Bleeker Ridge live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 5 February 2014

Eight dollars, on a Wednesday, in February. Bleeker Ridge’s night at Crocks on 5 February 2014 was priced like a local show, sold online and marked 19+, in a year when Crocks tickets with a listed price ran from $5 to $50. The band behind it had a major-label album in its past.

Loffredo & Associates and H.I.T Management presented it, and the announcement went up on 22 January, two weeks before the night. The hard-rock quartet was billed as live in concert, with no support act named. Readers were told to buy at the promoter’s site, to be over nineteen, and to write for details.

Two sets of brothers

The band came from Orillia, Ontario, and is made up of two pairs of brothers: the singer Taylor Perkins and his brother Cole on guitar, and Dan Steinke on guitar with his brother Dustin on drums. They met in 2003 at a local jam night in Lagoon City, a community of about three thousand people.

They began with Joe Walsh and Jimi Hendrix covers, moved on to writing their own songs and put out two independent CDs. The name came from two streets, Bleeker Street and Ridge Avenue, where the founding members lived.

Small Town Dead

Small Town Dead came out in September 2010 on Roadrunner Records, with Bob Marlette producing. It was the band’s third studio album and its only one for that label. All twelve songs were written by the band, and four of them began as co-writes.

Dave Bassett, who has written with Shinedown and Sevendust, worked on three of them, among them “Pick Me Up” and “Still Standing”. Tyler Connolly of Theory of a Deadman co-wrote “Sick of You”, the southern-styled kicker. The title track was the first single, and it reached the top ten on the Canadian active rock chart.

After the title track came “Sick of You” in January 2011 and “You Would’ve Liked It” in March 2011. The V13 Media review, dated December 2010, described the sound as modern rock with classic riffs and big melodies, and predicted that 2011 would be a big year for the band.

By the night at Crocks the record was three and a half years old. Its follow-up, Four, had come out in 2013, so the band had two albums to draw on for a Wednesday set.

On the road

The band had already toured with bigger names. In an interview from early 2012 they described supporting Buckcherry and Papa Roach on the Canadian leg of a Jagermeister tour, and they said they wanted to play in the United States and make themselves known there. Ontario and Quebec dates were planned for the early part of that year.

They also described where the sound began: the band started as fans of Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin, playing something more bluesy before the hard-rock style settled. The riffs stayed. A reviewer at V13 Media called the album’s opening track, “Pick Me Up”, super riff-driven and powerful.

What the song says about towns

Taylor Perkins has described the title song as a personal one, about growing up outside a big city. Friends and kids he meets all say the same thing, he explained: there is never anything to do. You can watch a movie, then go and break things.

Lagoon City has about three thousand residents. Thunder Bay, with roughly 108,000, is far larger, but a Wednesday in February here has its own quiet.

Where they went next

In January 2016 Dustin Steinke left to join Sixx:A.M., the side project of the Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx, and the group shortened its name to Bleeker. A 2024 single from the band, “Let’s Go”, was played in NHL broadcasts and picked for the NHL 25 soundtrack, which suits a band from Ontario.

The next Crocks night came ten days later, DJ Ruckus returning on 15 February, announced on the same day. The room’s other dates are on the shows page. A second $8 ticket followed with The Glorious Sons in late March.