Henry Rollins live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 9 June 2012

Numbered seats do not usually appear on a Crocks ticket. For Saturday, 9 June 2012, the room was set out theatre style, and a limited run of advance tickets carried seat numbers. Henry Rollins was the reason. He was billed as a spoken-word act, and the poster noted, in capitals, that it was his first time in Thunder Bay.

The show was announced on 5 March. Tickets went on sale four days later, on 9 March. Doors were at 7 p.m. and the talk started at 8. The advance price was $25, sold only at Crocks and on the promoter’s website.

What the evening was

The tour was called The Long March. The promotional text promised stories from the road less travelled, with recent trips to North Korea, Mongolia, Bhutan, Vietnam, India, Tibet, Sudan, Uganda, Haiti and Cuba. It set that against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and political upheaval, and said he would bring out the human and often humorous side.

There was no support act. The poster gave a single name and a long job description: punk rock icon, spoken word poet, actor, author, DJ. Each of those was accurate for 2012.

Where Rollins stood in 2012

His first band was State of Alert, in 1980. He joined Black Flag in 1981 and sang for them until the band split in 1986. He then started 2.13.61, a label and publishing house that put out his spoken-word albums, and formed the Rollins Band in 1987. By 2009 he was also hosting a weekly radio show on KCRW.

The Long March supported his twentieth book, Occupants, a collection of photographs and essays from his travels, published in 2011. That book accounts for the countries on the poster, and the format explains the seating plan, which looked more like a lecture than a gig.

A city two weeks after a flood

The Saturday date fell thirteen days after the rain of 26 and 27 May, which put Thunder Bay under a state of emergency. Tickets had gone on sale in March, long before, and the show went ahead as announced.

The poster predates the storm and says nothing of it. The calendar, though, puts this evening inside the first fortnight of the clean-up. That is a reading of the dates, not a stated fact about the night.

The rest of the tour

Eight days before Thunder Bay, on 1 June, Rollins played the Alix Goolden Performance Hall in Victoria, British Columbia. A Victoria newspaper wrote that his talks tackle hard subjects and often run past two hours. After Crocks he played the Dominion-Chalmers United Church in Ottawa on 13 June and the Charlotte Street Arts Centre in Fredericton on 19 June.

He then crossed to Newfoundland, with the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre on 22 June. Those were concert halls, church halls and arts centres, and a Crocks date with assigned seats fitted the same pattern of rooms set out for listening.

The price in context

A Newfoundland listing put tickets there at $25 in advance and $30 at the door, so the Thunder Bay advance price was in line with the eastern dates. Across the five shows of 2012 with a listed price, Crocks ran from $10 to $25, and this was the top of that range.

The limited advance run was not the whole house. The poster did not say how many numbered tickets existed or what happened after them. What it did say was that they could be bought at Crocks itself or through the promoter’s online shop, and nowhere else.

Around it at Crocks

Eighteen days earlier the room had held a very different night, the metal bill on the Canadian Ritual Tour at $18. Twenty days later, a Minnesota casino hosted the Retro Rock Revue with Smash Mouth. For a rock club, the spring of 2012 contained a lot of range.

Crocks stood at 16 Cumberland Street South. The other nights of that year are on the shows page. How many of the numbered seats were taken is not something that survives.