Monster Truck live at Crocks at NV in Thunder Bay, 29 June 2019

An all-levels ticket to Monster Truck cost C$45, plus a $5 service fee, and no other price on the 2019 calendar in this record went higher. General admission cost C$40. The band, from Hamilton, played Crocks at NV in Thunder Bay on Saturday, 29 June 2019. Doors were at 7:30 p.m. Cobra vs Mongoose were billed as special guests.

Two tickets for one room

The all-levels ticket carried a sentence of its own: it allowed access to all levels of Crocks at NV. That wording implies a building with more than one floor, and a general admission ticket that did not cover all of them. Which parts of the room the C$40 ticket reached is not stated.

Tickets for both tiers were sold through the promoter’s online shop, on the TicketScene platform, with Visa, Visa debit and MasterCard accepted. Five dollars separated the tiers, and the fee sat on top of the C$45. Against the Friday night in Sault Ste. Marie, priced at $35 plus a fee, general admission here ran five dollars higher and the top tier ten.

A building six years on from the last visit

Monster Truck’s earlier Thunder Bay date, Thursday 12 December 2013, was at Crocks on Cumberland Street South. By 2019 the same club name sat over a different building. Since October 2018 the concerts had been held at 228 Red River Road, in the NV Nightclub premises, and this was the first summer there.

The comparison shows how far the price moved. The 2013 date charged $15 in advance and was a 19+ night. The 2019 date charged three times that at the top tier.

The tour that came first

The 2013 visit was one of thirteen Canadian dates that December, running from the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on the 4th to Hamilton Place Theatre on the 22nd. Thunder Bay was the only stop between Winnipeg on the 11th and Ottawa on the 14th. The band was touring Furiosity, which had debuted at number 13 on the Canadian SoundScan chart.

That summer it had also held an opening slot for Alice in Chains on Canadian dates, and its single “Sweet Mountain River” had reached the top of the active rock chart. That autumn it had also been in Europe supporting Vista Chino, the group that grew out of Kyuss, with a festival date in Hamburg on 27 September.

The 2013 announcement carried praise from Slash and from Mike Inez, the Alice in Chains bassist, both quoted as fans of the band. A band that could open for Alice in Chains in summer and headline a club in December had two very different jobs in one year, and Thunder Bay saw the second.

The band that came back

By 2019 there were two more albums: Sittin’ Heavy in 2016 and True Rockers in 2018, the latter announced with a track called “Evolution”. The line-up was the same four people who had formed the group in Hamilton in 2009. Later years changed that. Drummer Steve Kiely left in March 2022, and Jon Harvey, the bassist and singer, in June 2024.

That leaves this Saturday as one of the visits with all four original members present. It followed a Friday date at Soo Blaster in Sault Ste. Marie, with a different opener.

The two weeks after

Twelve days later the room hosted a different crowd. Colter Wall played on 11 July at C$25, and Half Moon Run the next night at C$32. Monster Truck’s C$45 stood well above both.

From the Soo along the shore

The two nights were joined by Highway 17, which runs along the north shore of Lake Superior between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay. A band playing the Friday in one city and the Saturday in the other would drive between them on that road, past towns such as Wawa and Marathon.

Thunder Bay itself, a city of roughly 108,000 people, sits at the western end of that shore, on the same lake the highway follows for most of the drive. Prices show what a night cost, not how full the room was.