THUNDER BAY - When the band, Midnight Shine, first took to the stage seven years ago, they played to a crowd of more than 1,000 people in Timmins’s Ont. This summer, the four member band from the James Bay Lowlands have been travelling the country as part of their first official tour and playing concerts and festivals from Vancouver to Ottawa.
“The first time we played a stage of that size was really nerve-wracking for me,” Adrian Sutherland, lead vocalist and guitarist with Midnight Shine, said of the Bluesfest in Ottawa they played in early July.
“We had our humble start up in the far north and a lot of times we would show up to a gig and we would be missing equipment or don’t have a mic stand.”
Midnight Shine will continue their tour with a stop in Thunder Bay on Wednesday, Aug. 9 as part of the free ONtour Concert Series. Free concerts have been held in cities across Ontario to celebrate Ontario’s 150th anniversary. Joining Midnight Shine in Thunder Bay are Magic!, Kardinal Offishall, and Ginger Ale & The Moonwhales.
“It’s interesting to see the different audiences across Canada,” Sutherland said of the band’s first official tour. “There’s always a slightly different feel when you get in front of a crowd in Hamilton versus Vancouver and then going from Vancouver to Timmins.”
Midnight Shine, which consists of Sutherland, George Gillies, Stan Louttit, and Zach Tomatuk, have been playing together since 2011. They released their first album, Midnight Shine, in 2013, and their second release, Northern Man, in 2014. Songs for a third album are already being recorded and Sutherland said they are hoping to wrap up recording by early November.
All the members of Midnight Shine grew up in communities in Ontario’s far north, which Sutherland said has really influenced their music and writing.
“Because growing up there in Attawapiskat, in a way it sort of shielded me from the rest of the world,” he said. “I had some musical influences growing up there, not a whole lot, pretty much just what I could get my hands on. As I got older and left the community and went to school, I got to really see what the world was like outside of the community.”
But being outside of the community has not meant he left it all behind. Sutherland said much of his upbringing comes out in his music and it is important for him, as a First Nations artist, to speak about issues affecting northern communities.
“I think it’s everybody’s role to try and learn more about some of the issues that First Nations are faced with,” he said. “We, as a First Nation band, I always feel like I have an obligation to educate people about some of the issues and some of the challenges and there are some really big challenges in some of these communities.”
“I think it’s important for me to talk about it and it comes out in some of the writing, particularly some of the things I’ve experienced growing up there,” Sutherland continued.
Being their first performance in Thunder Bay, Sutherland said fans can expect a unique variety of different tastes in music. And even though they have been playing on festival and concert stages in places like Vancouver, Toronto, and Ottawa, Sutherland said it’s always important for Midnight Shine to return to the smaller stages.
“We come from small communities,” he said. “My community of Attawapiskat is really small. I think for us to overlook the smaller communities is just not really in our interest. We think any show is a good show to play.”
