After a summer return of live music, Hamilton artists thank the venues that 'stuck around'
CBC
When psychobilly and horror rock bands The House of Haunt, The Brains and Gallows Bound took the stage at This Ain't Hollywood on March 12, 2020, little did music fans in Hamilton know It would be one of the city's last live shows for some time.
The show would in fact be the final one for the venue. The iconic Hamilton bar was sold that spring, just as the pandemic started hitting the city's arts and culture sector hard with closures.
"This Ain't Hollywood was on the verge of closing for quite a while," House of Haunt vocalist and guitarist Matthew 'Fang Binite' Vörös said, looking back.
"The strength of the scene and the strength of the people kept it alive."
The venue's closure ushered in a difficult time for the industry, but more than two years later, COVID restrictions on live music venues are fully lifted. Hamilton artists are emerging from a summer nearly back on track, after navigating a music scene deeply impacted by the pandemic.
Well-known venues in the city — The Casbah, Mills Hardware, Doors Taco Joint and Metal Bar, and Corktown Pub, to name a few — are back to near-regular programming.
Thousands of music fans caught many a live act on stage, as Supercrawl returned to James Street North in September.
The city has also seen new venues enter the scene, such as the Sonic Unyon Records-owned Bridgeworks, which opened last year. Underground DJ venue Sous Bas was sold to new owners, who relaunched it as Andthenyou in June.
But the industry which relies on live performances for revenue also saw many losses over the past few years. This Ain't Hollywood and the Cat N' Fiddle closed permanently. Absinthe also closed, although it hinted on Oct. 7 on Facebook that it was ready to re-open.
"I am very grateful for those venue owners that stuck around," musician Andrew Adu Amoah said in an interview earlier this year. Amoah is the lead singer and composer of the Hamilton post-apocalyptic funk band Papa Skin Freak.
"Hats off to those who didn't just quit. But who believed in musicians and artists and are architects of hope really," he said.
The band went back to playing live throughout the spring and summer. This return included shows at Hamilton's Corktown Pub and Toronto's Supermarket. Looking back on the band's performance at Corktown, Amoah said the show's atmosphere reminded him of the magic of live performance.
"That interplay between the artist with the band members and the artist with the audience was beautiful to watch," Amoah said. "It felt really good, especially because [the band played] original music. [The crowd] hadn't heard [those] songs before and yet, we got people dancing."
Performing allows artists to build relationships and connections within the music scene. The pandemic put a dent in that ability, as several Ontario artists told CBC Hamilton.
P.E.I.'s Public Schools Branch is looking for 50 substitute bus drivers, and it'll be recruiting at three job fairs on Saturday, June 8. The job fairs are located at the Atlantic Superstore in Montague, Royalty Crossing in Charlottetown, and the bus parking lot of Three Oaks Senior High in Summerside. All three run from 9 a.m. until noon. Dave Gillis, the director of transportation and risk management for the Public Schools Branch, said the number of substitute drivers they're hiring isn't unusual. "We are always looking for more. Our drivers tend to have an older demographic," he said.