The Sword live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 14 August 2013

Doors at nine on a Wednesday, a 19+ rule and photo ID at the door: that was the set-up for The Sword at Crocks on 14 August 2013. The date went public on 31 July, two weeks ahead, and the announcement gave four band names, one price and a short list of places to buy it.

The Sword were on tour with Castle and American Sharks. The local guest slot went to Uhussie. Advance tickets cost $15 and could be bought at Crocks itself, through the promoter’s website, at Rainbow on Bay and at Bean Fiend.

A band from Austin

The Sword formed in Austin, Texas, in 2003. Their first three albums, Age of Winters in 2006, Gods of the Earth in 2008 and Warp Riders in 2010, all came out on Kemado Records. For Apocryphon in 2012 they moved to Razor & Tie, and J. Robbins produced it at Magpie Cage Studios in Baltimore during that summer.

The line-up in 2013 was John D. Cronise on vocals and guitar, Kyle Shutt on lead guitar, Bryan Richie on bass and Santiago “Jimmy” Vela III on drums. Vela had joined in October 2011, after a stretch with a temporary drummer, and the Apocryphon tour was the band’s first full concert tour without its original drummer, Trivett Wingo.

The two touring bands

Castle are a San Francisco heavy and doom metal band formed in 2009 by Elizabeth Blackwell on bass and vocals and Mat Davis on guitar and vocals. They had a new drummer for this tour, Al McCartney. American Sharks are from Austin, like the headliners, and play a metal-tinged punk that a Dallas reviewer described as high energy.

American Sharks sold a limited number of a 7-inch record, Weedwizard, each night of the tour, four per night according to that review. Whether Thunder Bay got its four is not known.

The tour they were on

The Thunder Bay date belonged to the Apocryphon tour, which ran from October 2012 to November 2013 and came to 163 shows across North America, Europe and Australia. The summer leg opened on 25 July at the Granada Theater in Dallas, then crossed much of Canada, with Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg and Toronto among the stops.

A Dallas reviewer of that first night noted “Freya” and a cover of Rush’s “Working Man” in the set, with “Night City” and “Iron Swan” as encores, and a special ale named for the last of them on sale at the venue. What Thunder Bay heard three weeks later is a different question.

Thunder Bay, on 14 August, came just under three weeks in. A fall leg with Clutch and American Sharks began on 27 October, so this was a summer stretch between two larger runs.

The price against the calendar

The 2012 announcements at this room often listed five or six shops, while this one named four points of sale: Crocks, the promoter’s website, Rainbow on Bay and Bean Fiend.

Across nine 2013 shows with a listed price, tickets at Crocks ran from $10 to $40. At $15, The Sword sat near the bottom of that range. Six days later came the hip-hop artist Tech N9NE, and the day after that the Australian hard-rock band Airbourne, on their own show page.

The Airbourne announcement went up on 31 July as well, the same day as this one. Two loud shows were put on sale together, a week apart, in the same room.

Laid out by weekday the run is Wednesday 14, Tuesday 20 and Wednesday 21 August: three midweek nights in eight days at one club, each with a different sound. Metal, hip-hop and Australian hard rock shared the stage within eight days.

The opener from home

Uhussie was the only local name on the poster, and a hometown band on a touring bill was a routine arrangement. It was also the one line where a Thunder Bay audience knew the name before the night. Crocks stood at 16 Cumberland Street South, and the band that headlined it would put out High Country in 2015, again on Razor & Tie.