Canadian heavy metal legends, the truest of the original gangsters, Exciter will make their – unbelievably  long awaited – Newfoundland debut on July 23rd at The Rock House in St. John’s.

Established all the way back in 1979, the trio of founding members Dan Beehler (vocals/drums), Allan Johnson (bass) and newly minted guitarist Daniel Dekay have long since been established as one of the pillars of Canadian metal, earning god-tier status alongside heavyweights Annihilator, Sacrifice, Razor, Anvil and Voivod for their genre-shaping work in the 1980s.

Sitting down with the multi-versed stick-man and mic-slayer Beehler, and the career metalhead reflects on over four decades of music and memories, including the impending 40th anniversary of Exciter’s debut album Heavy Metal Maniac.

“It was a long time ago, but it’s fascinating that we’re still out there f***ing playing those songs that we wrote when we were kids,” Beehler opens with a chuckle. 

“The people, they still want to hear it. We just did a festival in Poland and played the album in its entirety. In some ways I guess it feels like it was yesterday, but a lifetime has gone by and it’s pretty cool.”

Did Beehler and company recognize the shifting landscape of the Canadian rock and metal world as it was being forged by he and his peers in the 1980s?

“It was just like passing ships in the night,” he admits. 

“We didn’t realize this whole Canadian thing was going to be so big for many years to come. We were just another band out there trying to make it. Now when we play with Razor and Sacrifice, it’s this big Canadian package to the rest of the world and they eat it up. But back then, no, we didn’t really think of it that way.”

Unveiling the Wicked

And while seminal records like their lauded debut and subsequent followups Violence & Force and Long Live the Loud and Unveiling the Wicked are still seen as present day genre gems, the band is hard at work on their first studio album in 12 years, and first since the departure of founding member John Ricci.

“The reunion happened in 2014 and we went five years with John. And obviously when he left the band we just scrapped any material that we wrote. But there really wasn’t that much material to scrap to tell you the truth. The writing was really slow. But now, of course with Daniel we’re writing new material and working on it and eventually there’s going to be an album. Yeah, we’re really looking forward to it. It’s got to live up to those old albums. And I think it will.”

As for the present, after four-decades-plus of heavy metal dominance, Exciter finally are set to touch down on our shores, aiming to blow the roof off The Rock House in St. John’s in classic fashion. “We’re pumped up for it,” Beehler shared with genuine excitement. “To go to Newfoundland and bring Exciter there, it’s f***ing amazing man. We can’t wait. And yeah, it’s been all these years and we’ve never been there. It’s cool to play places that we’ve never played before. It’s awesome.”

Exciter take to The Rock House in St. John’s on July 23rd with special guests Vertebraeker and Grenadier. Tickets still available at Fred’s Records and the Fogtown Side Shop

Limited ‘Early Bird’ general admission and premium section tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. this Monday, July 25 at ChurchillParkMusicFestival.com.

Early bird general admission tickets are $49.50 plus applicable service fees & tax and early bird premium section tickets are $99.50 plus applicable service fees & tax.

Gates open at 4 p.m. and the show ends at 11 p.m. This event will have a licensed 19+ area and a limited all ages section. There will be an area for lawn chairs if you choose to bring your own.

This concert is in addition to the already announced shows on Saturday, August 13, featuring Matchbox Twenty, Gin Blossoms, Our Lady Peace and Timber and on Sunday, August 14, featuring The ‘Original’ Irish Descendants, Bud Davidge of Simani, Celtic Connection, Kubasonics and Carolina East, as part of the Come Home 2022 celebrations.

About Churchill Park Music Festival

The first annual Churchill Park Music Festival will take place in Churchill Park, located in the heart of St. John’s, Newfoundland over three days, August 12, 13 & 14, 2022. Featuring wide open views, surrounded by mature trees and greenery, the festival location is easily accessible from all parts of the city – a perfect setting for recreation and leisure, social gatherings, and celebrations. The event will bring to Newfoundland a variety of top musical talent and aims to provide a safe, inclusive, and pleasing experience for all attendees.

For more information, visit: ChurchillParkMusicFestival.com.

Fans can expect to hear a selection of songs from his brand new album The Legend of Robin Hood plus Moonfleet, Into The Light, Spanish Train and many other classic hits from an international career that spans 50 years.

