Great Lake Swimmers live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 23 May 2015

Part of A Forest of Arms was recorded in the Tyendinaga Caves in Hastings County, Ontario. The album came out in Canada on 21 April 2015 on Nettwerk, and thirty-two days later Great Lake Swimmers arrived at a club on Cumberland Street South with a set built around it.

The show was billed as an early show on Saturday 23 May 2015, with doors at eight. It was 19+ with photo ID required, and advance tickets cost $20. H.I.T Management and Loffredo & Associates presented it.

Why an early show

An early show is a compromise with the calendar. The Elliott Brood date in September 2013 spelled it out: a concert with doors at seven, then the regular Saturday-night DJ dance party at eleven. This one used the label without the second half, and its doors were an hour later than that 2013 date.

It was not the only early event that month. DJ Qbert had played an early event on Friday 15 May, eight days before, with doors at eight as well. That night carried a $20 advance ticket and a separate $5 after-party.

A lake band on a lake

The band’s name points at the Great Lakes, and Thunder Bay sits on the north shore of Lake Superior, the largest of them. Whether that made the date feel more or less fitting to anyone in the room is not recorded. It is a coincidence of names, and the poster made nothing of it.

Lost Channels drew nominations for a Juno and a Canadian Folk Music Award, and in 2010 the band won the CMW Indie Award for Favourite Folk/Roots Artist or Group.

The band and the album

The group came out of Wainfleet, Ontario, and are now based in Toronto. Tony Dekker leads them. Their debut appeared in 2003, and A Forest of Arms was their sixth album. Lost Channels, from 2009, was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

Critics have set Dekker’s songs beside Nick Drake, Neil Young and Iron & Wine. Dekker himself names Gordon Lightfoot, Gram Parsons and Hank Williams. A Forest of Arms carried a newer concern: he had worked with the World Wildlife Fund on environmental projects, and the record draws on that. Kevin Kane of The Grapes of Wrath played on it.

Nettwerk, the label, had put out the self-titled album by The Trews in April 2014. That band’s December 2014 date at Crocks carried a Nettwerk record through the same room, on a louder kind of tour.

The opener

The Weather Station is Tamara Lindeman’s project, formed in Toronto in 2006. Its albums to that point were The Line in 2009 and All of It Was Mine in 2011, made with Daniel Romano. Loyalty followed on 12 May 2015, the first release in Canada through Outside Music, eleven days before the Crocks date.

Loyalty was recorded near Paris, a long way from any cave in Hastings County. Both artists on the bill had new albums less than a month old. That is a reading of the calendar, and a tidy coincidence.

A quiet room in a loud season

Folk rock was the exception on this calendar. In the twelve weeks around it the club had a French metal band on its first Canadian trip, Benighted on 8 March, the turntablist DJ Qbert on 15 May, and an Ontario rock band, Arkells, on 1 March. A songwriter’s band sat oddly among them, and the early doors helped it stand apart.

A second visit in 2018

The band came back to Crocks on 27 September 2018. That second date was a Thursday, with a ticket at C$25, five dollars more than in 2015. Three years and one price step separate the two nights.

In 2015 the $20 ticket cost the same as DJ Qbert’s, and $10 less than Arkells asked in March.

Tickets were sold at five places: Rainbow on Bay, Extreme Pita, Waking Giant Coffee Co., Espresso Joya and the club. Advance buyers could also go to the promoter’s online store. The rest of that month’s nights are on the shows page, where Great Lake Swimmers and DJ Qbert at Crocks sit eight days apart with almost nothing else in common.