Airbourne live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 21 August 2013

A hundred tickets is a small number for a room the size of Crocks, and that was the cap on the $30 VIP tier for Airbourne on 21 August 2013. The tier added a meet and greet and could only be bought online. Everyone else paid $20 at the door or from one of four shops around Thunder Bay.

The show was presented by Rock 94, the local promoter Loffredo & Associates and H.I.T Management. Airbourne, billed from Australia, headlined on a Wednesday. Bleeker Ridge, a band from Orillia, Ontario, was the special guest. Doors were at 8 p.m., and the night was 19+ with photo ID required.

Where the money went

The price ladder was short. Twenty dollars got general admission, thirty got the meet and greet, and nothing sat between them. Across the eight priced shows the promoter had running that year, ticket prices ran from $10 to $40, so a $20 headliner ticket landed in the middle of the range and the VIP price sat toward the top.

Tickets were also sold at Bean Fiend, Rainbow on Bay, Crocks itself and Extreme Pita on Arthur Street. Two local businesses, the club itself and a pita counter make an odd list, and it is a fair picture of how a rock show reached people in 2013. The promoter’s website sold both tiers, and the VIP tier was available nowhere else.

The band from Warrnambool

Airbourne formed in Warrnambool, Victoria, in 2001, a coastal town in the west of the state, a few hours’ drive from Melbourne. The O’Keeffe brothers are the centre of it: Joel on vocals and lead guitar, Ryan on drums. Their debut album, Runnin’ Wild, came out in 2007, and No Guts. No Glory. followed in March 2010.

The title track of the first album and “Live It Up” from the second were both singles, and both were three years old or more by the summer of 2013.

The third, Black Dog Barking, was released on 21 May 2013, so the Thunder Bay date arrived about three months after it reached shops. It reached the top five in Germany and the top twenty in Australia, among other countries, and it was nominated for an ARIA Award for best hard rock or heavy metal album.

A week with three very different nights

The calendar around this show is a fair picture of the room’s range. On 14 August The Sword played Crocks, with Castle, American Sharks and Uhussie on the bill and a $15 advance price. The night before Airbourne, Tech N9ne played the same stage, on a Canadian summer tour for his album Something Else.

That puts a heavy-metal band from Austin, Texas, a rapper from Kansas City and an Australian hard-rock band inside eight days, all in one downtown room on Cumberland Street South. Nobody in the audience needed to like all three.

Reading the bill

Bleeker Ridge was the only support act named, which points to a bill built for one hard-rock crowd instead of a package tour. An Ontario opener also spares a touring headliner the cost of carrying a second band north. That is a reading of the geography, not a reason anyone stated.

Airbourne’s reputation rested on short, loud songs about beer, engines and volume, played at full throttle from the first chord. It is a simple formula, and a low-ceilinged club suits it. Reviewers have compared the band to AC/DC since the first album, and the comparison has followed them ever since, fairly or not.

How full the room was on the night is not something the record keeps, and neither is the running order. What remains is the structure of the evening: a Wednesday, an 8 p.m. door, a capped VIP list and a general ticket priced at twenty dollars, inside the band’s own album cycle.

The other Crocks dates from that August and September are on the shows page. Orillia sits on Lake Simcoe, north of Toronto, so the support band’s road to this show crossed most of the province, a drive of well over ten hours.