Matthew Good live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 5 November 2013

A hundred seats. That was the cap on the reserved tier for Matthew Good’s night at Crocks on Tuesday 5 November 2013, priced at $40 against $35 for general admission and available only through the promoter’s own website. Everyone else bought general admission.

Rock 94, Loffredo & Associates and H.I.T Management presented the show. It was announced on 20 June and went on sale on Friday 21 June, the first day of summer, so the wait ran to four and a half months. Doors opened at 8 p.m., the event was 19+, and photo ID was required.

Tickets and the top tier

The reserved block was the only tier with a stated limit, and it could not be bought at any shop. General admission tickets came from Rainbow on Bay, Bean Fiend, Extreme Pita and Crocks, or online through the promoter’s site.

A VIP package went through Maple Music: one premium ticket in the first ten rows and a meet-and-greet after the show, sold as the Arrows of Desire fan experience.

Among the other priced Crocks shows that year, prices ran from $10 to $30, which put $35 at the top of that scale and $40 above it. That is a Tuesday in November priced above the room’s usual range.

Who Matthew Good is

Good was born in Burnaby, British Columbia, in 1971 and grew up in Coquitlam. The show’s title promised a return to Thunder Bay. The Matthew Good Band formed in 1995 and released Underdogs in 1997. The band split in 2002 after internal tensions, and he has recorded under his own name since.

Their best-known record is Beautiful Midnight, from 1999, which debuted at number one on the Canadian albums chart and won a Juno Award for best rock album. It became the band’s best seller. Between 1996 and 2016 Good ranked twenty-fifth among the best-selling Canadian artists in Canada.

His solo albums include Avalanche in 2003, Hospital Music in 2007 and Vancouver in 2009, which won the Juno for rock album of the year. Across his career he has collected 21 Juno nominations and four wins. Arrows of Desire, the album behind this tour, is his sixth solo studio record.

Arrows of Desire

Arrows of Desire came out on 24 September 2013 on Frostbyte Media, and Good produced it himself. Its ten songs run about forty-three minutes.

The first single, “Had It Coming”, appeared on 27 May, and the title track followed in early September. The album debuted at number six on the Canadian albums chart, with first-week sales of about 4,900 copies, and later received a Juno nomination for rock album of the year.

Good has said that the Pixies and the Afghan Whigs, bands from his youth, shaped the writing of Arrows of Desire, and it has been described as guitar-heavy, melodic rock. By the time he reached Thunder Bay the album was six weeks old, with the tour running from mid-October to late November.

The opening band

Gentlemen Husbands opened. The band comes from Cobourg, Ontario, and had formed nearly a decade earlier from a group that started out playing hardcore. Universal Music Canada announced their signing on 31 July 2013, six weeks after the Crocks date went on sale. Their debut single, “Shelter Valley”, came out that July, and they spent the fall on the road with Good.

The tour ran from 14 October to 28 November, 31 dates in 46 days, so the band played on two nights out of every three. The act that opened on 5 November had a Toronto-recorded single, a new deal and three more weeks of road.

Two Tuesdays, two years apart

Good came back to Crocks on Tuesday 24 November 2015, on the Chaotic Neutral tour with Scott Helman opening. Advance tickets were $35 plus a $5 online service fee, so the base price held at $35 while a fee was added.

MAKJ had played the room eighteen days earlier, on 18 October 2013, a different kind of night. The rest is on the shows page.