Evan Dando live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 20 May 2014

Sara Johnston had the second name on the poster, and she gave the night a second thread. Johnston first became known as a singer with Bran Van 3000, whose debut album, Glee, came out in 1997. In May 2014 she was travelling across Canada with Evan Dando, opening each show with songs of her own before he took the stage.

Bran Van 3000 toured the world behind that record and behind a second, Discosis, in 2001, so she brought more road miles to the job than most openers do. Nobody else was billed with the pair.

The Thunder Bay stop was Tuesday 20 May 2014 at Crocks. Doors opened at eight and the event was 19+. Advance tickets cost $18 and had been on sale since 14 March. H.I.T Management and Loffredo & Associates presented it.

The billing

The poster called him Evan Dando, front man of The Lemonheads, and kept the band’s name in the smaller type. That was accurate.

The Lemonheads began around Boston in 1986 with schoolmates from the Commonwealth School and made their debut in Cambridge that July. By 2014 Dando was the one person the name still stood for. The touring that spring was a two-person affair, and no other members were announced for the date.

A singer with a guitar needs no stage plot, which suits a club of Crocks’ size. The rest of the evening depended on how many people came to hear songs they already knew.

What the name carried

The Lemonheads made their widest mark in 1992 with It’s a Shame About Ray. A cover of “Mrs. Robinson” was added to it that year to mark the 25th anniversary of the film The Graduate, and it reached number 19 on the UK singles chart in December 1992. A cover recorded for a film anniversary became the song many people linked to him.

Dando also made a solo album, Baby I’m Bored, which came out in February 2003 and reached the top 40 of the UK albums chart.

The age line hardly mattered for this crowd: anyone who bought the 1992 album as a teenager was well past 19 by 2014. A night billed under his name alone therefore had two decades of records behind it by the time it reached Thunder Bay. Whether he had played the city before is not something this record can say.

A May of small rooms

The Canadian run that month was a string of modest rooms. Victoria had him at Lucky Bar on Saturday 10 May, with Johnston opening and tickets at $20. Fredericton followed on 29 May and Halifax on 31 May at the Seahorse Tavern. Thunder Bay’s $18 was in the same range.

Sixteen days before this date, Swollen Members had filled the same room with a Vancouver rap bill and a $50 VIP tier. The two nights had little in common beyond the address and the promoters. One sold a meet and greet at twice the ticket price. The other was a solo performer with a support singer, at eighteen dollars a head.

Tickets and doors

Rainbow on Bay, Bean Fiend, Extreme Pita and the club’s own box sold the $18 tickets, and the promoter’s online store sold them as well. The on-sale line names 14 March at all outlets. The announcement itself went up on 27 April, about six weeks later, so the tickets were already available by the time it appeared.

The $18 ticket was the cheapest of the three big spring nights: Swollen Members asked $25 and Beenie Man $30, both in advance. The solo bill carried the lowest price.

A Tuesday was a sensible night for a show of this size. It kept clear of the weekend and left sixteen days between this show and the rap bill before it. The other nights around it are on the shows page.

One small detail sits in the opener’s name. The poster spells it Sarah, while the listings for Victoria, Fredericton and Halifax spell it Sara, and this page follows the spelling used on the tour.