Swollen Members live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 4 May 2014

The VIP line cost twice the price of an ordinary ticket. For the Swollen Members date at Crocks on Sunday 4 May 2014, advance tickets were $25, and a limited number of meet and greet passes were $50 and sold only through the promoter’s online store. Doors opened at eight, the room was 19+, and photo ID was required from everyone.

The evening was billed as Swollen Members with Madchild and Prevail, the two rappers who carry the group’s name on record. Animal Nation was named as tour support. Two local acts, Deepcave and Rogue, took the local support slots. H.I.T Management presented the show together with Loffredo & Associates.

A Vancouver group on a long route

Swollen Members formed in Vancouver, and their run of albums on Battle Axe Records began with Balance in 1999. Balance won the Juno for Best Rap Recording at the 2001 ceremony, and the group collected four of those awards in total by 2007. By 2014 they were on their eighth studio album, and it had not yet come out when they reached Thunder Bay.

Brand New Day was released on 17 June 2014. The group said it was a landmark for them because the record carried no guests at all, only Madchild and Prevail on the microphone, with producers behind them. Anyone buying a ticket in April had a new record about six weeks away, and no way to hear it yet.

Where the date sat on the map

The published Canadian routing began in Vancouver on 23 April and moved east through Chilliwack, Cranbrook, Calgary, Lethbridge, Edmonton and Saskatoon. Winnipeg followed on 3 May, at the Pyramid Cabaret, and Toronto came on 6 May at the Opera House. That listing had no entry for 4 May.

Thunder Bay is the obvious stop for a band travelling from Winnipeg to Toronto on that line, and the calendar fits it into the gap. Nobody wrote down why the room was chosen, so this is a reading of the dates.

The twelve Canadian shows in that listing ended in Montreal on 10 May. Boston came three days later, and the announced route then ran through New York, Detroit, Chicago and St. Louis before turning west across Colorado and New Mexico, finishing in Scottsdale, Arizona, on 25 May. Thunder Bay sat in the middle of all that.

What a Sunday cost

Money is the easiest way to place this night among its neighbours. Beenie Man had asked $30 in advance for a Tuesday in April, 19 days earlier, so the Swollen Members ticket came in five dollars under it. Evan Dando, on the 20th, would ask $18.

The $50 tier was the odd number, a price that made sense only as a premium for something extra, and it says little about what the room normally charged. Whoever bought one got a meeting with the band. Everyone else stood in the same room for half the money.

Tickets were sold at Rainbow on Bay, Extreme Pita, Bean Fiend and the club itself. The VIP passes went through the online store alone, and the announcement called them a limited amount without saying how many.

The rest of that spring

Two other Crocks nights from the same weeks are worth setting beside this one. Beenie Man played on Tuesday 15 April, and Evan Dando followed on Tuesday 20 May. First came dancehall, then a Vancouver rap group with local openers, and after that a solo acoustic set from a singer who had fronted a Boston band.

That is a wide spread for five weeks, and it says something about how the room made its living: one door, three audiences that barely overlapped. The shows page lists more of the season.

Deepcave and Rogue appear on the poster with no more attached, so nothing further can be said about them here. Their names show that a Sunday bill still had room for people from the city alongside the act that came in on tour.

The age rule was the same for all of them. In Ontario 19 is the legal drinking age, and Crocks ran as a licensed bar, so the 19+ line and the photo ID requirement kept every ticket type, from the cheapest to the VIP pass, behind the same check at the door. Anyone planning a Sunday around this show needed the ID before the ticket.