Nashville Pussy and The Supersuckers at Crocks, 20 April 2012

The announcement for 20 April 2012 arrived more than two months early, and it opened with a record rather than a date. Nashville Pussy’s new album, it said, was From Hell to Texas. The band was coming back to Crocks, and the bill would carry The Supersuckers as special guests. Everything else was logistics.

The logistics were specific. The music was set to start at 9:30 p.m., the show was 19+, and there were two prices. A limited run of advance tickets cost $10 in the promoter’s online shop. Everyone else paid $15 for general admission, bought from a list of shops around town.

Six places to buy a ticket

The general admission list is the most local part of the night. The Urban Boutique, Rainbow on Bay, Ozone on Memorial, Bean Fiend, Valente’s Music and Extreme Pita all sold tickets. That is a spread of shops and food counters across town, with no ticket office among them, and it shows how a rock show was sold in 2012.

The advance price was the cheaper way in, and it was limited. How many tickets that meant, or when the offer would end, went unsaid. The gap was five dollars, and nothing suggests either tier included anything beyond entry.

The wording also draws a line between the two. Advance buyers went to the promoter’s own e-shop. Everyone else was sent to a shop counter. A reader with no card or no patience could still get in for the higher price.

What the band had behind it

Nashville Pussy formed in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996 around the guitarist and singer Blaine Cartwright, with Ruyter Suys on lead guitar. The band’s first album, Let Them Eat Pussy, came out in 1998, and its song “Fried Chicken and Coffee” earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance the following year.

From Hell to Texas was released in 2009 on the German label Steamhammer, and it was recorded at Willie Nelson’s Pedernales Studio in Texas. That makes the word “new” in the February 2012 post a generous one. Three years had passed, and the album was still the band’s latest; the next, Up the Dosage, came in 2014.

The Supersuckers

The Supersuckers formed in Tucson, Arizona, in 1988 and moved to Seattle the next year. Their early records were on Sub Pop, beginning with The Smoke of Hell in 1992. Sub Pop, the Seattle label, was best known then for the grunge bands of the early 1990s. Eddie Spaghetti, the bass player and singer, is the one member who has stayed throughout.

In 1997 they made Must’ve Been High, which has Willie Nelson on it.

That gives the bill an accidental link. Both bands have worked with Nelson, one in his studio and one on a record. Both also lean on country and southern rock, played loud, so the pairing made sense on paper. It is a reading of the two catalogues and not something anyone stated.

A date on the calendar

The February listing of upcoming shows wrote the date as “Friday 4/20”. Twenty April is 4/20, a number with its own reputation among rock audiences, and a loud southern band landing on it is hard to call chance. That is a reading of the calendar, not a stated reason, and the announcement never mentions it.

The word “returns” in the title says the band had played the city before. When, and at which room, is not in the record.

Announced twice

A second post appeared on 27 March 2012, under a title that named both bands and the date, April 20th. The two announcements are treated here as one record because they concern one show. The first post already named The Supersuckers in its body, so the later one repeated the bill rather than changing it.

Crocks stood at 16 Cumberland Street South, in downtown Thunder Bay. The other shows announced for that spring are on the shows page, and the February 2012 listing shows where this date sat among them. nothing says whether the night filled the room.