Brad Paisley stopped by Calgary last week for a visit to the Calgary Stampede.

The Kings of Leon made a stop in Calgary’s Knoxville Tavern to perform a FREE show as one of the 20 Aurora Illumination concerts across Canada.  If you were one of the lucky folks to win your way in, then you enjoyed a very packed and wild ride without needing to be in the Stampede’s rodeo!

The 11th annual Beaumont Blues and Roots Festival took place in Beaumont Alberta the weekend of June 15-17.  Known as “Canada’s biggest little music festival”, it is the country’s longest running all Canadian content music festival, highlighting the best in all music genres, not just blues and roots, including pop, folk, rockabilly and country music.  While the festival has always included a fairly even split between male and female artists, this year is the first time they have scheduled an all female Friday, headlined by Serena Ryder.

The Sam Roberts Band headlined the 11th Annual Beaumont Blues & Roots Festival Saturday with a marathon set.  Known as “Canada’s biggest little music festival”, the festival has always featured a 100% Canadian line up with about 50% being female artists.

MacEwen hall was chalk full of rockers on Saturday night, the industrial looking college venue in Calgary making a perfect escape from the cold. An enthusiastic and heavily branded crowd greeted us as we walked into the large room, fired up from openers eyehategod and eagerly awaiting Corrosion of Conformity. There was puke on the floor, the beer lineups were ridiculously long, and the women were as pretty as the beards. It was it was the kind of show where everyone was there for the music. Like, there was this beautiful, unspoken sense of camaraderie. One dude just going around and taking selfies videos with everyone, I don’t even know if he realized BLS was playing but he was super stoked about the whole thing. It’s like we’d just gotten home.

On the tails of completing the most successful North American run of their storied career, Queens of the Stone Age have confirmed a second Stateside installment of the 2018 Villains World Tour. The new dates will begin with a March 21 and 22, 2018 two night stand in San Diego, and run through the end of May, including an April 24 appearance at the Austin 360 Amphitheater—the first QOTSA Austin headline show since 2011 and first time in the area since Austin City Limits 2013. The expanded Villains 2018 campaign will also feature stops in New Orleans, Miami and additional dates in Canada where Villains lead single “The Way You Used To Do” has reigned steadily atop the Alternative, Modern Rock and CAR radio charts. 

On June 2, 1987 Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Jay Semko, Don Schmid and Bryan Potvin, aka The Northern Pikes, would release an album that would forever make The Northern Pikes a household name across Canada and the single “Teenland” would become an anthem for a generation. This fall Jay, Bryan and Don are taking Big Blue Sky on the road across Canada starting October 12 in St John, NB.

Canadian rockers One Bad Son took to Facebook this morning to announce that they’ll be hitting the road this fall for a Canadian tour in support of their new album Made in The Name of Rock N’ Roll, which comes out this October.

On another beautiful, unseasonably hot Friday night in Banff, 1500+ people gathered in the Shaw Amphitheater at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity for a sold out show. Canadian music fans showed us that you don’t need to go to the Calgary Stampede for a rockin’ good time on a Friday night.

Know anyone who attended one of Chase Rice’s SOLD-OUT shows in Ontario? Everybody We Know Does…