The Glorious Sons and Teenage Kicks at Crocks, 30 March 2014

Two bands on a Sunday night, and neither had its first album out yet. The Glorious Sons and Teenage Kicks shared the stage at Crocks on 30 March 2014, doors at 9 p.m., tickets $8 online. The Kingston band’s debut was six months off. The Toronto band’s was due in four weeks.

Loffredo & Associates and H.I.T Management presented it, and the announcement went up on 5 February, so the show sat almost eight weeks in the calendar. The night was 19+ and photo ID was required. The billing was as short as the ticket price: a headliner, special guests, a date and an address.

The Kingston band

The Glorious Sons formed in Kingston, Ontario, in 2011 as a five-piece rock band. Brett Emmons sings, and his brother Jay plays guitar. In 2013 they put out an independent EP, Shapeless Art, which included their first radio single, “Mama”.

John-Angus MacDonald of The Trews produced the EP, and Gordie Johnson mixed it. Black Box Music signed the band the same year and reissued the EP with a further song, “White Noise”.

Before Crocks they had toured Canada with acts including Head of the Herd and The Balconies. The Union, the first full-length, was recorded in early 2014 at Catherine North Studio in Hamilton, Ontario, again with MacDonald producing. That puts the March date in the middle of the recording year, a reading of the timeline and not a statement from the band.

Kingston sits at the eastern end of Lake Ontario, where the St. Lawrence begins, and Thunder Bay on Lake Superior. The two cities lie at opposite ends of the province, and this Sunday brought one of them to the other.

The Toronto band

Teenage Kicks were built around two brothers, Peter and Jeff van Helvoort, and formed in Toronto in early 2010. They put out the Rational Anthems EP in April 2011 and Be On My Side in March 2012. Their debut album, Spoils of Youth, was recorded in West Hollywood with the producer Alain Johannes and came out through Universal in April 2014.

The two bands had already shared a Winnipeg bill in the middle of March, with The Revival opening. A review of that night caught Teenage Kicks in the middle slot with half an hour of sweaty rock and roll.

They played two covers and new songs from the coming album, “Digging Up Old Bones” and “Houdini” among them, a preview of a record still six weeks from release. The Crocks bill came about two weeks after Winnipeg with the same pairing.

A loose thread

Peter van Helvoort met The Glorious Sons on a 2014 tour, when his band opened for them. He later worked as their guitar tech. When the bassist Chris Huot had a family emergency, he filled in, and he now plays bass and sings with the band. Teenage Kicks had played their final show at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on 23 May 2015.

The Union came out in September 2014, with “Heavy”, “Lightning” and “The Contender” as singles. It reached number 23 on the Canadian albums chart, went gold and earned a Juno nomination for rock album of the year.

The band won Group of the Year at the 2015 SiriusXM Indie Awards. On the album tour they went out across Canada with Airbourne, who had played Crocks the previous August, and with The Trews.

A Sunday at eight dollars

At $8 the show sat at the low end of a scale that ran from $5 to $50 for Crocks dates with a price that year. Bleeker Ridge had sold at the same $8 in February, on a Wednesday, and their night at Crocks looks much the same on paper: one price, online sales, 19+.

April held very different bookings. SuicideGirls: Blackheart Burlesque played on 8 April, nine days after this date, and Beenie Man, billed as the king of dancehall, came on 15 April. Crocks stood at 16 Cumberland Street South, and the shows page has the rest of that spring.