check out hbogie123's new videos above & below!



Next up, Haggith drummer & local solo musician Mike Haggith received some cool promotion the other day as the featured artist on Betty on the Go, an online music webseries from XEAYZ.TV out of his Windsor hometown. As originally streamed on Thursday evening, it's now posted to watch on YouTube, so what should you know? After introductions, host Betty Gudel and Mike talk about numerous topics in this half hour video, including his recent work towards becoming a licensed pilot & what that could mean for his music career, his songwriting inspirations, his musical beginnings & preferences, his work with Paperclip Productions and the band Haggith, among other subjects. This runs for about 20 minutes before Betty does some local advertisements (with Mike providing some running thoughts), and after a brief clip of a local summer theater camp, Mike sings his original song "This Potato May Be Used As A Flotation Device" from his newest EP "A Place Of Our Own", which you can jump straight to at this link if you're interested.

There isn't a lot in terms of breaking news for future shows & such, but Mike did elaborate on the formats of his earliest out-of-print albums, and detailed the story of how he joined what became Haggith in the interview. While I'm a little surprised that Mike didn't go into details about his Windsor-era band work with bands like S.C.A.R., this was a solid interview, and way more extensive than I'd have guessed going in! The webstream video quality is what it is, but Mike sings well at the end, and it's nice to see him get this kind of a feature, so check out the full interview below!



Also, I have deleted local hard rock duo Re-Born (formerly the original Brutaly Fatal) from our band links due to the closure of their Facebook (and only online) page in recent weeks, which was likely related to the band's recent breakup. A reason for either has not been announced, but there was a falling out between members & Blood Shed Productions co-founders Tyler Gibson & Austin McCrea after Austin and the second version of Brutaly Fatal (now The Revolution) left the label last month. Out of respect to both parties, I won't go into further details on the split, but it didn't sound amicable. The original Brutaly Fatal (which was largely Austin's solo project) were one of the launch acts for Blood Shed Productions in late 2012, releasing a handful of demo CDs and playing a few live sets through last fall. In early 2014, Tyler joined on drums, and they changed their name to Re-Born, along with drifting to hard rock & punk covers, but their activity was limited to scattered video posts & some unannounced gigs, last making an online update in February.

While their original solo death metal style was an acquired taste (and I never understood the missing L from "brutally"), Austin always had bass talent and growling ability, and if he can shore up his stage presence, he should go far with The Revolution! Re-Born might always be one of those "what if?" projects due to the minimal online media and lack of announced shows, but hopefully things aren't as bad as they appeared late last month. Tyler's also got a good thing going with his current grind projects, so look for more from both this year, and best of luck all around!

Finally for today, remember how Toronto hard rock quartet Public Animal headlined at The Rockstar Bar yesterday? Well, there were more local ties beyond The Role Models' opening set and the C'Mon show two years ago, as Public Animal drummer Ryan Gassi is actually from Sault Ste. Marie! As outlined in a new SooToday article from Donna Hopper,  Ryan drummed for notable local bands like blues rockers The Rhythm Rats and punk notables The Kite-Eating Maples before moving to Toronto, where played in bands like The Lying Cheats & Memory Bank. In the article, Ryan discussed how he was almost going to quit drumming in bands before frontman Ian Blurton asked if he wanted to join his new band Public Animal, who are heavier than Ryan's past bands. I'm not sure how I didn't connect the dots before on Ryan's local past when researching Public Animal, but it's great to see him still playing and coming back home for a show! In fact, Public Animal will be the next band profiled in our Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile Series next month, so look out for that, and hopefully Public Animal come back to the Soo down the road!

That's all for now, but stay tuned for more news soon, plus our review of Mike Haggith's new EP by Monday! Thanks everyone!

No comments: