Architects Announce Canadian Tour Dates Including Thunder Bay

The tour list runs to thirteen lines and reads like a bus timetable. It opens with Rum Runners in London, Ontario, on 15 August 2012 and closes at Tom Fun Hall in Vancouver on 31 August. The sixth line is Thunder Bay, Crocks, Thursday, 23 August, with a link beside it to RSVP to the event.

Architects, the Brighton metalcore band, were the headliners.

The announcement went up on 4 June, and the album that the tour was named for came out the next day. Daybreaker was released on 5 June 2012. The tour, then, was announced on the eve of the record it was meant to promote.

The thirteen dates

The route touched six provinces: Ontario, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia. Over 17 days it had 13 shows and four days without one, on 16, 21, 22 and 27 August.

Toronto’s Opera House was on 17 August, Montreal’s Itamelodie on the 18th, Ottawa’s Mavericks on the 19th and Time to Laugh in Kingston on the 20th. Then two days with nothing listed, and Thunder Bay on the 23rd. Winnipeg’s West End Cultural Centre came the following night, then Regina, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary and Kamloops on the way to Vancouver.

Those two empty days before Thunder Bay are the only real pause in the route. Kingston to Thunder Bay is a long drive by any road, and a gap fits that. It is a reading of the calendar and not a note from the tour.

Who was on the bill

Structures came from Toronto and had released their debut album, Divided By, on Sumerian Records on 25 October 2011. A Sight for Sewn Eyes came from Halifax and were about to release a record of their own, Alone Together, on 26 June. Both were on every date. In Thunder Bay a local band was added: The Vilification, billed as local guests.

Structures had been here before. They were on the 2010 Holly Springs Disaster farewell tour, which also carried Architects. Architects and Structures came through together in 2010 and again in 2012, both times to the same room.

Before the list starts

The thirteen lines are not the whole tour. A Halifax concert on 11 August 2012, at Michael’s Bar and Grill, has a review in Exclaim, and the same three bands played it.

The reviewer described the singer Sam Carter climbing benches and tables and noted a couple of PA problems during an hour-long set that drew on The Here and Now and the new record. By 23 August the band had been on the road in Canada for twelve days.

An early show

The event was billed as a special early show at 7 p.m. It was all ages and licensed. A 7 p.m. start on a Thursday leaves room for a second, later programme in the same building. Whether there was one is not stated, so this is a reading of the clock only.

Advance tickets were $15 and were described as available soon at six shops: The Urban Boutique, Rainbow on Bay, Extreme Pita, Bean Fiend, Solbada next to Ozone on Memorial, and Valente’s Music. Buyers could also order online through the promoter. Five 2012 shows with a listed price ran from $10 to $25, so $15 was on the low side.

What the band was doing

Architects formed in 2004 in Brighton around the twin brothers Dan and Tom Searle. Hollow Crown came out in 2009 and The Here and Now in 2011, both on Century Media Records. With Daybreaker, Tom Searle said, the band wanted to look past personal issues to the bigger picture.

The date fell 88 days after the flood of 26 and 27 May, which had put the city under a state of emergency. The tour news went out in early June, when the clean-up was fresh. The relief fund reached $1,046,908 by September.

Crocks stood at 16 Cumberland Street South, and other nights at the room are on the shows page. The last line of the itinerary, Tom Fun Hall in Vancouver, was eight days after this one.