Chris De Burgh has always had a very special relationship with Canada, “It was one of the first countries that really embraced my music, and the atmosphere of playing there is just electrifying. My music goes back a very long way there … the beautiful, wide open nation – and its wonderful people. We can’t wait to see you in the spring!”

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De Burgh’s most iconic single, the chart topping The Lady in Red, remains to this day one of the most played songs on the planet and reached the #1 position in 47 countries. Out of his repertoire of more than 280 songs, De Burgh’s other classic songs are staples on the radio: Don’t Pay the Ferryman, Spanish Train, Patricia the Stripper, High on Emotion and A Spaceman Came Traveling speak to a generation of music lovers, who have rewarded him with sales of 50 million albums and sold out performances worldwide. Download Chris de Burgh’s full bio here.

Chris de Burgh’s 27th studio album released this past September, The Legend of Robin Hood, re-imagines the fabled tale of a folklore favourite. The concept emerged from his involvement in  Robin Hood, a stage musical about the infamous Sherwood Forest nobleman and his band of outlaws. Chris was invited to contribute storylines and melodies to the musical, which will be produced later in the year in Fulda, Germany, by Spotlight Productions.

The compelling result breathes music and lyrical life into a centuries-old and much-loved classic. It has the romance and magic of a minstrel entertaining and enlightening the listener, and that is precisely what has made Chris so unique and peerless throughout his long career. The Legend of Robin Hood is an aural extravaganza, played flawlessly by seasoned, talented musicians across a plethora of musical styles, from Medieval, ‘traditional’, nursery rhyme, folk and Celtic-infused to rock, classical and choral.

St. John’s, NL • Wednesday, April 13, 2022 • Mary Brown’s Centre. Tickets on sale Saturday, December 18, 2021 at 10am NSTat mileonecentre.com

JUNO-nominated, Newfoundland duo Fortunate Ones will celebrate the season at home in St. John’s with the return of their Holiday Show on Tuesday, Dec. 21 at the Arts and Culture Centre. Special guest is Nico Paulo.

Performing a collection of Christmas classics and their own festive tunes, including the Alan Doyle-produced “Hold On To Christmas Day” and their EP All Will Be Well, Fortunate Ones will warm up your winter with plenty of cheer to make your holidays merry and bright! 

For the first time ever, James Taylor & His All-Star Band, with special guest Jackson Browne, will perform together across Canada. Jackson will replace the previously announced Bonnie Raitt who unfortunately is no longer available to join these rescheduled concert dates due to her prior touring commitments.

“Last year was a time of great disruption and general upheaval for all of us. My plans for a coast-to-coast concert tour of Canada with my dear friend, Bonnie Raitt, were seriously sidetracked. Our rescheduled dates for this September were likewise denied. But we’ve been determined to follow through; to make the tour happen and come hell or high water, we’re setting our sights on this coming Spring of ‘22. The one wrinkle is that Bonnie will be unable to join us for the newly rescheduled dates. Happily, Jackson Browne and I have been touring together this Summer and Fall and he has agreed to come to Canada with me. We’ve been delighted with the response from our audiences on this current tour of the States and I’m hoping that those of you who have been holding onto tickets for the Canadian concerts will be pleased with the surprise change in the bill. Of course, some of you may have had your hearts set on seeing Bonnie and would like to receive a refund due to the change. This we will cheerfully and expeditiously accommodate. But I dare say that the rest of you will not be disappointed. See you all this Spring.” – James Taylor

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The highly acclaimed tour will kick off in Canada on April 21, 2022, at the Mile One Centre in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Pollstar recently commented of the legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famers during their current US tour that “these songs not only endure but expanded to include the life-worn truths of coming of age in the 21st century by two American treasures.”

Founding member of the hall of fame Canadian rockers Barenaked Ladies, Ed Robertson is no stranger to Newfoundland and Labrador.

Returning with the band who has produced globe-topping hits One Week, If I Had $1000000, Pinch Me and It’s All Been Done, BNL returns to St. John’s at the Iceberg Alley Performance Tent on September 16th. And if you think 30-plus years of gigging and the grind of the road has trampled the spirits of Robertson and company, you don’t know BNL.

“It’s a huge part of why I still do this thing. I love to play live, and it is a hallmark of the band,” he shared in a one-on-one with The Newfoundland Herald.

