Five Alarm Funk live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 3 July 2015

Two days after the Canada Day party in the same room, Crocks changed its mood entirely. On Wednesday 1 July 2015 the club held its annual party after the marina fireworks, with resident DJs and $5 admission. On Friday 3 July it put a large funk band on the floor instead, and the poster billed it as party funk.

The Friday show had doors at nine, was 19+, and advance tickets cost $15. Loffredo & Associates presented it, and the ticket line said the show was on sale online, with printed tickets to follow at the outlets on 28 May.

A band that arrives in costume

Five Alarm Funk is from Vancouver. The band’s own description promises a fully costumed, prop-heavy stage show, and its sound leans on gruff funk vocals, psychedelic rock guitars and horns. A 2014 description of the lineup counted ten musicians: guitarists, a bassist, a drummer who also sings, percussionists on congas and timbales, and players of trombone, saxophone and trumpet.

The poster’s line was “Vancouver’s champions of party funk”. The announcement’s title said the band was returning, and a photograph taken at Crocks on 1 July 2014 shows why: Five Alarm Funk had played the room on Canada Day the year before, three weeks after Abandon Earth came out.

Canada Day, one year on

That earlier date makes the calendar neat. In 2014 the band was the Canada Day entertainment. In 2015 the holiday went to resident DJs and a $5 door, and the band came two days later, on a Friday of its own.

Nothing states that the two dates were connected, and no one wrote a reason down. The sequence is only what the dates show: a holiday visit in one year, a stand-alone one in the next, and the same room both times.

Where the band stood in 2015

Rock the Sky, the group’s fourth album, came out in 2012 and was nominated for a Juno in the Instrumental Album of the Year category in 2013. Abandon Earth followed as the fifth, launched at the Commodore Ballroom in Vancouver on 7 June 2014 and released on 10 June. The band had a new record and a national nomination behind it when it came north.

The group has also collected Western Canadian Music Awards along the way, three of them by its own count. Anything Is Possible won the instrumental award at the 2011 ceremony, and Rock the Sky was nominated for a similar prize at the 2013 ceremony.

On 13 June 2015 the band played the Red Truck Brewery in Vancouver, three weeks before the Crocks date, so Thunder Bay came after a home-city show and not at the start of a run.

Three Fridays

The club’s other Friday nights in this record show three different formulas. The Trews played on Friday 5 December 2014 with doors at eight and a $25 ticket. DJ Qbert played an early event on Friday 15 May 2015, with doors at eight, a $20 ticket and a $5 after-party. Five Alarm Funk had doors at nine and asked $15.

At $15 the ticket sat below what Great Lake Swimmers charged in May, $20, and well below the $30 Arkells asked in March. Of the shows set beside it here, only the Canada Day admission and the $10 door price for Benighted were lower.

The late door is the odd number. Nine o’clock is an hour past the Qbert and Trews door times.

The two July nights

The Canada Day party opened its doors at 10 p.m. and charged $5. It was built around the marina fireworks, with the club taking over once they ended. The funk night opened an hour earlier, two days later, and asked three times the money for a live band.

Tickets were sold at Waking Giant Coffee Co., Joya Espresso, Extreme Pita and Rainbow on Bay, plus the club. The rest of the summer’s dates are on the shows page.

The 2014 Canada Day visit survives only as a dated photograph, and how that night was billed and priced is unknown.