We'll Do it Live!

With the return of live music, I can’t help but feel nostalgic about the concerts that I’ve attended over the years. My first was an all-ages Gob show in Guelph when I was a teenager. Like in many high schools, there was almost a clique-like division with what music you listened to. You had the hip hoppers, the country music fans, the folkies, the hard-rockers, and with our small group, the punk-rockers (or to be more accurate, the pop-punk rockers). Live music has the power to do many things and, especially at a time of awkward adolescence, going to that show and experiencing the collective energy was a realization that our small band of misfits weren’t as alone as we’d thought. I still remember fighting tooth and nail at the end of the set for the drummer’s battered drumstick. For years I kept it in my bedroom like a talisman and reminder of that show.

Every November we present our annual Sounds of the City, where we celebrate local musicians. For our 10th edition, we’re focusing on the artists, venues, and organizations that bring live music to the masses. No stranger to the stage, singer-songwriter Rodney Brown talks to Tiffany Jarva about staying committed to his Northwestern Ontario roots. Plus, did you know Thunder Bay is Canada’s smallest city to have a fully professional orchestra? Ayano Hodouchi looks back as the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra celebrates 60 years of symphonic music. Also in the cover story, Sara Sadeghi Aval speaks to musicians about The Apollo and what impact the city’s long-running music venue has had on them, I chat with the organizers of the grassroots, family-friendly festival Live at the Bedrock, and we profile six musicians who you have to hear live. Keeping with our music theme, we go Eye to Eye with the MacDonald brothers from The Honest Heart Collective, film columnist Michael Sobota shares his favourite musicals, and the Northern Policy Institute examines the music industry in Thunder Bay during COVID-19.

Speaking of hitting the stage, we preview Badanai Theatre’s All Together Now and Paramount Live’s Heathers The Musical. Elsewhere in our November issue, we present two new columns: A Thousand Words, where we profile different photographers from Northwestern Ontario, and The Enthusiasts, a look into quirky clubs around the city.

In his essay “The Day the Live Concert Returns,” Dave Grohl wrote, “We need moments that reassure us that we are not alone. That we are understood... we are instruments in a sonic cathedral, one that we build together night after night. And one that we will surely build again.” Judging from the pages of our November issue here’s hoping that time is now.

- Adrian Lysenko