“I love to write songs, I love to make records, but I do those things in order to facilitate playing live. That’s where all the joy is for me, is in entertaining a crowd. We’ve only done maybe four or five shows at this point. And what a joy to get back to a live audience once again. So it’s pretty fantastic.”

Fresh off their 16th studio album Detour de Force, and with over three decades worth of chart-topping albums and crossover hits in the notoriously tough-nut-to-crack U.S. market, Robertson admits there is no secret to the bands’ success, nor to their taming of American audiences. Just good music, good people and more than a pinch of good luck.

“Well, if there was a secret, I would tell it to everyone I know and one thing we tried to do is drag our friends down through America with us as an opening act and try to share any of that audience that we can. I think one thing that has befuddled a lot of our peers over the years is thinking that because of our proximity to the United States, that fame in Canada will immediately translate to fame in the US. And what I’ve told so many people over the years, we get America, like we watch all of their news, we watch all of their television shows. We consume everything they put out. The reverse is not true,” he shares.

“As far as the industry is concerned in America, Canada is Portugal or Germany. It’s just a foreign market. And to say to an American label oh this band is huge in Canada, it just carries no weight with them whatsoever. It’s like telling them, oh, this band is huge in Italy. They just think, oh well, what does that have to do with America? So fame in Canada just gets you no free passes in America, and that’s very discouraging for a band that’s extremely famous in Canada. They go south of the border and they can’t get arrested and they go, well, I’m not going back there. 

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I was lucky to see The Hip in a lot of small clubs in America when they were already, you know, deities in Canada and there was no particular reason it didn’t take off the way it did for us. Added to all the hard work and all the talent and all the great songs there has to be a fourth dice roll, which is just blind luck. All of these crazy coincidences have to line up all at the same time in order for you to transition from a bar band or a large club band to anything beyond that. And you know, as hard as we worked, we were also lucky as hell. And that’s as important as the hard work.”

With 2022 marking the 30th anniversary of BNL’s landmark debut album Gordon, there is no shortage of nostalgia to go around. Set-lists, much like that of the bands’ impending NL return, are proverbial greatest hits of fan favourites.

“For me, I’ve been feeling quite nostalgic lately because a lot of those anniversaries have been coming around and I’m getting asked about them a lot. The 25th anniversary of Gordon is behind us. I think of Maroon as like late into our career and it’s 20 years old now. So I’ve been quite nostalgic about all that stuff lately,” Robertson admits. 

“One Week, it was the number one hit all over the world. And some bands would be like, oh, well, whatever. You know, I’m tired of that song. We just keep reinventing it. We played it as a bluegrass song for a couple of years. You have to find your joy in the things that made you successful. When we sit and write that set-list I go, OK well, here’s what we owe to the audience because they’re coming to see us. So this much of the set is for them, and then that carves out a little piece of the set, maybe 30, 40 percent of the set that I feel like, OK, that’s for us. So as long as we give them If I Had $1000000, One Week, Pinch Me and The Big Bang Theory and The Old Apartment, It’s All Been Done, we give them all of those, then we can do whatever the f**k we want.”

For tickets and more information on the Iceberg Alley Performance Tent visit the official event website. Pick up the upcoming September 12-18 issue of The Newfoundland Herald for the remainder of our one-on-one with Ed Robertson of the Barenaked Ladies!

August 27th will feature Canadian rock legends Glass Tiger, alongside local powerhouses Women of Rock. 

On August 28th, Newfoundland’s own Shanneyganock will take to the George Street stage for night three, with support from  The Navigators and Siochana.

The following evening, August 29th, will see Juno nominated singer-songwriter Tim Baker take centre stage with special guest Donovan Woods & the Opposition.

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On August 30th the festival gets a little country with The Reklaws with Robyn Ottolini. Local musicians, Carolina East and Justin Fancy, will open the show.

On August 31st, a band that needs no introduction to Newfoundlanders and Labradorians, Blue Rodeo returns to The Rock with guests Elliott Brood. 

Previously announced, Arkells will close the festival on September 1st!

Stay tuned to The Herald for news on the festival’s opener. On Friday, August 13th at noon, tickets will be available for purchase online at georgestreetlive.ca/gsf2021/