\ TO WEST \ The new Monday night Motown/Soul-Rock jam being hosted by the BackTrack big band at Cadillac Lounge won’t be running all summer after all. We told last week you about the new 7:30-9:30 Monday nights “Backstage with BackTrack” event for its kick off night, but since then the group’s guitarist, Marty Zatzman,…
\ ETOBICOKE \ The Groovestone band turned out to be more stone than groove in their Tuesdays stint at Southside Johnny’s in Etobicoke and now the band, having previously also burned out Timothy’s Pub in Etobicoke, has scampered back to Port Credit to play weekly at Roc’n Doc’s, where they should be right back at…
\ MISSISSAUGA \ It’s really hard for me to believe that it was a full twenty years ago that I first set foot in the Failte pub in Mississauga’s City Centre area. But since I was there pretty soon after it opened to talk to them about advertising in to-nite magazine (as this publication was…
\ TO Central-Midtown \ It’s been a rocky road for the last few operators of the room at 744 Mount Pleasant Ave. in uptown TO, which of course for decades was known as the Chick ‘n’ Deli bar and eatery, home of famous chicken wings (though not as tasty as advertised in my experience) and…
\ TO EAST \ Hirut Cafe was closed for a few weeks in July and August and seemed at first a little slow to get back up and running at full speed. But with venue namesake Hirut’s husband Tibebe Woldemichael set to retire at the end of this month, the music-loving multi-instrumentalist, who put in…
\ TO WEST \ Musicians and their fans in the Junction area are calling on people to boycott performing at or patronizing longtime live music venue Axis Gallery & Grill after a band’s show was cancelled with no compensation upon their arrival at the bar last Saturday night. It’s the latest in a series of…
\ SCARBOROUGH \ Open stagers used to performing Monday nights at McGradie’s Tap & Grill on Victoria Park Ave. at Ellesmere will have to find a new location to ply their talent tonight and for the foreseeable future, as the room has been shuttered at least since the middle of last week. Rumours and postings…
\ TO WEST \ It’s been a bumpy road over the past year for the weekly Wednesday Hump Night Blues show hosted by Dave McManus and George Baumann.and their Hump Night Blues Krewe combo. It was a year ago this month, after all, that the room where the pair had originally started it in 2015…
\ TO WEST \ It sure doesn’t feel like almost 18 years since Sam Grosso contacted me to tell me he wanted an ad for the opening of his new room in Parkdale, to be known as Cadillac Lounge. Yet indeed it is almost exactly that long since he opened the room at 1296 Queen…
\ TO WEST \ April has been a sad month for live music in west TO as not one but two longstanding venues with several nights a week of live music have either already ceased live music operation or will be dark after the end of the month. We already reported a couple of weeks…
\ TO WEST \ Yet another near legendary live music venue preparing to close, Cadillac Lounge in Parkdale isn’t limping into oblivion but has a robust schedule of live music between now and the end of the month when its doors are shuttered. Owner Sam Grosso has sold his stake in the room (interestingly a…
UPDATE: The Mike McKenna birthday show has been rescheduled to next Sunday due to the weather. Other show cancellations have also been received since this was posted. If you want to check a show’s status, click the link in the club’s address field to go to Google Maps, where address listings also usually include phone…
\ TO WEST \ It’s the end of an era for Roots-Rock fans who’ve been gathering Saturday afternoons for the past 13 years at Gate 403 on the Roncesvalles strip of west TO for the weekly 5-8 show hosed by affable songwriter Bill Heffernan. The club has been sold and closes after tomorrow’s finale performance,…
\ TO CENTRAL \ With so many iconic venues having already closed in the past year (and two more set to end live their music programs this month after having been sold) it’s downright inspiring to see a room that is committed to music being successful after having been through that mill already. Today marks…
\ SCARBOROUGH \ With just three nights left before it closes its doors for good (the space is being turned into a clothing store, apparently) iconic Birchmount Tavern in Scarborough wraps nearly 60 years of history with its final jam tonight and one last hurrah this coming Saturday. Anyone following the scene won’t be…
\ SCARBOROUGH \ On Saturday you can expect to see on the GTA club scene a million faux-Irish themed-bars offering green beer, Irish dancers, Celtic bands (or anyone who can fake a jig) for St. Patrick’s Day, and there are St. Paddy’s-related events happening in a lot of places all this week. But few of…
\ SCARBOROUGH \ As the deep freeze bites yet again many clubs are still in the doldrums after New Year’s Eve and not presenting any live music tonight, but one room in Scarborough that somewhat regularly has live bands is dark and cold for a very different reason. Overnight on Dec. 30-31 a fire apparently…
\ HAMILTON \ A bi-weekly Folk open stage that’s been happening in Hamilton since 1982 may come to an end tonight if a replacement isn’t found for the host, Al Lindsay, who says this will be his final week at the helm. The event, operated by the Hamilton Folk Club at The Pheasant Plucker bar…
\ TO UPTOWN \ If you enjoy live music but can’t really much abide the craziness of the “bar scene” with its blaringly bright oversized televisions mindlessly tuned to telecast sports you have no interest in, Boland’s Live Kitchen on a Wednesday from 5-8 might be just the ticket. Here you’ll find no tvs (at…
\ TO WEST \ It appears that Gate 403 Jazz/Blues and Roots restaurant on Roncesvalles Avenue is scaling back on its live music for three of the seven days a week it has been presenting two shows per day for several years. For over 23 years now, as we described in an article in 2015,…
With not much fanfare but presumably high hopes, two new rooms enter the live music fray tonight, one in downtown TO and the other in Thornhill. The most exciting of the two is the downtown room, Basso Blues Room, located at 320 Queen St. E. a bit west of Parliament Street. The former owner of…
The closing of Upstairs @ Aquila on Sunday April 29 due to owner José Corniellis‘s then-failing health was a depressing development for Junction area musicians. Cl
